The delusion of the separate self
by Edinburgh artist Mike Heseltine.
The serpent speaks to my ego, with promises of happiness, fame and fortune. It tells me I am special, permanent and unique. I become these thoughts, and miss the space between thoughts, where the ever present stillness is wisdom and understanding of what is.
"When… you step out of the content of your mind...the incessant stream of thinking slows down. Thoughts don’t absorb all your attention anymore, don’t draw you in totally. Gaps arise in between thoughts – spaciousness, stillness.
You begin to realise how much vaster and deeper you are than your thoughts"
- Eckhart Tolle
I think for me, the knowledge that identifying as a separate self is a delusion is liberating. We obviously have a concept of 'self' which helps us survive and navigate the world on a day to day basis. This idea of 'self' is generated by our thoughts ..... but this is just a useful illusion. If we look deeper, this 'self' is 100% dependent on everything that has ever happened and everything in the world at this precise moment. The picture I did reflects on how the Tree of Knowledge amplified that sense of individual 'self' and as the story goes, Adam and Eve felt self conscious and naked as a result. I think our lives today seem to be all about nurturing the 'self' rather than understanding that we are all connected and interdependent. This obsession or identification with our thoughts (the self) distracts us from what is and constantly makes us want more and more. Eckhart Tolle puts it perfectly....
“Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you and nature, between you and God. It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a totally separate ‘other.’ You then forget the essential fact that, underneath the level of physical appearances and separate forms, you are one with all that is. By ‘forget,’ I mean that you can no longer feel this oneness as self-evident reality.”
So I think by realising that I am totally interdependent upon all things that are both present and have happened in the past, I seem to view the world in a more empathetic way. By accepting that my existence is dependent upon everything that is right now, I seem to stop fighting with the world and become calmer. In that calmness of acceptance, I can then choose to change my situation or let it be. I am no teacher of Buddhism but these are just my thoughts!
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