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Identity and the phantom self
The self that a no-separation sensibility refutes is the one that doesn’t exist - the one that is not here, now in this wide-awake happen-ing state of present experience. I sometimes refer to this as the ‘happened self’ as it solely resides in memory and narrative - not in actuality - it’s a persistent and convincing delusion upheld in mind.*
But let’s be clear, in the absence of this phantom self, the matrix of body-mind-activity still endures and its biological proclivities still arise. There is still the play of an individuated matrix which we can’t just reason away or trust that it will disappear when our narratives and memory are let go of. It persists in the same way as a tree persists or a bird or a stone etc.
Yet like the tree and the stone it has no inherent existence or self-origination and therefore no ultimate reality - it is activity, expression, patterning (for want of a description) of THIS - of wholeness. THIS or wholeness is the only actor. But it acts (in the case of a doing, for instance) VIA the individuated matrix.
It is via this play of the individuated matrix that identification arises. Source has no need for identity. So to a question such as, who is it that makes a cup of tea or fills in the tax returns? Strictly speaking, there is no separate one to make tea - there is only THIS - Source or wholeness manifest. But to pacify the intellect (in the context of a forum set up or similar) it is helpful to answer something like, Source… presenting as the body-mind-matrix makes tea or takes an aspirin for a headache or fills in the tax returns or avoids walking in front of speeding trucks etc.
Ultimately a question such as ‘who am I’ leads to the source of the intellect - but by then the question is meaningless.
* The sentient body-mind organism is biologically adapted to have a sense of individuated orientation. Over time the individuated orientation accumulates a reflective history which builds into a (almost incessant) self-reflective narrative. This history/narrative conceptually congeals to become a kind of pseudo entity - the happened self (also known as the psychological self or the remembered self.)
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