The Hologram of Self
El Holograma del Yo
A reflection on how the sense of "I" is sustained by a complex web of thoughts, and what begins to happen when that construction is seen through directly.
The Hologram of Self
A reflection on how the sense of "I" is sustained by a complex web of thoughts, and what begins to happen when that construction is seen through directly.
When we refer to "I," what that word points to, for most people, is a bunch of thoughts. But it is a bunch of thoughts that are really complex. It is like a hologram of a self, a hologram of what I am. And then there is a belief that this hologram is what I am.
We refer to "I," and we refer to a bunch of thoughts, and we have done this all our lives. We just live as if that narrative, that bunch of thoughts, is real as what I am, rather than recognizing that it is real only as a bunch of thoughts.
Seeing through the narrative
When you see that this is just a bunch of thoughts, then the question arises: what am I really? Then we can see that there can be a shift where that subjectivity becomes a certain emptiness, one that becomes free from the attachment to being collapsed into this constant movement of thoughts.
Only now, by looking
This cannot happen tomorrow. This cannot happen because of anything in particular. It can only happen now, by looking, and by grace, but only now. There is no strategy that can work. There are practices, but the practices will all point you to one thing: look now. And the more you look, the more it will start to unravel, and it will unravel in different ways. It will be scary. It will be shocking. It will unlock an emotional torrent where you will be experiencing pain. But in that process, something starts to free up.
The body responds as if it were dying
I always highlight a kind of warning: as this happens, it will be challenging, because the sense of self, what we have believed ourselves to be all our lives, starts to disappear. And the body responds to that as if the body were dying. The brain gets signals that the "I" that I am is ending, and the body reacts with all of the chemistry and the nervous response of death. There are very few exceptions where this has happened without that.