2014 ms item01 03 16 b phillips awakeningday16
Formula for Miracles® Presents
30 Days to Awakening
Thousands of Years of Spiritual Wisdom Revealed in Fun, Ten Minute Insights ©2012-2013 Brent Phillips www.FormulaForMiracles.net
Day 16: The Truth About the Ego, Body, Mind, Memory, and Personality Now that you clearly and unambiguously understand that You (uppercase: consciousness or awareness itself) is not the same as you (lowercase: the ego-mind, body, personality, etc.), it’s normal to feel a bit confused or disoriented. This is perfectly natural and a sign of progress. After all, we’ve just exposed that the basis for almost every action you’ve taken - and every decision you’ve made in your entire life - is based on a lie! It’s not unusual to feel that you’ve somehow lost yourself along the way, so today we’re going to explore the hidden truth about the things that you thought You were. IMPORTANT: You will not lose yourself when you Awaken! Instead, You are actually finding Yourself, perhaps for the first time. What you will lose after Awakening are the damaging false beliefs and mythologies about what you thought you were. What you thought you were – including the mind-body organism, the ego, the personality, the memory, the body, and even the soul – is really just like a robot that acts and reacts according to preset programs. In fact, the primary difference between a real robot and the biological mind-body organism is that the organism has the ability to change its programs dynamically, very much like a computer program that can modify its own source code as it is running. (For the curious, the idea of self-modifying code has always been a popular topic of research in artificial intelligence, and the ability to effectively self-modify is one of the primary differences between living, sentient beings and electronic computers. In fact, when I was studying artificial intelligence in graduate school at MIT in the 90s, the computer world was still a long way from figuring out how to create functional self-modifying software. ) You now know that the core and primary purpose of spirituality is to understand that the “false I” you thought you were doesn’t even exist, and that instead the real truth of your identity is that You are awareness itself, or – more precisely – You are the act of the perceiving. This is the Awakening! But Awakening is not always the same as complete liberation or Enlightenment, which occurs (usually) during the (usually) slower process of embodying your Awakening as you overcome the many deeply ingrained and heavily conditioned nervous system responses rooted in the myth of the “false I”. Some Non-Duality teachers call this the “residue” that’s left over from the years, decades, and lifetimes that you were still asleep. I’ve found that one of the most compelling and most common reasons that we tend to identify with the “false I” is action. In other words, you think that You (the true self) are you (the “false I”) because when you take actions, it seems that You are the one doing it. WARNING: Our languages are not well designed for advanced spiritual concepts such as Awakening, so to avoid cumbersome and clumsy language I will need to say things like “I am drinking a
glass of water” that are technically false where the more precise truth would be “I have a perception of a glass of water being drank by the mind-body biological organism known as Brent.” For example, if I go to drink a glass of water, it would be natural to say that “I just drank a glass of water.” In this example you can see clearly that language is partly at fault here, as the “false I” is deeply embedded into the syntax and grammar of all modern human languages. However, the truth here is that You are not the doer – instead, You are the one experiencing the doing. For example, if I am looking at a flower, the truth is that I – the true me, awareness itself – is having an experience or a visual perception of a flower via the mind-body bio-chemical organism that you know as Brent. But I am not Brent – I am the awareness that has the visual perception of the flower provided to it by the Brent mind-body organism. In order to deepen and embody your Awakening, you need to break the habit of thinking that You are the one doing things, and break the habit of thinking that things happen to You, because they don’t! You might say that nobody ever does anything, and that nothing ever happens to anybody, because there’s nobody here – we’re all empty! Whenever you are challenged in life, or afraid of something, or dislike something or don’t want to do something, always ask yourself: “To whom is this happening?” The proper and correct answer is nobody, because we know that the truth is that there is nobody here! Instead, what is here is a bunch of biological robots acting according to pre-set programs that act as vehicles to feed perceptions to the One Awareness. It’s unfortunate that nearly all spiritual practices are performed from false identification. For example, you might think “I am doing yoga”, or “I am meditating”, or even “I am a seeker”. However, the dirty little secret of spirituality, religion, and the New Age movement is that spiritual practices performed from the “false I” can actually amplify suffering because they reinforce the underlying basis for all suffering. It’s quite ironic that the path of the seeker tends to take you away from that which you are seeking, because the thought “I am seeking” not only reinforces the “false I”, but also creates the condition of not having found what you are seeking. Oops! Instead, the most direct path to wisdom is to remember a simple truth: no matter where you are, or what is happening, there is no one there – we’re all empty! Let’s repeat that in a big bold italic font because it’s so important:
There is no one here! Let’s take another example to clarify this concept. In our example, imagine that I’m at a spiritual retreat in a small room with a dozen other people doing meditation and yoga. According to our societal programming, it would be natural to say that “I and twelve other people are in this room meditating and doing yoga.”
But that’s wrong, and this fundamental misunderstanding is responsible for literally all the suffering in the world! More correctly, I might say that “There are thirteen human bio-chemical mind-body organisms in this room performing the actions of yoga and meditation. I am having a perception of this experience via the mind-body organism known as Brent.” In another example, let’s say that you have stubbed your toe and it hurts. You might think, “I stubbed my toe and now I’m in pain!” But this is incorrect, and again, this same fundamental misunderstanding is responsible for all the suffering in the world. More correctly, you might say “I had an experience of a toe being stubbed, and now there is pain.” But You are not in pain! You never have been in pain, never will be in pain, and can’t actually ever be in pain, because all those statements assume that You are some fictional character that doesn’t actually exist. Language is a big problem here, because it’s nearly impossible to achieve effective communication without identifying with the “false I”. It might be better to refer to yourself in the third person, but that would get clumsy and everyone would think you’ve gone crazy, so I’m not sure it’s a practical idea for communication with other people. Instead, you might start to train your thoughts to refer to yourself and others in the third person in the internal dialogue in your head, and continue to use the first person “false I” identification when speaking with others so they don’t think you’re crazy. We’ll cover the challenges of language in more depth next, so for now, simply start developing an awareness how your thoughts, words, and actions tend to strengthen and empower the “false I”. And if you can do this consistently, you’re speeding down the road to Enlightenment faster than you may realize!
Exercise Use a pad of paper and a pencil, or (even better) one of those clicker counters that the door man at the nightclub uses (you can find them at most sporting goods stores) or maybe your cell phone, and count the number of times during a single hour that your thoughts, words, and actions are based on the “false I”. I recommend doing it only for an hour, because it happens SO frequently that you’ll drive yourself nuts if you try it all day!
30 Days to Awakening
Thousands of Years of Spiritual Wisdom Revealed in Fun, Ten Minute Insights ©2012-2013 Brent Phillips www.FormulaForMiracles.net
Day 16: The Truth About the Ego, Body, Mind, Memory, and Personality Now that you clearly and unambiguously understand that You (uppercase: consciousness or awareness itself) is not the same as you (lowercase: the ego-mind, body, personality, etc.), it’s normal to feel a bit confused or disoriented. This is perfectly natural and a sign of progress. After all, we’ve just exposed that the basis for almost every action you’ve taken - and every decision you’ve made in your entire life - is based on a lie! It’s not unusual to feel that you’ve somehow lost yourself along the way, so today we’re going to explore the hidden truth about the things that you thought You were. IMPORTANT: You will not lose yourself when you Awaken! Instead, You are actually finding Yourself, perhaps for the first time. What you will lose after Awakening are the damaging false beliefs and mythologies about what you thought you were. What you thought you were – including the mind-body organism, the ego, the personality, the memory, the body, and even the soul – is really just like a robot that acts and reacts according to preset programs. In fact, the primary difference between a real robot and the biological mind-body organism is that the organism has the ability to change its programs dynamically, very much like a computer program that can modify its own source code as it is running. (For the curious, the idea of self-modifying code has always been a popular topic of research in artificial intelligence, and the ability to effectively self-modify is one of the primary differences between living, sentient beings and electronic computers. In fact, when I was studying artificial intelligence in graduate school at MIT in the 90s, the computer world was still a long way from figuring out how to create functional self-modifying software. ) You now know that the core and primary purpose of spirituality is to understand that the “false I” you thought you were doesn’t even exist, and that instead the real truth of your identity is that You are awareness itself, or – more precisely – You are the act of the perceiving. This is the Awakening! But Awakening is not always the same as complete liberation or Enlightenment, which occurs (usually) during the (usually) slower process of embodying your Awakening as you overcome the many deeply ingrained and heavily conditioned nervous system responses rooted in the myth of the “false I”. Some Non-Duality teachers call this the “residue” that’s left over from the years, decades, and lifetimes that you were still asleep. I’ve found that one of the most compelling and most common reasons that we tend to identify with the “false I” is action. In other words, you think that You (the true self) are you (the “false I”) because when you take actions, it seems that You are the one doing it. WARNING: Our languages are not well designed for advanced spiritual concepts such as Awakening, so to avoid cumbersome and clumsy language I will need to say things like “I am drinking a
glass of water” that are technically false where the more precise truth would be “I have a perception of a glass of water being drank by the mind-body biological organism known as Brent.” For example, if I go to drink a glass of water, it would be natural to say that “I just drank a glass of water.” In this example you can see clearly that language is partly at fault here, as the “false I” is deeply embedded into the syntax and grammar of all modern human languages. However, the truth here is that You are not the doer – instead, You are the one experiencing the doing. For example, if I am looking at a flower, the truth is that I – the true me, awareness itself – is having an experience or a visual perception of a flower via the mind-body bio-chemical organism that you know as Brent. But I am not Brent – I am the awareness that has the visual perception of the flower provided to it by the Brent mind-body organism. In order to deepen and embody your Awakening, you need to break the habit of thinking that You are the one doing things, and break the habit of thinking that things happen to You, because they don’t! You might say that nobody ever does anything, and that nothing ever happens to anybody, because there’s nobody here – we’re all empty! Whenever you are challenged in life, or afraid of something, or dislike something or don’t want to do something, always ask yourself: “To whom is this happening?” The proper and correct answer is nobody, because we know that the truth is that there is nobody here! Instead, what is here is a bunch of biological robots acting according to pre-set programs that act as vehicles to feed perceptions to the One Awareness. It’s unfortunate that nearly all spiritual practices are performed from false identification. For example, you might think “I am doing yoga”, or “I am meditating”, or even “I am a seeker”. However, the dirty little secret of spirituality, religion, and the New Age movement is that spiritual practices performed from the “false I” can actually amplify suffering because they reinforce the underlying basis for all suffering. It’s quite ironic that the path of the seeker tends to take you away from that which you are seeking, because the thought “I am seeking” not only reinforces the “false I”, but also creates the condition of not having found what you are seeking. Oops! Instead, the most direct path to wisdom is to remember a simple truth: no matter where you are, or what is happening, there is no one there – we’re all empty! Let’s repeat that in a big bold italic font because it’s so important:
There is no one here! Let’s take another example to clarify this concept. In our example, imagine that I’m at a spiritual retreat in a small room with a dozen other people doing meditation and yoga. According to our societal programming, it would be natural to say that “I and twelve other people are in this room meditating and doing yoga.”
But that’s wrong, and this fundamental misunderstanding is responsible for literally all the suffering in the world! More correctly, I might say that “There are thirteen human bio-chemical mind-body organisms in this room performing the actions of yoga and meditation. I am having a perception of this experience via the mind-body organism known as Brent.” In another example, let’s say that you have stubbed your toe and it hurts. You might think, “I stubbed my toe and now I’m in pain!” But this is incorrect, and again, this same fundamental misunderstanding is responsible for all the suffering in the world. More correctly, you might say “I had an experience of a toe being stubbed, and now there is pain.” But You are not in pain! You never have been in pain, never will be in pain, and can’t actually ever be in pain, because all those statements assume that You are some fictional character that doesn’t actually exist. Language is a big problem here, because it’s nearly impossible to achieve effective communication without identifying with the “false I”. It might be better to refer to yourself in the third person, but that would get clumsy and everyone would think you’ve gone crazy, so I’m not sure it’s a practical idea for communication with other people. Instead, you might start to train your thoughts to refer to yourself and others in the third person in the internal dialogue in your head, and continue to use the first person “false I” identification when speaking with others so they don’t think you’re crazy. We’ll cover the challenges of language in more depth next, so for now, simply start developing an awareness how your thoughts, words, and actions tend to strengthen and empower the “false I”. And if you can do this consistently, you’re speeding down the road to Enlightenment faster than you may realize!
Exercise Use a pad of paper and a pencil, or (even better) one of those clicker counters that the door man at the nightclub uses (you can find them at most sporting goods stores) or maybe your cell phone, and count the number of times during a single hour that your thoughts, words, and actions are based on the “false I”. I recommend doing it only for an hour, because it happens SO frequently that you’ll drive yourself nuts if you try it all day!
