Who Would You Be Without “Me”? | Station Me, Part 3

#buddhism #mindfulness #ego
What if the “me” we spend so much time managing and protecting isn’t actually running the show?
This was recorded from a Live event.
In Part Three of the Station Me series, we look more closely at the one who seems to be making the decisions, creating the motivation, and directing our lives - and what happens when we can’t actually find that separate doer.
Perhaps life has been happening all along and it continues to unfold without all the stress and anxiety of trying to control that which we aren't controlling.

Transcript

Are going to continue on with our station me series so really looking at this ongoing broadcast that is always interpreting experience everything that's happening and referring it back to a me So what does this mean about me? How is this going to affect me? What do they think about me? What do I think about me? And as we've been looking at this series, We've used a lot of examples, Kind of universal examples of the unanswered text, They haven't called me back yet, Getting snubbed by someone or getting the message back but not the one we wanted to receive. And there can be this really wonderful sense of relief when we hear these universal examples and we think, Oh, It's not just me. And then. We're going, Of course, A little bit deeper. To say, Well, Maybe it isn't me at all. Maybe it's just a broadcast. And before that insight, Before that relief, Can even settle in. Another Breaking News event. But who would you be? Without me. So yeah, Maybe this me is. . . In interpreting things in a way that's exaggerating things or making things overly personal about me or it's having a lot of misunderstandings, But this is the me that's also getting everything done. This is the me that I'm the motivation. I'm my moral compass. I'm my personality. I'm my preferences. I'm the one. That gets things done. So without me, Right, You might just be sitting on the sofa all day staring at the wall. Who would be running your life? And so it presents a bit of a dilemma for us. We start to push back on this because we think, Sure. I would love to lose the misinterpreting of every situation as how it relates to me. I would love to stop. Doubting everything I say, Questioning everything and what is everyone thinking about me? We'd love to get rid of that. But at the same time, We think, But maybe that's the same me. That's responsible for all my successes. That's responsible for my moral compass, For my motivation, For my preferences, For my personality. For all my good qualities. So now it doesn't sound like such a good deal. Because if I have to give up neurotic me. Then I'd also have to give up. Competent. And so the fear comes back in, The clinging, The grasping at the me. That we think we are comes right back in again. And if we use another analogy of saying that we're walking around all day, We're wearing these heavy backpacks and it's filled with all these stones, It's filled with all this sand, It's filled with concrete, Super heavy. And it's not that we're saying. Put the backpack down. It's not helping you. Right? Not that that's not a good teaching, Right? This is a progressive path. And at different stages of the path, It's helpful to hear, Put the back path down. But we're going deeper. We're pointing out. Maybe there isn't a backpack. At all. Maybe there is nothing that needs to be put down. There's nothing that needs to be gotten rid of. Maybe it's not something that we just need to learn how to carry around more skillfully. So we're not asking, We're not questioning. You know, Do we need to give something up? We're questioning the claim that Station Me is making. That I'm running all of this. I'm making all the decisions. I'm all of the motivation. I'm the one that's coming up with all the good ideas. But is that really what's happening? Because of course, All day long, Things are happening. Maybe we're. We're at our computer. It's Monday morning. And a little reminder pops up that we've got a meeting in 10 minutes. Because we scheduled that meeting, Different conditions from a couple of days ago, There was an idea, The team needed to get together and discuss it. So that reminder pops up. And then another thought pops up and says, Hey, Let's go get that cup of coffee now. Because if you have the second cup of coffee too late in the day, Remember what happened the other day, You weren't able to sleep that night. So that memory comes up as well. And it's like, Okay, We go get the cup of coffee. And then after the meeting. Maybe a thought pops up in our head like, Remember that podcast that said it's really good to get little bits of activity throughout the day. It's not good to sit all day. And so all of a sudden, There's some motivation to go for a little walk around the block. And then as we're walking around the block, And we're looking around, And we're hearing the sounds, And our circulation is flowing, And then all of a sudden, A good idea pops into our head. And we think, Wow, What a brilliant idea. Let me put a little voice memo into my phone so I can remember that for later. Now, Stasia and me will come into every single one of those situations and say, I did that. I made the coffee. I decided to go for the walk. I gave you the motivation for the walk. I had the brilliant idea. But if that was really the case. If I am really producing my motivation. Then why can't I just turn it on at will? If I'm really the author of all these great ideas. Why can't I just decide to sit down with a pad and pen and say, OK, Brilliant ideas? Flow forth. Or, If I am the author of all of my thoughts, Why do I not know? What my next thought is going to be. So if we. If we look at this and maybe let's unpack how a decision is made. We've got something to decide coming up. We are maybe thinking about leaving our job. We're thinking about taking on a new job, Starting a business, Or making a big purchase. So there's a decision that needs to be made. And there's a lot of thinking that's happening around the decision. A lot of risk analysis and, Oh, Should I do this? But, Oh, Another memory pops up. But don't forget about what happened last time. It could go that way. But, Oh, Remember that podcast that said you should think of it this way? And then all these different kind of thoughts are happening. It's like these kind of ping pong balls going back and forth. We're not choosing any of these thoughts. We're not creating. But they just all seem to be arising. So clearly, Analyzing happening. Brain processing happening, Pros and cons being weighed up, Memories arising. And then all of a sudden, After days, Maybe weeks, Of periodically thinking about this big decision, 8. 45 on a Friday morning. The ball drops, Decision made. I've decided what to do. I did that. This is what Station Me declares. But if we look more closely. And we see. Why did the decision come? At 8. 45 that morning versus 10. 17 the night before? Did we choose to sleep more soundly so that we could see things differently in the morning? Did we choose which memories were arising that were helpful and some that were kind of pulling us back, Right? Of the thousands of thoughts that we were having, Why did that one particular thought all of a sudden have so much weight? That pushed the ball forward to say this is the decision. I'm not saying that decisioning isn't happening. Is happening all the time. What I'm saying is it's happening out of countless causes and conditions. Countless how you're feeling in one particular moment versus another moment, What your friends said to you about the decision, What your friends didn't say to you about the decision, What's happening with the weather, You would be shocked to know how much the weather is influencing our decisions, Whether we're feeling sick, Whether we just had a huge success or whether we just had a big failure. Whether someone just praised us, Whether someone just criticized us. All of these things, Trillions of conditions going into the decisioning. And yet when we look, We cannot find. An independent author behind all of that activity. The broadcast is happening we can't find. The independent author at the center. And if we even kind of look at this a little bit more. It's kind of a little bit of an absurd example. We We look at a rocket launch that's happening, A space rocket launch. And of course, There's the people watching the rocket launch. There's the astronauts in the spaceship. There's the engineers, The scientists, The technicians. And then after the rocket launches, One person goes up to the podium and they say, I did that. And we would all say, That's absurd. You didn't do that. Because we would point to all the engineers and the scientists and the technicians, And we would go, Look, All these people were a part of it. And the astronauts, Obviously, They're all a part of it. But even that would not be sufficient enough. Because behind every person there, There's parents, There's teachers, There's mentors. There were books that were written, There were classes that were given. There is centuries of knowledge and understanding and experiments that have been transferred down from generation to generation. Technology built upon technology built upon technology. Even in this example. You can't find an independent author. Behind the activity. Space rocket launching. It's just trillions of conditions coming together. This is how everything is happening. Decisioning happening. Thinking happening, Action happening, Responding happening. But when we look, For the author behind all of this activity, The one that we believe is controlling and directing all of this. We actually can't find it. And the belief. That there is a little me behind all of this activity, Directing and controlling, Is what is causing so much suffering, So much dissatisfaction, So much misunderstandings, So much worry, So much self-doubt, Because think about if there is really a me that is controlling all of this. Then I have an enormous job to do every single day. Right, Because. Right, Now I'm the one that has to Make sure that I'm always making the right decisions. I'm the one that can't make any mistakes. I'm the one that can't say anything wrong. I'm the one that needs everyone to like me. I'm the one that needs to be improving and being better every single day. I'm the one. That just basically needs the whole world and everyone in it. To be doing what I want them to do. In order to feel okay. About myself. So the burden. It's not that. We need to get rid of this me. But it's to see that our whole lives we have been managing and trying to protect. This imaginary me that we believe to be at the center of experience. Now before we go to nihilism. I'm not suggesting that there is not a human experience taking place here. A human experience that we would conventionally call Michelle or Alice or Kathy or Lori, Right? That is continuously arising through trillions of conditions. And having the unique expression as Joe or Sandy or Simon. Because each of us does have our own unique conditioning based on our upbringing and our parents and where we went to school and the experiences that we had that kept shaping us and the preferences and the talents that we have and the wounds that we have, Right? Each of us having our own unique expression. So experience is happening. And the knowing of experience is happening. We're knowing when there's a pleasant experience. We're knowing when there's an unpleasant experience. We are knowing when it's a neutral experience. But when we look… What we can't find is a separate experiencer. A separate knower behind the experience. Just trillions of conditions arising, Continuously arising and changing. So doing, Happening. Right? Actions happening, Responding, Happening. But with the absence of this me that, Am I doing it right? Am I doing it fast enough? What am I going to get out of this doing? Am I going to feel more complete out of this doing? What are they thinking about my doing? So it's the absence of that doing. No doer. Right? Thinking, Right? Thinking helpful. Thinking is useful. We need to be able to think, Of course. And in that thinking, There's planning happening, And there's ideas that are coming up, And there's decisioning happening. But it's the absence of the, Oh, My God, I have to make the right decision. Oh, My God, My whole life depends on this. I mean, How many times have we put our whole life dependent upon one decision only to just come back and do it again? Right? So we put all this stress on it, Right? Or, You know, I have to get them to see me this way. How can I think about this so that they can see me in a particular way? Right? So all of that, The contraction, That contracted energy of needing it to be a certain way, Of having to have the outcome be a certain way, It's the absence of all of that. There's much more of a sense of relaxation, A sense of, Yes, The thinking's happening, The decisioning's happening. So much of it's happening at a subconscious level, Right? And then there's times when we want to do it a little bit more consciously, Right? But it's the absence of this, Oh my god, I need to get the right answer, And if I don't get the right answer, Then something terrible is going to happen. It's just a little bit more of a sense of ease of like, Yep, It's happening in there. I know even my subconscious thinking happening. I know it's all happening in there. And it'll pop out. It'll pop out. And when it does pop out, When that ball finally drops and goes, Ah, Here's the decision, This is how you respond. This is what you should do. Right? When it happens, There's just a there it's a sense of gratitude like thank you universe thanks now let's see how that turns out thanks let's see let's see right so so there's not so much riding on it and again just this sense of i didn't do it but all these different conditions came along and because there's not all this fear and this grasping and this clinging and i needed to go a certain way generally speaking. Whatever nudge, Whatever ball drops. Tends to be a great deal wiser and compassionate than coming from that sense of me that needs to make the right decision. So what this does, This questioning of the me that we believe Station Me is broadcasting to, Is reporting to about itself, What this is doing, That when we look to see if there's anything there, And using all of the practices we've been talking about in the past, Mindfulness and self-compassion, Self-inquiry to really question the doer behind the doing, The thinker behind the thinking, The planner behind the planning, That when we question in this way, What it does is it upends our entire view of reality in ourselves. So we go from this view of I'm the center of the universe and everything is about me, Right, And I need to control everything, Right, And I always need to try and find some better experience because I'm always dissatisfied and yet I'm eternally looking for this sense of satisfaction that I never find because the separate self thrives in dissatisfaction. So that view, In the absence of that view, And it falls apart because we realize there was no me at the center of experience that could find a place to land. You in the continuous seeing of that. It's not that a new view like, Okay, Now I've got to study this new view of reality. It's what's revealed is what is happening. That we're not the center of the universe. We're a part of the universe. We are a part of the flow of life, Life expressed out of life. This unique experience. Of whatever this is. And life tends to flow a lot more easily in this view. We stop fighting it. We stop creating problems where they don't exist because we stopped making everything about me. Not because we tried, Not because we forced effort, Not because we tried to convince ourselves of this. But because we saw we're not the center of the universe, There is nothing behind. The broadcast, It's not reporting to something. It's just a broadcast. And in this way, The broadcast can continue. Sometimes it has something helpful to say, And we're more discerning of that. But it's not getting us so wound up all the time. It's not twisting and exaggerating and interpreting how everything is about me because none of this is about me. And the more that we make it about me, The more that we suffer. And the more that we see that actually there was no me to manage and protect here. The freer we are. The freer we are. Thanks for watching!

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