The Lights are On but Nobody is Home

"If you take a moment to look for yourself, you discover that there is no individual self, only an idea of a self. The “I” is just an idea. So in this sense, it is accurate to say that there is no self and no doer." 

-- Nirmala

Actions and patterns happen, then some thoughts arise and then the ego pops up and lays claim to the actions by making a story from the thoughts. This is actually easy to prove to yourself.

We have probably covered this before, but an action happens before thought and before language. The simple act of raising your arm can seem like it is happening at your command, but if you examine the process carefully you can see that the arm is simply raised. Arm raising happens. You cannot trace a thought that is making the arm rise because it does not exist until after the arm raising has happened.

The thought reports that the arm has risen. Note we are now in the past tense, the realm of the unreal, the dream and the false self or ego. The ego will then pop up as I stated earlier and claim that it performed this action, when actual self examination proves that the ego does not exist and therefore there is no doer.

Life just happens.

This does not mean that the personality of the ego does not affect the actions of the ego body unit. The body unit performs based upon patterns and those patterns are at the root of the ego. Some of those patterns are skilful, such as the way that it can drive the car without you needing to pay actual attention to what it is doing. Some of those patterns are un-skilful, such as the way the ego bangs on the horn and swears at other drivers who, in its opinion, are performing at a suboptimal level.

Patterns exist, but no one is doing those patterns. Like life, the patterns just happen, until they don't.

Part of the post awakening process involves examining those patterns in the light of their unreality and allowing those which are not skilful to dissolve.

Awakening does not mean that you suddenly become the perfect human being, because you are not a human being. Awakening allows us to see that there is no separate identity to become perfect. There is only life.

Awakening allows us to surrender to life, to reality, to freedom.

Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life — and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.” 

-- Eckhart Tolle