Meditation exercise on "separate me"
Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2023 1:03 pm
I invite us all to set aside philosophical and metaphysical considerations, look at the "separate me" issue from purely phenomenological perspective and try this meditative exercise. I've been doing this for years and still do it regularly (I'm still working on deconstructing my egoic complex residing in subconscious around the sense of "separate me").
During the daytime activities we regularly get entangled in situations where we feel insecure, offended, hostile, humiliated, depressed, greedy, competitive or get involved in any other similar scenarios (let's call it event X). We usually blame others or life circumstances for that and leave these situations unexamined. Other situations may involve us feeling self-aggravated and superior to other beings, including feelings of intellectually or spiritually more superior or advanced (the "enlightened ego" phenomenon).
So, in the evening or next morning let's reproduce exactly step by step the event X and look at it phenomenologically re-living every arising and move of ideas, feelings and deeds, but look at it through the light of awareness with complete honesty and transparency. Here are the steps I usually go through:
1. Trace all the phenomena involved in the event X (ideas, feelings and deeds) - how they arose and linked to each other and the events of the situation.
2. Trace and realize how all these phenomena revolve and are founded on the foundation of the "separate me" sense-idea (which is also a phenomenon), how they all always pertain and causally linked to the "separate me". Realize how all these causal connections between these phenomena of the event X happened in our blind spot in unconscious without our awareness of how they actually relate to each other and the sense of "separate me".
3. Realize and remind yourself again that the "separate me" sense-idea is a complete mind-fabricated abstraction incoherent with reality. Trace and realize how the origin of this "separate me" sense-idea is rooted in and stems from the erroneous dualistic perception of reality where we perceive the world as a conglomerate of separate entities, separate selves and things, one of which is this sense-idea of "separate me" who is in the center of the "external" world experiencing it and acting in it as a "doer". Realize how this dualistic perception is related to the failure to experientially and intellectually realize the fundamental underlying Oneness of the Cosmic Organism behind the seeming diversity of forms.
4. Using imaginative cognition, imagine how the situation X would unfold if there would be no sense of "separate me". Realize that all the ideas, feelings and deeds of the event X would not have any ground and would not arise and happen if the sense of "separate me" would not be present. Imagine how we could be free from all this egoic reactivity and could become altruistic, compassionate and loving if we would experience oneness with all Cosmic Organism and all sentient beings and would not feel or think ourselves separate from it.
Most people do not realize how much most of their problems in individual and social life are related to and caused by the egoic complex maintained around the core sense-idea of "separate me". We always look for the problems and solutions somewhere else without realizing the role of the egoic complex around "separate me" while the "separate me" remains deep in unconscious in our blind spot and in the driving seat.
It is also useful to contemplate on how most of our social issues (wars, corruption, consumerism and mass media propaganda, economic inequalities, Earth pollution, conflicts in groups and between groups large and small, etc etc) can be traced to the human egotism and the "separate me" at the root of it. This is more intellectual exercise rather than phenomenological, yet still very instructive and useful to understand the picture and the problem on the larger humanity scale.
During the daytime activities we regularly get entangled in situations where we feel insecure, offended, hostile, humiliated, depressed, greedy, competitive or get involved in any other similar scenarios (let's call it event X). We usually blame others or life circumstances for that and leave these situations unexamined. Other situations may involve us feeling self-aggravated and superior to other beings, including feelings of intellectually or spiritually more superior or advanced (the "enlightened ego" phenomenon).
So, in the evening or next morning let's reproduce exactly step by step the event X and look at it phenomenologically re-living every arising and move of ideas, feelings and deeds, but look at it through the light of awareness with complete honesty and transparency. Here are the steps I usually go through:
1. Trace all the phenomena involved in the event X (ideas, feelings and deeds) - how they arose and linked to each other and the events of the situation.
2. Trace and realize how all these phenomena revolve and are founded on the foundation of the "separate me" sense-idea (which is also a phenomenon), how they all always pertain and causally linked to the "separate me". Realize how all these causal connections between these phenomena of the event X happened in our blind spot in unconscious without our awareness of how they actually relate to each other and the sense of "separate me".
3. Realize and remind yourself again that the "separate me" sense-idea is a complete mind-fabricated abstraction incoherent with reality. Trace and realize how the origin of this "separate me" sense-idea is rooted in and stems from the erroneous dualistic perception of reality where we perceive the world as a conglomerate of separate entities, separate selves and things, one of which is this sense-idea of "separate me" who is in the center of the "external" world experiencing it and acting in it as a "doer". Realize how this dualistic perception is related to the failure to experientially and intellectually realize the fundamental underlying Oneness of the Cosmic Organism behind the seeming diversity of forms.
4. Using imaginative cognition, imagine how the situation X would unfold if there would be no sense of "separate me". Realize that all the ideas, feelings and deeds of the event X would not have any ground and would not arise and happen if the sense of "separate me" would not be present. Imagine how we could be free from all this egoic reactivity and could become altruistic, compassionate and loving if we would experience oneness with all Cosmic Organism and all sentient beings and would not feel or think ourselves separate from it.
Most people do not realize how much most of their problems in individual and social life are related to and caused by the egoic complex maintained around the core sense-idea of "separate me". We always look for the problems and solutions somewhere else without realizing the role of the egoic complex around "separate me" while the "separate me" remains deep in unconscious in our blind spot and in the driving seat.
It is also useful to contemplate on how most of our social issues (wars, corruption, consumerism and mass media propaganda, economic inequalities, Earth pollution, conflicts in groups and between groups large and small, etc etc) can be traced to the human egotism and the "separate me" at the root of it. This is more intellectual exercise rather than phenomenological, yet still very instructive and useful to understand the picture and the problem on the larger humanity scale.