In the January 12 episode of Radio Adyashanti, A Dive into the Deep End, Adyashanti briefly talks about the difference between ego and self.
As I understood it, when Adya talks about the ego he refers to identification as a me, a personality and so on. The self refers to identification as open aware space. And behind that is what we cannot really talk about.
I have found similar layers, and like to think of it in terms of beliefs.
A few layers of experience…
There is awake emptiness. Experience happening as awake emptiness.
There is a quiet joy inherent in experience itself. Independent of its content.
There can be a kindness towards experience. Independent of its content. Including myself and others.
There is a quiet voice. Intuition. An invitation from the heart. A quiet guide for my human self in the world.
And there is my ordinary human experience. A sense of being fulfilled or not. And much more.
All of these are sometimes more in the foreground and sometimes more in the background.
Some layers and aspects of experience…
Beliefs (identification with stories and identities) and effects of beliefs… Resistance to experience. Reactivity. Rigid views. Closed heart. Tension. Stress. These are all tendencies in that direction, depending on how strongly the belief is held, and how much friction there is between the belief and life.
A simple way of looking at how our world is built up…
First, the Ground of empty awareness, the no-thing that allows all things. The inherent absence of form which allows any form, the absence of color which allows any color, the absence of sound which allows any sound, and so on.
The, the world of form, which is no other than Ground itself. It happens within, to and as Ground. It is awakeness temporarily happening as form.
These are the sense fields… sight, sound, smell, taste, sensation, thought.
Then, or as part of this, the overlay of thought. Thoughts that interpret and ask questions about the world. Creating boundaries. Mimicking the other sense fields. Forming gestalts with the other sense fields. Helping our human self to orient, navigate and function in the world.
Then, the overlay of beliefs in thoughts. Thoughts telling us that certain thoughts and gestalts are true, substantial, real.
And finally, from beliefs, the overlay of drama. The drama of maintaining and protecting beliefs. The drama of an I with an Other. The drama of story management.
The ones up through thought are there as long as this human self are around, whether Ground is awake to itself or not.
And the two last ones – beliefs and the drama of beliefs – are there when Ground is not quite awake to itself, when Ground forms itself into the appearance and belief in a separate I.
This map is only helpful – at best – as a preliminary roadmap while exploring this for ourselves, suggesting what to look for on the way.
And for me, labeling practice and exploring the sense fields is the most direct and effective way to explore it, along with all the other practices such as the Big Mind process, headless experiments, The Work, and being with experiences.
In working on knots, I notice two layers.
First, it is the release from being blindly caught up in it. It is a release from beliefs, identifications, shoulds, and the war created by these. I find more peace with whatever is going on, I befriend it. I shift into that part of my that naturally allows it, which is myself as awareness.
Then it is the layer of accepting the gifts and harvesting the nutrients inside of it. I do this through The Work, in exploring the truths in the turnarounds of the initial belief, and then bringing these turnarounds into my daily life. I do it through voice dialog and the Big Mind process, when I investigate what the disowned voice has to offer to this human self, and how I can find a more nourishing relationship with it. I do it through Process Work, when I become the Other and that which holds both what I previously identified with and the Other. And there are innumerable other ways of finding the gifts and harvesting the nutrients inside of the knot and the (previous) disturbance.
The release is a transcending of blindly identifying with it, and the harvesting of nutrients is an active embrace of its content.
A friend of mine mentioned how there are always new layers of healing, with no end in sight. And there is a beauty in that.
At our human level, there is always further to go with healing, maturing and developing.
There is no end to healing, because as long as there is a sense of a separate self there is something that is wounded and more to heal. And there is no end to maturing and developing, because the maturing and development of this human self is intrinsic to the evolution of the world of form as a whole.
The no-end-to-healing situation is exactly what may encourage us to explore what we really are, to notice ourselves as this awake void and form, inherently absent of an I with an other.
After a while, seeing always new layers of healing, we realize that there is literally no end to it. One layer is healed, only to reveal another. It can go on forever.
And that is what help us shift into a whole new orientation. One of exploring what is really going on and what we really are, in our own immediate experience, unfiltered by ideas. And one of allowing all that is, as it is, here and now. To see, feel and love it as it is.
We realize that seeking something that is always beyond the horizon – whether it is healing or something else – in itself is what prevents us from being at peace with what is, and finding contentment here and now. And it is also what prevents Ground from noticing itself.
When we seek something just beyond the horizon, something that is (apparently) not quite here yet, we don’t see the inherent wholeness of this human self, in spite of all its wounds. And the dust kicked up in the drama of seeking also prevents Ground, this field of awake void and form absent of an I and Other, from noticing itself.