Consciousness, Headlessness and Humanity's Case of Mistaken Identity

Questioning this ‘I’ is the very thing we must do. If we do not, if we allow it to go unquestioned, to take over our whole identity, without a second thought, then we are servants to this ‘I’, to this voice in our heads, and it will, and often does, run amuck.

The mistaken duality is between consciousness and the ‘I’. Even when we think ‘I must do the dishes’… who the hell are we talking to? Is there another ‘you’ inside of ‘you’ who needs ‘you’ to remind ‘yourself’ to do the dishes? After all ‘you’ are the one reminding ‘your’‘self’ to do them.

Furthermore, suffering is an object within consciousness. Consciousness is aware of suffering. But if we no longer mistake consciousness (no-thingness) with its objects (things, including things like thoughts, feelings, pain), then we recognise that it is not the real me that suffers, rather it is that phenomenal ‘I’, it is the one in the mirror who suffers. Anxiety and pain are feelings within consciousness. The consciousness aware of the objects of anxiety and pain is not itself in anxiety and pain, if it no longer identifies with its objects. Of course, this may not be much use to many presently suffering… there is much meditation and self-enquiry to do before this mis-identification of consciousness with its objects, sustained and habitualised over the course of our entire lives, can be un-done. I know I for one am nowhere near this point of enlightenment yet. Though of course, in another way, we are all already enlightened, we are all already the self-world, we are all already the no-thingness of consciousness apart from its objects.