On Confusion

The following are after thoughts on a conversation with Mike, who was trying to explain that doubt in no way could convince me as experience-and-experiencer that I am not that.

Ultimately all thoughts, whether insight or confusion, are experience-in-awareness, hence they are what I am: experience-and-experiencer. Whereas insight carries the message "I am all that arises and that which sees what arises", confusion carries the message "The body hurts, so I am the body and must save myself from the rest".

To Mike, the latter cannot confuse the self, because it is part of the experience and therefore it is a confirmation that I am the experience-and-experiencer. But I do not agree, because the insight "this confusion is part of what I am and the proof ect." is also another thought arising in this experience-and-experiencer.

So yes, confusion cannot confuse the sense of self IF there is another insight to counterbalance it. But what if the insight does not arise? Awareness alone simply is aware of confusion, it doesn't take part in it. But awareness is brought in evidence in the experience only thanks to insight. If that insight does not arise, and if confusion does, then awareness remains invisible.

The switch between confusion and insight, is a change of experience, of mind. So I see only two possibilities: either there is no guarantee of "full and final" insight, or all insight and confusion is equally invalid and irrelevant to knowing what the self is.

I Am the Body

From experience thought arises and from thought, experience interpreted. And there is a belief that interpretation of experience is experience itself.

So do I believe that I am the body and mind: but that is merely interpretation of experience. On closer observation, "I am the body and mind" is a circular argument:

  1. There is the observation nuances in experience in the first place. 
  2. Part of this experience is cognised and associated to the thought "body".
  3. Then the criteria of body, which are drawn from experience, are used to recognise body and determine its existence.

In other words: what tells me that the statement "the laptop is know by proxy of the body, therefore the body is what I am" is correct? What / who has made this rule? Is there any part of direct experience which provides this rule? How is this rule more valid than "there is sight of laptop, therefore laptop is what I am?".

So understanding of experience is not so much drawn from experience as it is projected on experience. But again, because thought is experience too, this (false) understanding is experience as well.

So am I the body? There is no more evidence that I am the body than the laptop, if I am to leave the "rules" to which I consent without prior scrutiny.

You don't need belief,
if you take a moment
to see how uncanny the existence of the universe
is.

What Am I?

What am I?

So many time I ask this question.

And here's precisely the point: it is I who asks the question. Can I ask this question without underlying assumptions as to what I am? Is there really an answer to this question? (Most probably not, it would be mere verbose).

Most questions (philosophical or spiritual) are queried with the underlying intent to find answers satisfying to the sense of being a person. But who is ready to face death through knowledge?

More truthful it seems is the expression "I AM", known as awareness-and-senses, which shines as the entire Universe.

The closest thing to death
we know
is before-birth,
and that wasn't too bad,
was it?

There is a never-ending truth for me to discover.

Children

We often forget adults and children are one and the same. If there is any difference between the two, then perhaps it is that children naturally allow the world to shape them, whilst adults believe they know what is better for the world.