this is a completely irreversible seeing through of the self.
i feel like there was an easter egg and a painter and the egg is gone but the painter still tries to paint. the egg never existed; it was just licks of paint that adhered to each other and formed the impression of solidity.
the core of that egg was removed in the initial event and everything after that has been a case of removing the shell and peeling off the congealed layers of oils which i used to call a self.
it is unusual, that’s for sure. the habit of defining the self. i am an artist or i am an ironman or i am an enlightened being. that final one took all the others and it removed them, but then that fell away too. and what is left but emptiness?
i am a father, when i am parenting. i am an artist when i am arting… or am i? am i just an empty vessel that is doing certain things? like i am a box full of lego bricks which can be made into a house or a car or a person or a dinosaur but will always be taken apart in the end?
i never clung to past glories; each chapter starts when the last one ends. but the chapters used to last for years, or months or at least days. more recently they lasted days i guess, with each day of the altered states feeling like an aeon, and each state seeing a completely different modality of being, as i unravelled another layer of congealed conditioning.
and this was all driven by that one identity that was replacing them all: the enlightened being identity. but then that fell away too and it was just… normality? but without the suffering? like a current of experience flowing through the sense sphere and still filtered through the learned perceptual framework but no longer trapped in whorls and ebbs and sand tunnels of thought.
and it’s strange because the painter is still trying to paint. i had a dream about an awesome way to turn this all into a book, where you are in a computer game and being played by another person but the game is about figuring out the game, and how the sandbox changes according to your perceptual framework. i had the idea to write this experience up as an experiment, which i will probably do. i have some art projects and ideas going on on that front. i have these swords.
so im like ‘am i an artist or a craftsman or a writer or a philosopher - which will i be today or even now in this very moment - am i a writer right now that i am writing?’ and the answer seems to be no. even though i am typing these words this label just… it slips off. there is no glue. there is no pane to which it can adhere.
and this all sounds very mystical but it’s not… it’s just… they don’t stick. there is nothing for them to stick to. i can see that the egg was the painter was the paint and they are all the same thing and paint cannot paint itself and this again sounds over-philosophical and i can see why people struggle to describe this thing.
so…
it’s like i am still habitually trying to stick these labels and they go to where they would have adhered before and then they just vanish from my mind. there is nothing for them to adhere to. one label is gone before the next arises so they don’t even adhere to each other; and that is what a ‘self’ is at the end of the day - it’s when you have labels stuck to each other, as opposed to some kind of crystalline structure that grew from a central impurity you could call a ‘soul’.
there has never been a self; that’s the thing.
so i feel kind of lost, but not in a bad way. it’s like the idea of chapters has gone, and there’s a faint sadness that i won’t be able to record my progress through the book that i was reading any more.
i guess the self is like this writing now in that it is being read at the same pace as it is being written and it will be finished as a stream of consciousness and then put away and maybe looked at situationally if appropriate but it’s a standalone thing, self-constructing and self-completing.
it’s all very strange.
but i tried to stick some kind of label on. several kinds. it doesn’t work any more. it’s that simple. it just does not work.
and i still have the full gamut of experience, minus a lot of the horribleness. i can still get grumpy or tired or happy or … anxious? not sure about that one. physiologically, yes, but not in terms of ‘will i make it’ or ‘am i enough’.
it’s like you have a building that is used for several purposes. it can be a place of worship or a play area for kids. it can be an art studio or a library. but because it can be anything, the building itself is nothing, and it is empty unless it is being used.
so there is no lasting purpose to this building apart from to host the various activities which are passing through it. but even when used for reading it is not a library and even when used for art it is not a studio; it is just a place where reading or art or play or eating or sleeping or whatever is happening. the building itself is a container.
and that sounds all mystical again but it’s not so hard to get your head around. when you break a bone then the building is full of pain but when you look back you can only remember the echoes of the pain. the pain itself is gone. same for joy. you can’t remember the feeling in your chest when you first held your child but you can remember that this thing happened and a feeling was felt.
all that ever existed was the flow. the letters coming out of these hands that never could learn to touch-type. the bhikku being mindful while he urinates. the children playing downstairs with the pokemon they love today and will forget tomorrow.
and this is how it has always been but i guess we evolved to look for patterns and solidity and safe havens and trees which would always provide fruit. and i guess these things don’t actually exist, but this way of thinking helped us to survive to child-bearing age and pass on the genes. a quick-fix solution that became a defining feature.
it’s all very strange, i tell ya. but it’s not unpleasant. the chapters are gone and now it’s more like a stream. no more lochs in a man-made canal. just a river, meandering and eventually leading to the ocean.
i wonder if my granddad really is waiting to launch me into that estuary and into the eternal deep. i guess we will find out once the river reaches its terminus.
but what then? the river will stop being a river but that doesn’t mean it stops being water. and we are back into unanswerable questions but i no longer fear death.
being alive is nice, and i don’t fear death. before all this, being alive was pain, and i was terrified of dying. how strange.
i guess it’s all the perceptual framework. self-reinforcing. feel pain, see pain, expect pain. feel fluidity, see fluidity, expect fluidity.
all good. let’s go make some dinner.
/jb202512261620