After recognition what happens to the self-assertion? Does it fall away? Does it hang out to keep the awakened person company? Or, are so-called enlightened people ego-less? The truth is nothing happens to the sense of self called “you”! I would not claim that I am an enlightened individual, I would say though that this separate self I called HD has had awakening experiences. Over time though I have come to see that as grand as these experiences were they have no more validity than the simple recognition I’m suggesting here. “I” have experiences, but they are not awakening, that’s just more deception perpetrated by an ego that wants to get enlightened. Re-cognition is a non-experience.
It’s a common misunderstanding within spiritual communities that enlightenment, awakening, liberation, or whatever you want to call recognition and resting in Awareness means the ego-self dies. There is this belief that the self-assertion disappears and all that’s left is this blissed out enlightened being full of light and love. The awakened person sits on the mountain and becomes a guru to all the poor souls that haven’t awakened yet. It’s all bullshit!
Take a moment to consider those saints, mystics, and sages whom we would generally agree were awakened individuals. Do these people not think, have opinions, preferences, desires? We’re not saying that they are egoic…we’re affirming that they still function within the relative sphere of experience as persons. What you’ll notice about them is that they are not attached to their body/mind ego-self. They are not deceived by the thought-stream that declares they are separate entities. There’s nothing wrong with the ego, it’s the attachment to it that keeps you enslaved within the illusion.
This reminds me of the old method of teaching the seeker that this world is a dream, awakening is waking up. Imagine you are dreaming. Within the dream is an entire universe yet when you awake in the morning where does it go? It’s clearly seen to never have been, it was illusory. In fact we often talk about the ego-self falling away or dissolving upon recognition. This is not inaccurate, I talk this way often, it’s a way of teaching from the perspective of Awareness. When you wake up from a dream the dream character is vaporous, it had no reality. But in the dream it does have a provisional existence. We’ll talk more about perspectives tomorrow in post #8.
Recognizing that you are Awareness is waking up within the dream of this relative existence. You might look at it as lucid dreaming: you know that you are dreaming yet you’re still totally engaged in the dream! There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the dream. The lucid dreamer while resting in the truth that it’s all merely a dream isn’t anxious at the fact that he or she is momentarily identified as a dream entity. In fact the lucid dreamer is ever aware that they are all the dream characters.
What we’re trying to wrap our flawed minds around here is that when recognition occurs this doesn’t mean the dream ends. You will still be here aware of what is. The world turns, the body moves, the mind thinks, the self-assertion does its thing. Yet you are conscious as the witness, the ultimate Subject. There’s nothing wrong with being “you”. It’s when you subscribe to the self-assertion as the only reality that there is avidya or ignorance.
Recognition is not about killing the ego. Recognition is about seeing through the illusion of the ego as a belief in itself as a separate entity in a world of apparent objects. As long as you’re going to sit around and try to stop the mind or not do anything with the body you’re going to be rather frustrated. That’s an aggravating place to be, like trying to drive a car without the wheels turning. You just can’t do it. It’s enough to let the engine run, the wheels turn, and the road to go by. Because from where you are seeing it all, it’s just happening. There’s no use in denying that “you” are sitting in a car going down the road. It’s enough to recognize that it’s all just happening and you are not the happening but only Awareness.
Today as you focus on re-cognition recall that you are only looking back upon what you truly are. There’s no need to kill your ego. It’s enough to investigate its reality, see that it’s a fiction, and look to what remains. Behold what is true, permanent, infinite, what is real.
