The Subject That Is Not You
El sujeto que no eres tú
A reflection on how the sense of self is a mental object, and how discovering the deeper subject behind it can lead to freedom.
The Subject That Is Not You
A reflection on how the sense of self is a mental object, and how discovering the deeper subject behind it can lead to freedom.
There is going to be an image of how that person is, who that person is. All of that is a mental process. We could work on this the way I did in the previous session, with a meditation that points to how much of what we think is reality is just the mental layer. All of those thoughts, all of those images are objects, but they are subtle objects: mental objects.
Seeing the subject behind the self-image
When you look at the object of "I am" in all its forms, you can see that there is something observing that object. Something that can know it, describe it, experience it, body and mind. That subject is not the person you take yourself to be. This is a very powerful practice that can be explored for quite a while, making it more and more clear that the subject is not the self-image.
That same subject is the place I'm pointing to when I speak of the place that accepts. When you are hearing my voice right now, the part that is experiencing that is this subject. It is the same subject. "Subject" is just a word, of course. It points to the deepest sense of "I," but it is "I" without an object, "I" without a form. That subject, or "I-beingness," is also described as spaciousness, emptiness, presence. And that presence is fully accepting.
Where experience comes from
In fact, it is where the experience of objects, of reality as form, comes from. That is a trickier and deeper thing to see. Usually our understanding is that we are an object inside a universe of many objects, and we are just a subset of that. But through this process, we can start to realize more and more that what we are, at a deeper level, is not just that object but the universe itself.
This is something that even in physics is becoming increasingly recognized, through studies of what the universe is and what consciousness is. But it can also be discovered through introspection, and that discovery can lead to a very deep sense of freedom and well-being. It is not something we need to do or achieve. It is a discovery of something that is already real.
The cost of false beliefs
It does require that we question beliefs we might be quite attached to. In the process of questioning and dropping some beliefs, there is usually an encounter with some form of fear or pain, or both. A bit of a transition is needed. Then that belief can be dropped, and a vaster sense of freedom can appear.
There are many levels of false beliefs. We can have a false belief about our partner, and that can create a certain kind of struggle. But then there are beliefs about who and what we are that create a deeper kind of struggle. Every struggle of the kind that takes us to the place of "life is not okay," "this moment is not okay as it is," that deep sense that something is fundamentally wrong, is caused by a belief.