So the image I have of myself,
All the views and opinions that we hold about ourselves,
This is all very time-bound.
And what I mean by that is we're located in space and time,
Through a memory of all our past history,
Create the story that I have this sense of me moving through time.
And this sort of,
I wonder how this all came about actually.
I think that's an inquiry in itself.
I can see how for protection over time,
As far as the physical is concerned,
I inhabit with this unique manifestation,
This unique form.
It did need to be protected from sabre-toothed tigers or whatever.
And so the idea of the self had a practical use.
But somehow that has come into the human psyche and we have this idea then that there's a psychological,
There's an inner me that's actually separate from the body,
That is endured over time.
I don't know if this is a view that we've acquired as a species over millennia,
But seems to be part of the human makeup these days.
That view,
There's some sort of entity,
Some sort of me that is having these experiences.
And then yes,
I can justify that by knowing my life story that it's happened to me.
But of course this can be incredibly problematic because what it does is creates the division between me and everything else,
The me and the not me.
And it also creates division within ourselves because then we have,
I am having this experience or I am having a certain feeling.
So the feeling is occurring to me.
It's happening to me.
There's this division between me and the feeling or me and the thought.
And why is this a problem?
Because we can see how division creates conflict.
Creates conflict in the outer between all the divisions of mankind,
Between different races,
Different religions,
Different nationalities and the same thing in the inner side.
So somehow we've created or got this belief that in our consciousness there is this center.
And it's the center that is the experiencer,
If you like.
It's not just that experiences are happening,
It's happening to me.
And because that is such,
Creates this division and this tension,
Then we say,
Ah,
Somehow I need to free myself of this division.
I need to feel whole in my experience,
If you like.
If we then inquire a bit more into this and we can say,
Well,
The self is,
If we've got this embedded view,
It's like a hard wired view,
That this is me.
The self is me.
It's who I am.
Any movement,
We always tend to follow the same pattern of that movement from that center.
And it's never freeing.
There's always what I should do or what I should or need to become or what will make me better.
The me is still embedded in the whole story.
Is that me,
If we deconstruct that,
It's the content of our consciousness.
It's all our memories,
It's all our hopes,
It's all our views,
It's all our opinions,
It's all the images we have about ourselves.
How can we let go of that?
And how frightening is it,
The whole idea of letting go of that?
Because the sense we have,
If we let go of that,
There's not what's left.
And as I say,
Even if I think I should let go of that,
Any movement to let go of that is just confirming the self.
It's not breaking the pattern.
It's not dissolving this time-bound view,
This time-bound embedded idea we have about ourselves.
Of course,
When we look at the world through that view,
We interpret the world through that sense of self,
Through that,
Which is the content of our past consciousness,
Our past experience.
We're always interpreting the world through that mechanism,
Which is a distorted view.
This is how it relates to me and how it relates to my understanding or how it relates to my knowledge.
So as I say,
We get to this point where we say,
Well,
How do I move from here?
Because this is the very core of the problem.
This is what's inhibiting and stopping the freedom.
What is possible here?
Even the word,
How do I go about it,
Is locked into the old pattern.
It's still got the I embedded in it.
Can we see and observe and acknowledge all these movements that emanate from that center?
How we take experience and life so personally?
Can we see that all we identify as self,
All the hopes,
All the beliefs,
All the past knowledge and views,
All our opinions,
That this is a limited view of the world,
That this is creating division.
This is the separation.
I think in that seeing is the only possibility of freedom.
It's through the understanding of the whole construct and noticing that inherent habitual pattern of relating experience to the self and seeing how this is all fabricated and how problematic this is.
And seeing that any movement from that center can never bring freedom or liberation.
So this realization,
If you like,
We've been told,
We've read all the teachings are all about this emptiness of self,
But it's meaningless unless we see it expressed in our own relationship to that experience.
Then we have the realization that this is the end of becoming,
That is not time bound.
We get a sense of the immensity of things.
Our things are not limited.
There's an incredible connection between all life and all experience.
If we're not creating that division between the self,
The experiencer and the experience,
Between the self and what's occurring,
Then we see how life can open up and consciousness can really expand.
It's not becoming free.
It's not becoming enlightened,
But it's letting go.
That contraction is falling away because we see the patterns that we fall into all the time.
So this is what it means to see deeply into the constructive self,
To see that that story,
All those memories,
They're just residues of past experience.
They're just thoughts.
They're interpretations.
They're stories.
So when we really see into that construct,
What remains when there's this falling away with identification with the personal?
It reveals the sacred,
If you like.
It reveals what the Buddha called the emptiness of all things.
There is no center to consciousness.
Content of consciousness is but a mere fraction,
A mere residue of past experience.
Consciousness is unlimited,
Not limited to my experience.
Then we get a sense of the timeless that is not caught or stuck anywhere.
Thank you,
Everyone.
