The dictionary typically defines it as the quality of awareness (perceptive) and responsive of one’s surroundings. This definition is definitely not helping. The author of the sessions says that consciousness is the prior condition of everything: feelings, emotions, thoughts, vision, sounds, pressure, temperature and so on. In other words, it is the canvas on which everything else appears. Even the self, which is only but another thought, appears on this canvas. The fact that we are noticing a thought, or a feeling is like it is at the center of the canvas/consciousness. Like an object in your visual field. This canvas is so fluid that things appear, disappear, and re-appear with no control whatsoever.

If time is a consequence of this fluid canvas, shuffling and juggling around objects appearing on it, then it should be possible to lose track of time and be stuck in some sort of limbo. Unless the passage the time is an appearance in consciousness itself, in which case, there cannot be a state of limbo where you lose track of time.

It has been a couple of weeks since I started practicing meditation. Today’s meditation session, as usual, started off with focusing or noticing the breath as first, then gradually swaying, to notice bodily sensations, sounds and then to slowly to feelings. Little did I know that I was about to experience something really profound and at the same time realize a potential consequence that is disturbing.

Today’s practice was about searching. Searching for the focal point that is at the grand stage of consciousness. The observer of objects, the thinker of thoughts, the seer of vision, the hearer of sounds, the feeler of feelings, the sufferer of pain and the self that is aware of all that can be felt.

The more I try to search for the focal point, the more difficult it becomes to continue. It wasn’t easy at all. Tracing back, treading slowing to find the origin of this focal point. The focal point probably doesn’t exist. I feel this way because I did get this empty feeling at the end of that pursuit. It just weird that there is a void at the source of it all. Let’s just take the guide’s word for granted and assume that the observer doesn’t really exist. And the feeling that there is a person or a self at the center of this awareness is simply but another thought in the many thoughts or feelings that appear to me. There is no one self that is producing these thoughts.

Let me quickly take a tangent here and describe something that happens always to me but notice it clearly during these mediation sessions. The drifting of thoughts or attention. Whenever I’m following the instructions of the guide, pointing my attention at something, often times it happens that my focus is just distracted, and my thoughts quickly engulf me and transport me to a different place before I even know it. It is not long before I notice it myself to bring me back to focusing my breath and the instructions of the guide. As per the guide, there is no judgement necessary for this drifting off. There is no guilt involved. I will come back as to why that is the case. The point here is that I had no idea when or how exactly I drifted off. After only a few moments into the drift that I even notice that I have drifted. This is to show that clearly, I have no control over my thoughts. It just appears in my consciousness.

The absence of the observer or self and that thoughts just appear to me, makes me think, am I really in the driver seat of my existence? And the guide makes me raise exactly the same question. If the absence of observer is really what it is, then there is no point in judgement or guilt for the natural state of mind (the drifting of thoughts). Even if I judge or guilt myself for drifting of, who am I really pointing this judgment towards? There is no ‘I’ at the other end. It is simply a thought. Self, then, is a GRAND, ELLABORATE ILLUSION. Isn’t it !?

I think I have a theory as to why it is important that we feel there is a self.

Imagine a simple scenario. You are facing a problem and you’re trying to solve it. Be it your school math problem or a way to reverse aging or a solution to global warming. It does not matter. It’s just a thought experiment. Just bear with me. Let’s say, you did come up with a solution or at least a potential solution.

Given that I described the possibility that there is no ‘You’ (or ‘I’) and that thoughts ( in this case the solution) just appear, is it reasonable to ask the following questions ?

1. Who exactly came up with (produced) the solution?
2. Did you really reach or conceive of the solution or did it, like a thought, come to you?

I have no freaking idea as to how to answer these questions. Maybe, I will find out eventually in upcoming sessions or maybe not. For now, I think its important to operate in life with the assumption that there is (there at least could be) indeed a self (‘I’) at the center. We are not just a passenger in our body, but rather a driver who is in control of what we think and what we do. Else the alternative, in my opinion now, is nihilism and/or total detachment. I’m being pessimistic. There is another alternative take of this realization. But that is for another post.

Cheers !