By Joana Gockel
I was just trying to be a good person. I was so convinced that I was righteous – the noblest person of all. But I found out that the person I thought I was, was just an image I conjured up in my mind, a kind of story of me. Putting most of my attention on this false me actually made me the worst person.
I was so fixed in my frame of being better than others that I didn’t allow myself to be angry. I made myself a prisoner of this image of me that I created, held up by my strong judgements and belief systems. I was not able to see and appreciate the world and people as they were because what I held in my mind, covered the real world like a veil.
I am false!
Let me tell you how this became clear to me. Now after some time of meditating with a clear and structured method of letting go, I can find the truth within me. I am becoming free from the frustrations and burdens that I have created for myself. I never thought that I put them on myself, but yes I did. I thought that I saw the world clearly. But it was only my own mind-world that I was holding on to. This self-made mind world contained all of the suffering that I took as normal and thought was life. Only now I am beginning to realize what true life is. I am getting a glimpse of what it means to live without the self by admitting and realizing every day that this me that I lived as is false.
My self is really stubborn, so I have to persistently let it go, by admitting that it is not real, but false. It’s not a kind of negative judgement I give to myself in order to get rid of it. It is more like an admission that everything I have ever thought about myself, others, or the world is false. By allowing all this to disappear. Only when it disappears, can I truly see and accept that it was not real. So, I actually accept that I am not real.
In books like “The Self Illusion” by Bruce Hood or “No Self, No Problem” by Chris Niebauer it is already well said and based on scientific research that the self is actually false, it doesn’t exist! But let’s be honest, have we ever admitted it? That our self is an illusion? That we are false? That we do not even exist?
No, of course not! We claim that there is value in this self and we try to justify every day that we are here and living ‘our’ lives. We completely ignore the fact that this may not be true. To help us realize that the me I think is real is actually false and then realize that there is a true me hidden beneath that falseness, someone had to figure it out and actually do it - Cast off his self completely so that others could follow and be able to do it as well.
That’s why it is possible for me now. Someone taught me how to do it, and I try to follow it every day. I let go of my self-made mind world in order to find the Truth that mankind has been striving for since its existence. We have developed quite well materialistically, but there is a bitter taste in that, because we know deep down that everything material is futile and disappears. Is it worth so much of our precious time to pursue these things that we eventually have to give up? We have to admit that we are going to die. Letting go of the illusionary self is like dying while you're still alive, it dies as you see that it is an illusion. Before that it is never possible to confirm it. From the point of view of something that doesn’t exist, how can you confirm that something doesn’t exist? Only when it truly disappeared can you confirm that it didn’t exist in the first place.
Through meditation you can finally confirm it in your own mind. It removes all the burden. “Trying to find a way to live, trying to live up to standards that you have created or copied from others.” - We don’t have to live life according to a computer-like program of conceptions, standards and conclusions, all of that can be let go of.
But how can you know it is true if you haven’t tried to live without it? You can only know if it is true after you have let it go, before that you are just following the narrow frame of your mind and are not able to see beyond it.
So let’s try it! We can admit that we are false 😊 only then, we can see beyond ourselves. We can go beyond our limitations! Let’s do it!
