Poking a Stick Into the Mud

She is detached from all things; that is why she is one with them.

Because she has let go of herself, she is perfectly fulfilled.

– – Lao Tzu

Today my ego decided to argue with reality. Seriously.

The ego mind, which can never grasp Liberation, decided to argue about non-duality.

In most discussions about enlightenment, non-duality is the core of the realisation. There is no separation. Individuation exists only in language. It should therefore be easy to persuade an ego that it is wrong.

It isn't.

The ego has a memory of the enlightenment experience. In the ego's memory of the enlightenment experience, the ego was sitting on a chair in a medical centre not thinking, just looking around. In this memory the ego is obviously thinking as it is inventing what it was doing by piecing together glimpses of what was stored in memory at the time.

In every memory, the ego sees itself as being the central actor. Therefore, as far as the ego is concerned, there was always a duality. The ego was looking. The ego was noticing that it wasn't thinking. The ego is feeling pleased with itself because it became enlightened at that moment.

Only, it didn't.

Egos cannot be enlightened since they are a fictitious construct, a character, something that does not exist until after the events in which it believes it took part are over. In order for ego to exist, language and thoughts have to happen first. It is easy to prove to yourself, your real self, that language and thoughts do not occur until after the moment has passed.

For example, you are looking around and you see a cat. That is it, seeing has happened and microseconds later a thought arises and labels the thing you saw as a cat. Another thought may then arise about what kind of cat it was and memory will be consulted, colours will be assigned, comparisons will be made. All of this is happening after the seeing took place and did not exist at the time of the seeing, when Awakeness Is.

The ego has no input into the Now. The ego inserts itself later, when it uses thoughts and language and memory to create a story. To the ego, there will always be a duality.

Enlightenment involves complete non-attachment, including non-attachment to language and labelling. Without labels there is no other, there is just What Is.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.

The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.

– – Lao Tzu

Tao Te Ching: An Illustrated Journey translated by Stephen Mitchell