April 2012 – unfindableself

Posted on April 29, 2012 by colettekelso

The Deficient Self – Never Enough

“Somewhere along the way through life, often in our early years, we begin to believe a lie about who we really are…I call that lie the ‘core deficient self’…These core stories lie dormant within us during times when life seems to flow smoothly. Like a fearful snake coiled up and waiting to defend itself, the story and the emotional wound come screaming to the surface when the right buttons are pushed by others. This leaves us spiraling into self-judgment and doubt. It’s fight or flight, all the way. We either attack and defend or run and hide.” ~ Scott Kiloby

“Once the notion of separation was believed in, we spent a lifetime trying to solidify this imagined notion through believing in the mind’s self-created concepts (‘I am not good enough,’ ‘I am not____, etc.). It is all a fraud, because it is all talking in terms of a defective, isolated and separate self, which we have taken as true.” ~ John Wheeler

Empirically, it can be observed that the self can be seen through, truly not found anywhere, yet suffering still arises, apparently in conjunction with conditioning. So while it makes sense to just try to find the self, and be done with the whole matter—get to the root of the “problem,” so to speak—there is an energetic component to this conditioning that resides in the body, that seeks to be released as part of the total freedom package. Freedom from identification with anything, with any lingering feeling of division, leads to freedom from seeking and suffering. This is why the inquiry is directed, in most cases, towards finding the deficient self, which is any idea of unloveability, unworthiness, or any perceived sense of lack. Because it is inherently fake, the deficient self can never be enough.

Ultimately, this can lead to seeing that there really isn’t even any original core wound. It is simply the label, in whatever form it has arisen, given to the primary, original experience of separation. Nothing was really wounded, or even touched by any life experience. But feelings, memories, and thoughts—the conditioning of a lifetime—can lead one to believe otherwise, and to manifest that belief through relationships, and any and all life circumstances.

The self tends toward deficiency because it is a total fabrication, an Impostor. It is then maintained by an underlying belief in, and subsequently a protective veiling of, that fundamental deficiency story. It is a blind spot in awareness. It is why we seek for love and acceptance in all the wrong places, but do not ever find.

The experience of being a phony, looking into that vague suspicion of inauthenticity, is a wide-open door to freedom, to that which is authentic and truly real.

Posted on April 25, 2012April 25, 2012 by colettekelso

This will not make you a better person.

“Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.” ~ The Duchess, Alice in Wonderland

“Self sabotage is the smartest thing you can do if you’re sabotaging a self that is not really you.” ~ Armand Demele

Doing the Unfindable Inquiry will not make you a better person. In fact, what you cannot find may may result in the renunciation of any and all forms of self improvement. It might, however, allow you to see quantum leaps of improvement in everyone around you. So, even better, the inquiry may make others mysteriously appear to be better persons.

“Curiouser and curiouser!” ~ Alice, Alice in Wonderland

Posted on April 19, 2012April 25, 2012 by colettekelso

Not Two

“Live neither in the entanglements of outer things nor in inner feelings of emptiness.
Be serene in the oneness of things and such erroneous views will disappear by themselves.” ~ from Faith Mind, Seng-Ts’an

“Love is one of the names we give to this recognition. It is simply not to know an other.” ~ Rupert Spira

No self does not mean nothingness, or at least that experience does not stand on its own. The discovery that there is not a separate self also coincides (not always concurrently) with the realization of who you really are. It can be seen from this everythingness that the conditions we place on love, on the “other,” are basically the best we can expect from them. If we perceive an other as untrustworthy, we are holding them to the highest standard they can maintain in our relationship with them. The other is empty save for the perceptions that make them who they are to us. That’s why conditional love fails empirically, as a concept or an experiment. The inverse is equally true. If we see them as the source of our happiness, that is what they will be…until the projection breaks down, as all projections surely must.

All of this, the perceived untrustworthiness, and the expectation that another will make you happy, comes from within, from our own sense of deficiency. The realization that there is not only no self, but no other, frees your projections, or creations, from the conditions you impose upon them. When you trust who you really are, the everything and the nothingness, you can trust another without reservation. Change your perception of the other, and they change. Not just the relationship changes (although it may), but who you are perceiving changes as well. Because there are not two. There is only the One, playing as (projecting) the many faces you see.

The conditions placed on love, loving, and being loved, arise as pointers toward the conditioning that still exists. The other exists as a mirror only as long as that reflection is necessary to see what is being shown. Look for yourself to see if you can find the self that needs to be protected, from anything, and set yourself and the illusory other free from all expectation. This is the experience of love, unconditional love.

Posted on April 18, 2012April 25, 2012 by colettekelso

What am I?

“Let him who seeks not cease from seeking
until he finds;
and when he finds,
he will be disturbed;
and when he is disturbed,
he will marvel,
and he shall reign over the All. ” ~ The Gospel of Thomas

Who is looking through those eyes? Who is running this show called your life? Do you want to know? Investigate all assumptions in this regard thoroughly.