Seems we humans do like to focus on what we're experiencing, doesn't it?
“I feel scared! Oh I am sad. Look, he’s leaving. Others are doing blah-blah and it feels terrible. This tastes great!”
We’re laser-focused on that what. A feeling, a thought, some colors, shapes and sounds, a body moving here or there? Yeah we are all about it.
Though sometimes, very occasionally, we might turn attention from What is being experienced to focus instead on Who is experiencing.
Then we observe The Experience-er.
“Look, I notice what I’m feeling! I notice my thoughts. I can observe myself, experiencing.”
That shift in vantage point feels better sometimes. Not always solidly, not necessarily for long. But still, generally… better.
Whether it's the What or the Who, what's common to either perspective is the Me at the center of it all.
“I am the experiencer, I am the one experiencing this, and I am the observer of it all.”
Gosh it's familiar, isn't it, that notion of Me as center point? We’ve been the locus of everything, the driver of every experience, since way back.
It makes us feel solid, and very central to the entire sense of existence.
"This is happening to me, by me and about me."
That stance feels so very strong, it is almost never questioned. So we go with it as a given. We start from, “I’m right here, in the center of this experience. I’m the one it’s happening to," and then stick with that point of view no matter what. Most of the time it hurts, but oh well. It's the devil we know.
But what if that certainty of the self as the center point of all experience has been…well, let’s call it …. misleading?
As in… ahem… wrong.
We don’t want to be wrong, do we? That would be bad.
So let's play and have some fun for a few minutes, and try on something new. Who knows, maybe we’ll find some rightness here.
So. What if you are not the one the experience, the dream, is happening TO?
What if you are not the owner of the dream, and not the dreamer? As in, what if it isn’t YOUR dream, and you’re not the one dreaming it?
What if you’re the dream itself?
That would mean that literally, all sights, sounds, thoughts and feelings are what you ARE.
As in, the thought arises, “I’m a fraud,” and what might it feel like if you are those words, literally?
Or the thought comes, “Others have it better.” And what if now you are those words?
If you’re open to consider that you are even the arguments with this idea… the annoyance, impatience, or fear that might be showing up at what crazy Judy is offering here…
If you’re open to just trying it on, for just a moment...
perhaps there’s something different to be discovered.
Something that center-point Me is very much not used to.
Because when you consider the possibility that what you are IS all those thoughts starting with the word, “But”, and IS the fear, resistance and impatience or annoyance…
that you are the experience rather than The One Experiencing it…
Well…
Do you notice how the center ... disappears?
Can you sense how un-solid you are, if you’re all those moving parts at once?
Look what happens to fury, indignation, resistance, hurt and fear, when those experiences are what you ARE.
If you are every experience, every word, every feeling and sight, do you notice the fluidity, the temporary, the no-centrality to hold on to?
You might even see that there is nothing that needs to hold on to something.
Almost like there is no you.
Like you’re a whole bunch of nothing. Decentralized. As are others, too.
Of course, we’re just playing here.
And yes, I know this isn’t easy to consider.
If only because for decades, we have practiced such devotion to the story of Me, such dedication to, “Shut up you non-dual fruitcake! I’m right here! This is what I am!”
And we have a lifetime of training being entirely centered in self, a lifetime of residing so carefully within that delineated box, that shifting to non-center feels …
Wrong. And weird. Very weird.
Of course the mind fights it.
But I hope you’ll play with this anyway.
Because the weird-ness that comes from shifting focus from experience-er to experience itself, just might be what allows freedom from all boxes… including the ‘certainty of self’ container…to happen.
Because even usually-locked doors are still capable of unlocking and opening. Which means there can always be the possibility… a possibility that has not happened with the usual approach… to see that ...
there is no box to get out of.
Not when you are the box. And the thoughts and feelings about the box. And the colors and shape of the box.
I mean...
Wouldn't if be something is it's all you?
Wouldn’t it be something if it turned out that Weird…
is actually...
Wonderfully... wrongly... wildly...
Wow?
