“Your mistake lies in your belief that you are born. You were never born nor will you ever die, but you believe that you were born at a certain date and place and that a particular body is your own” Nisargadatta Maharaj
As we take birth into this world – at the beginning there is no identity at all just a sense of presence.. this pure presence is radiated by every child before they begin to learn how to communicate. Through language the mind comes in to interpret everything absorbed by the 5 senses and gives it some form of meaning. Over time – we are all conditioned to believe that we are a body with a sense of sight, smell, hearing, touch and taste. We begin to develop a memory with a record of everything that we have picked up from the exposure to our environment being upbringing, schooling, university, work, media, internet etc and over time a whole identity is created with a collection of memories.
This identity belongs to the body which is time bound – it only exists until the body lives. Actually it doesn’t really exist at all – it’s merely an illusion – a mirage. Just like how a rope can be mistaken to be a snake – this body too is mistaken to be real. Imagine yourself playing a game like Grand Theft Auto – where you have forgotten that you are not the character in the game and believe it to be real. Same way we have forgotten that everything we experience in this life is merely a hallucination projected by our senses. In Hinduism they refer to this as “Maya”.
It is important to acknowledge the fact that this identity that is being played out with eons of conditioning and patterns is basically rubbish. The belief that one is a body – that is anything other than God – Source – the One Infinite Creator is not true. Even the very quest of self realisation establishes the existence of a seeker which is really just another identity. It is important to disassociate with all these identities playing out and stop entertaining all the mind games which come with that.
By acknowledging all this rubbish (the identity) that one believes to be true as bullshit; one is free from having to bear all the burdens of personhood. One can drop all the luggage which one is holding on to for no reason and just be free.
The fool who knows he’s a fool is that much wiser. The fool who thinks he’s wise is a fool indeed ~ Buddha
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Turiya Tatyana 