There are two paths . . . the path of effort and the sunlit path. The path of effort is well known. It is the one that has presided over our entire mental life, because we try to reach for something we do not have or think we do not have. We are full of wants, of painful holes, of voids to be filled. But the void never gets filled. No sooner is it filled that another one opens up, drawing us into yet another pursuit. We are like an absence of something that can never find its presence, except in rare flashes, which vanish immediately and seem to leave an even greater void. We may say that we lack this or that, but we really lack one thing, and that is self: There is an absence of self. For what is really self is full, since it is. Everything else comes and goes, but is not. How could what is ever be in need of anything else?. . . But then, where is that elusive self? . . . To ask the question is to knock at the door of the next circle, to engage in the movement of introspection of the second kind. And here, too, it is pointless to theorize on the nature of the self; it must be sought and discovered experientially. . .It is not by the grip of our virtues or exceptional meditations that we shall clear away that mantle, but by something else and in another way. For, indeed, the self we have to find is not a superself; it is something else altogether. We will therefore start with what we are and as we are, at the physical level of everyday life. posted by upwinger Thursday, November 17, 2005 @ 9:22 AM Location: Midwest, United States
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