A reflection on the difference between identifying with the imagined self and recognizing it as merely a tool for communication, and how this recognition transforms one's relationship with thought and sensation.
A reflection on the difference between identifying with the imagined self and recognizing it as merely a tool for communication, and how this recognition transforms one's relationship with thought and sensation.
There is a very big difference between communicating as if the imagined self is real, as if that is what I am, versus using it simply as a tool for communication, a vehicle. Think of it like driving a car: you can believe you are the car, or you can know that it is just the vehicle you are moving with.
Granting reality to the imagined entity
When that imagination of an entity is, to any small degree, granted the status of what I am, then the struggle begins. But when it is known and seen as "not I" (neti neti), there is freedom, and there is a more harmonic existing, a more harmonic movement.
Thought becoming more than thought
It is just a matter of seeing more and more clearly. This is what the meditation ended up being about: I can go into thought, and then thought becomes, to some level, to some degree, more than thought. Or I can live in and engage with sensation and perception, and then thought appears. Thought can be useful, but it appears more and more only when it is useful, in the ways that it is useful, rather than as a way to avoid engaging with sensation and perception.
Intimacy, not engagement
Even the language of "engaging with sensation and perception" is faulty, because there is not a something that engages with something else. It is just the intimacy with the appearance of sensation.