We believe that we are a particular psyche that has a particular set of psychological conditions that we work through. We hope, if we are interested in self-improvement, that we will find a solution to our imperfection which leads us endlessly into trouble. We may find a solution, God, or enlightenment to our psychological condition, to our psyche itself, and then apply the wisdom we draw from God to fix ourselves. What I find interesting is the immateriality of this psychological experience as a whole, including the process by which we fix it and are permanently freed. We hope to gain something from solving our psychological problems, and while we can gain in a relative sense from improving its condition, I do not believe in an absolute sense their is anything to gain from solving it's problems entirely. I think this is because this psychological process is not the core of reality. The psyche is not what we believe it is, nor is enlightenment and perfecting the psyche. We only see as far as we can and through the lens that we have. As a psyche we can't see outside of it. We can't imagine a reality deeper than it. We take personally everything that happens to "us" and believe in what we imagine to be the reality that "we", "ourselves" are experiencing. We believe in the enlightenment of our "self" or "psyche". We believe it is a lasting state or experience that we will experience. I believe enlightenment goes deeper than personal experience and is something that dissolves what we know of as personal experience. This is the best way I can say this now. Basically, we tell ourselves a story about enlightenment, a personal one. This is how we frame our experience and the process we come to understand. We don't fully understand it, and this is the lens we have to use and do use. We think there is a finish line for ourselves. What if their isn't? What if the whole psychological process and experience that we identify with, including the most basic act of identifying with things personally according to a believed and perceived personal reality is really not us at all. What if this personal way of identifying and experiencing a reality of us or ourself that we believe in so intimately and tenderly is not at all real. The whole set of experiences that we catalog as our experiences, our own personal psychology, is in no way, shape, or form us because this personal psychology "us" has no real substance. In such a way, that this us, our self, our whole psychology is not real and never was. What if their is no heart to it? I'm not referring to the belief that this is true, a personal position that one would take, which I think ends up being a denial of personal existence rather than the clear perception of the total immateriality of what we experience as personal. I simply find it strange to percieve this immateriality after what my mind says is more than a decade of intense personal transformation. What's strange is that according to these new perceptions, the whole personal experience of this long episode doesn't have any permanent value. It has had loads of temporary value in many ways, but what I'm seeing now shows me that what I have profited from this venture is of no lasting, or any real value. Not because it isn't valuable, but because the whole experience is not what it was perceived to be. The heart of it, the experience of the treasured I is not who I am to the degree that there is no I. In the sense that there is no unique set of psychological conditions that are me and mine that a self clings to. I and me and mine can only refer to an absolute being that is free in essence from conditional being. I think this is difficult to percieve and understand. Because we are mostly fully immersed in conditioned psychological existence in which an inner unique and separate I is the heart and soul. Our clinging to this idea makes us want to perpetuate its existence and drive forward towards a paradise for this imagined self. We image a whole range of possibilities that could happen, that we may think are happening, when I don't believe they ever are. What I am percieving now is that the whole psychological experience is completely impersonal and has no real permanent reality making it illusory. The different states of mind experience are transitory. They do not belong to the evolution of a permanent self. It is simply the product of a set of variables that produce consciousness. These states are not "mine", nor are they anyones. I has no reality. Neither does you, or we. This we does not reach enlightenment then. Enlightenment changes as the psychology evolves, even to the dissolution of that very psyche. So enlightenment doesn't really happen to anyone, it just occurs as a process of unfolding consciousness that includes the experience of a personal reality. This doens't mean that we or a we rejects the experience of this personal reality wholly denying it's meaning or value, for it does have real realitve meaning and value while it remains real, it means putting this personal reality into a greater perspective or reference and augmenting our behavior accordingly. It means that eventually when we do see this clearly enough, there is no need to perpetuate this catalog of psychological experiences, no need to seek it's fulfillment. No need to inwardly seek anything. This psychology will drop of it's own accord, it doesn't need to become an atman project, though neither does it matter if it does. What is left when this psychological process drops away? I think the Dao.
One thing I'd like to add. Trying to stop consciousness from changing or being what it is is like trying to stop the sun from shining...More important than understanding, is learning to navigate the currents as they come and go. There's nothing we can ultimately hold onto, so there's no need to keep anything now. This being said, recklessness is foolishness and we can swim without drowning. I wish you all the greatest peace.
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