The
striking thing about this whole malarkey is the fact that after
getting free from this illusion I was just amazed at the simplicity
of it all.
I remember the moment well. I was sat in a swivel chair in the corner of the lounge by the fan, it was a roasting hot day in Thailand just before Christmas, the 22nd December 2553 (2010 - the Buddhists use the date of Buddha's enlightenment) to be precise.
After a long day teaching English and a gym session I was sat there furiously scribbling in a notebook really trying to get the breakthrough moment and then it occurred to me to look honestly because I had simply been deceiving myself about looking in real life.
I personally had to force the issue and bust through the resistance that the mind threw up but what struck me was just how plain and obvious it was that the self was an illusion after the three weeks of busting my nut and convincing myself that I actually existed for the whole time. I laughed. I simply laughed to myself when I saw it and I felt an overwhelming sense of joy that I had seen it.
My blog has always been geared towards helping people to try and understand some of the conceptual confusion that arises from 'no self' and to give instructions for looking. I vowed to try and explain how to look but it is something inexplicable. It is just honest looking.
That is about as accurate as I can be, in the same way you can turn your awareness to a table and look at it, you simply need to look at your experience in the same way. The breakthrough moment is simply the perception that the self is a complex illusion, a projection of the mind that was simply believed as real.
Once you see the reality of this then what follows is a sense of profound freedom from the core mechanism of human suffering.
Are we adopting new beliefs?
I remember the moment well. I was sat in a swivel chair in the corner of the lounge by the fan, it was a roasting hot day in Thailand just before Christmas, the 22nd December 2553 (2010 - the Buddhists use the date of Buddha's enlightenment) to be precise.
After a long day teaching English and a gym session I was sat there furiously scribbling in a notebook really trying to get the breakthrough moment and then it occurred to me to look honestly because I had simply been deceiving myself about looking in real life.
I personally had to force the issue and bust through the resistance that the mind threw up but what struck me was just how plain and obvious it was that the self was an illusion after the three weeks of busting my nut and convincing myself that I actually existed for the whole time. I laughed. I simply laughed to myself when I saw it and I felt an overwhelming sense of joy that I had seen it.
My blog has always been geared towards helping people to try and understand some of the conceptual confusion that arises from 'no self' and to give instructions for looking. I vowed to try and explain how to look but it is something inexplicable. It is just honest looking.
That is about as accurate as I can be, in the same way you can turn your awareness to a table and look at it, you simply need to look at your experience in the same way. The breakthrough moment is simply the perception that the self is a complex illusion, a projection of the mind that was simply believed as real.
Once you see the reality of this then what follows is a sense of profound freedom from the core mechanism of human suffering.
Are we adopting new beliefs?
It
is all very well that I say LOOK at real life, it all sounds easy to
do on paper but the reality is somewhat different. You need only look
at the people who got stuck half way on RT and some of those that
have abandoned their threads on TS.
The many more who never posted and those that falsely believed they had seen no self and got carried away by adopting a belief in the concept of no self, when the reality was they had been sucked in to another delusion, one which is worse than the delusion of self for the simple reason that this position becomes entrenched and fortified by the mind. They fall just short and then have their work cut out trying to go the extra distance. Of course, it garners the question why is this so?
Quite simply, the adoption of new beliefs is not what we are looking for here. That is the last thing one should endeavour to do in looking for the truth. If anything Truth Strike is the antithesis of the believer. What we are primarily concerned with is testing beliefs to see if there is any objective basis for them.
Are we looking for the truth?
The many more who never posted and those that falsely believed they had seen no self and got carried away by adopting a belief in the concept of no self, when the reality was they had been sucked in to another delusion, one which is worse than the delusion of self for the simple reason that this position becomes entrenched and fortified by the mind. They fall just short and then have their work cut out trying to go the extra distance. Of course, it garners the question why is this so?
Quite simply, the adoption of new beliefs is not what we are looking for here. That is the last thing one should endeavour to do in looking for the truth. If anything Truth Strike is the antithesis of the believer. What we are primarily concerned with is testing beliefs to see if there is any objective basis for them.
Are we looking for the truth?
I
had someone tell me the other day that there is no such thing as the
truth and whilst we can say there are certain truths such as a-priori
mathematics, we have to admit that what constitutes our knowledge is
not necessarily truth.
For instance, there are things that cannot possibly exist, for example a square circle is not possible.
It may seem true that water boils at 100 degrees centigrade but we are taking for granted the fact that the universe is real and water really exists - we may all be hooked in to the matrix for example and this world is a fantasy made of neuron stimulation. Philosophically speaking we have no way of being sure that we are not in the matrix so we can never prove for certain that this is not the case.
For instance, there are things that cannot possibly exist, for example a square circle is not possible.
It may seem true that water boils at 100 degrees centigrade but we are taking for granted the fact that the universe is real and water really exists - we may all be hooked in to the matrix for example and this world is a fantasy made of neuron stimulation. Philosophically speaking we have no way of being sure that we are not in the matrix so we can never prove for certain that this is not the case.
So,
we can say that there is no such thing as truth and it is ultimately
not knowable what the truth actually is. The scientific method is
based on empirical refutation of our hypotheses and utilising the
falsification principle.
If you want to read more on falsification there is a good intro here, but to summarise briefly we will just say if something is falsifiable then it is empirically testable. From what we can test, we can derive certain things that are not true and this constitutes the basis of science.
So, for those who think there is no truth we can simply say:
We cannot find the truth, we can only expose that which is incoherent with reality.
If we take this as a starting axiom then, I am sure we can all agree that we hold false beliefs in varying degrees. We are not necessarily concerned with finding what the truth is, rather we are interested in discovering the beliefs and assumptions about the world that are are incoherent.
Primarily that is the purpose of Truth Strike, to facilitate this kind of investigation. We want to expose false beliefs and discard them, the adoption of a belief in no self is the antithesis of what we are trying to achieve.
Why did you used to call it the lie?
“Kill the lie!” (Healey 2010)
There was a reason why we used this term back in the day, we first knew 'no self' as simply 'the lie'. Why has this changed? Basically, the view at the time was that the core engine of human dysfunction rested on the single principle that there was a single belief in the self.
Once this lie was exposed then this rendered the engine of human dysfunction inert. Whilst yes, it is true I think this is a misleading view in the sense that if you look at the global financial scandal it was one enormous lie, yet, it was manufactured and perpetrated by many subtle lies that snowballed in to a giant lie that was waiting to be exposed.
That is simply the best way of seeing the false self, more properly it should have been called 'the lies'.
If you want to read more on falsification there is a good intro here, but to summarise briefly we will just say if something is falsifiable then it is empirically testable. From what we can test, we can derive certain things that are not true and this constitutes the basis of science.
So, for those who think there is no truth we can simply say:
We cannot find the truth, we can only expose that which is incoherent with reality.
If we take this as a starting axiom then, I am sure we can all agree that we hold false beliefs in varying degrees. We are not necessarily concerned with finding what the truth is, rather we are interested in discovering the beliefs and assumptions about the world that are are incoherent.
Primarily that is the purpose of Truth Strike, to facilitate this kind of investigation. We want to expose false beliefs and discard them, the adoption of a belief in no self is the antithesis of what we are trying to achieve.
Why did you used to call it the lie?
“Kill the lie!” (Healey 2010)
There was a reason why we used this term back in the day, we first knew 'no self' as simply 'the lie'. Why has this changed? Basically, the view at the time was that the core engine of human dysfunction rested on the single principle that there was a single belief in the self.
Once this lie was exposed then this rendered the engine of human dysfunction inert. Whilst yes, it is true I think this is a misleading view in the sense that if you look at the global financial scandal it was one enormous lie, yet, it was manufactured and perpetrated by many subtle lies that snowballed in to a giant lie that was waiting to be exposed.
That is simply the best way of seeing the false self, more properly it should have been called 'the lies'.
This
aspect was lost over time since it was an attempt to make the whole
no self thing more palatable to newcomers. Nobody likes to be told
they are a collection of lies but it seems this is not too far from
the truth if we are purely objectively speaking.
Of course, this makes no self seem rather less palatable but it is important that any fair enquirer realises that this is essentially what the false self is: a collection of fictitious assumptions that have no grounding in reality.
The thoughts you are aware of exist but they all refer to a character - “you”. This character is a fiction invented by the mind “you” are simply a figment of the brains imagination, you do not exist in any shape or form. Mental phenomena and human beings exist but “you” do not. There is no you quite simply, life lives itself.
Why do you keep saying dishonesty?
Now, you probably hear a lot about dishonesty on the forum and we shall focus on this aspect now. When we say dishonesty we are not talking about a conniving dishonesty where the enquirer is deliberately out to cheat everyone, we are talking about deceiving oneself in subtle ways that are not apparently obvious to the enquirer without scrutiny.
There is a clear and distinct pattern to the dishonesty that manifests itself and it is up to the enquirer to spot these patterns within their perception.
When you are working with a liberator, the liberator is NOT trying to free you. Make no mistake that is not the role of a liberator for the simple reason that only you can look at your experience. We cannot physically or mentally free you, it is quite simply your freedom and you have to take responsibility for this.
Of course, this makes no self seem rather less palatable but it is important that any fair enquirer realises that this is essentially what the false self is: a collection of fictitious assumptions that have no grounding in reality.
The thoughts you are aware of exist but they all refer to a character - “you”. This character is a fiction invented by the mind “you” are simply a figment of the brains imagination, you do not exist in any shape or form. Mental phenomena and human beings exist but “you” do not. There is no you quite simply, life lives itself.
Why do you keep saying dishonesty?
Now, you probably hear a lot about dishonesty on the forum and we shall focus on this aspect now. When we say dishonesty we are not talking about a conniving dishonesty where the enquirer is deliberately out to cheat everyone, we are talking about deceiving oneself in subtle ways that are not apparently obvious to the enquirer without scrutiny.
There is a clear and distinct pattern to the dishonesty that manifests itself and it is up to the enquirer to spot these patterns within their perception.
When you are working with a liberator, the liberator is NOT trying to free you. Make no mistake that is not the role of a liberator for the simple reason that only you can look at your experience. We cannot physically or mentally free you, it is quite simply your freedom and you have to take responsibility for this.
The
role of the liberator is simply to demonstrate your own dishonesty to
you, so you can witness in real life the assumptions you have made
with no basis. Essentially you are being guided to see your own
dishonesty that is as simple as we can conceptualise it.
This is not an exercise in logic and trying to conceptually get how you do not exist, you may as well repeat “Custard is really spaghetti” a thousand times instead of “There is no me” and by the end of this tedious process you will still not believe that custard is really spaghetti.
Repeat it a million more times and it will make no difference whatsoever.
Absolutely none.
This is simply a waste of your time and by us simply repeating “Is there a self?”, it gives it no truth value at all. You have to experientially dig deep and expose the lies that your reality has been based on. You have to see where your assumptions are based and flush them out to be scrutinised.
This is not an exercise in logic and trying to conceptually get how you do not exist, you may as well repeat “Custard is really spaghetti” a thousand times instead of “There is no me” and by the end of this tedious process you will still not believe that custard is really spaghetti.
Repeat it a million more times and it will make no difference whatsoever.
Absolutely none.
This is simply a waste of your time and by us simply repeating “Is there a self?”, it gives it no truth value at all. You have to experientially dig deep and expose the lies that your reality has been based on. You have to see where your assumptions are based and flush them out to be scrutinised.
You
are starting from a position of dishonesty in any enquiry. Everything
that you construe about the world is as a result of the beliefs and
assumptions you hold.
Since everything is framed within a belief of 'I exist', any enquiries we undertake in our thought will produce the same result.
To make a more simplistic analogy, imagine a computer running an algorithm to each data set input in to it. It does not matter how many times the information is processed it will output the result according to the algorithm that is programmed.
Your job is to scrutinise the program with a fine tooth comb removing any of the anomalies that are false. Of course, this is a simplistic analogy of a rather complex set of neurological machinery but essentially, the way to discover these anomalies is by looking at the program and seeing if it holds true in real life.
Many of these anomalies are not even beliefs that have been written unconsciously in to your mind, at times they are more like results of the program that have been assumed as a result of the processing that has taken place.
The key thing to note here is that the program will feed out the same results and conclusions, it will deceive you every step of the way and try to cover its tracks, since the mind sees any threats to its beliefs as an attack on its survival and replication prospects.
This is an idea to be covered in another post but what you have to do is test every line of this program and dig in to the assumptions it has thrown out. Reverting back to the results of the algorithm is simply dishonesty, because you have not scrutinised every line of the code to check if it is cogent with reality.
Since everything is framed within a belief of 'I exist', any enquiries we undertake in our thought will produce the same result.
To make a more simplistic analogy, imagine a computer running an algorithm to each data set input in to it. It does not matter how many times the information is processed it will output the result according to the algorithm that is programmed.
Your job is to scrutinise the program with a fine tooth comb removing any of the anomalies that are false. Of course, this is a simplistic analogy of a rather complex set of neurological machinery but essentially, the way to discover these anomalies is by looking at the program and seeing if it holds true in real life.
Many of these anomalies are not even beliefs that have been written unconsciously in to your mind, at times they are more like results of the program that have been assumed as a result of the processing that has taken place.
The key thing to note here is that the program will feed out the same results and conclusions, it will deceive you every step of the way and try to cover its tracks, since the mind sees any threats to its beliefs as an attack on its survival and replication prospects.
This is an idea to be covered in another post but what you have to do is test every line of this program and dig in to the assumptions it has thrown out. Reverting back to the results of the algorithm is simply dishonesty, because you have not scrutinised every line of the code to check if it is cogent with reality.
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