seeing-no-self.com

Home page

About this website

Receive email updates

Stream

    

Taxonomies

   

Tag: mind’s interpretation

  • Being no one

    Being no one

    Seeing No-Self

    A free email from Kat:

    The event

    The release date for my next book Being No One has been set by Hierophant Publishing for March 9, 2027. It’s a collection of Daily Nonduality posts, mostly from 2025 and 2024. That’s great, right? Sure. The only problem is that I don’t write like that anymore. When I wrote those contemplations, it was what “I” needed to hear then. I am always writing to and for my Self, including this text here and now. And that (flawed, human, limited) expression is spontaneous, always new, and constantly changing.

    The mind’s interpretation

    Thoughts arise that this is a real problem. How can something I would no longer write that way be published? But that would be making it about me again: “I” did the writing, so “I” can do a better or worse job of it, and “I” am responsible. But did I ever write any of it? The name of this body may be cited as the author but none of the content was ever created by me.

    So, to this point, the inquiry I’m sharing here is adapted from the book Seeing No-Self. When I narrated it a few days ago, it was quite obvious that it wasn’t something “I” ever created. Sharing it here now, the expression is again slightly different. Does that matter? It’s what comes through, here now. Its effects on you will be what they will be. None of it is my concern.

    The inquiry — please pause at every point to check if it’s true and take your time!

    • See if you can read this inquiry in a completely fresh way, referencing nothing.
    • Look beyond the words to what they’re pointing out.
    • Let the questions vibrate, without seeking an answer.
    • Don’t be a body, a mind, or a self; don’t be anything at all.
    • Notice how all sensations and thoughts come and go.
    • Check to see whether You come and go.
    • Or do you remain present and unmoving, clear and open?
    • Notice that in being no one, perception doesn’t change, but the interpretation of perception changes.
    • Without referencing the mind, life presents itself as unitive—one seamless, spontaneous arising.
    • What is, is a seamless, spontaneously unfolding whole.
    • Notice that nothing here indicates separation. What is, does not proclaim anything about “separate things or beings.”
    • Nor does it indicate a tangible, separate self. That self is never found.
    • From this “position” of no-separation, see if/how life verifies this.
    • Test in direct experience: Does life make more sense as an unbound aware Presence than as a separate self?
    • Allow this to permeate and percolate, without thinking.
    • You can put these statements to the test: I am not the body form. I am not a constantly changing mind. I am not the thoughts, or the sensations that come and go. I am not a separate self at all.

    🙏 Kat.

    As always: take what resonates and leave the rest. If you have feedback for me, or would like me to write about a specific topic, just reply to this email!

    Katrijn Van Oudheusden
    Am Heiligenstock 30
    61200 Wölfersheim
    Germany

    Holger: Ai alert (-;

  • Adding nothing to I am

    Adding nothing to I am

    Seeing No-Self

    A free email from Kat:

    The event

    Apparently, I’m now a teacher. I can insist I’m not a teacher and have nothing to teach. I can insist that nonduality isn’t a teaching. And yet, I’m now a speaker at an event* where I’m presented as a teacher.

    I’ve been called a thousand things in my life, and so have you. Sometimes we’re happy about it, sometimes we rebel. I remember a time where I loved being a coach but no one saw me as one, and another time where I didn’t want to be called a coach but everyone insisted I was!

    The mind’s interpretation

    Even if we wouldn’t take on any title or role, others will happily do that for us. In this consensus reality, we’re separate selves with serious roles to play. We have to define who we are, what we can and can’t do. When we meet anyone, the first thing we’re conditioned to do is figure out what they do — what box to put them in, what labels to slap onto them. This helps us figure out how to relate to them, which is even more conditioning.

    Both wanting a certain role and rebelling against it are forms of identifying with it. I think you’ll agree that we’re not our constantly changing, often arbitrary and made-up roles. But then what are we?

    The inquiry — please pause at every point to check if it’s true and take your time!

    • Note: You might feel you’ve done this inquiry before and it will have nothing new to show you. I recommend doing it anyway. There’s always something to see. And seeing is all there is to this.
    • How do you define yourself?
    • Who or what are you?
    • A person? A human? A self? A bodymind? A soul? A no-self? Awareness? Consciousness? Pure Being?
    • Try not to give the supposedly “correct” answer, but look to what you honestly, currently know to be YOU.
    • Notice that words may come up but we don’t really know the answer.
    • If we’re honest, we know that any answer is not what we are but a ridiculously limited concept of what we are.
    • All we have are ideas. If we’re into nonduality, we have nondual ideas instead of the more common ideas, but they’re still ideas.
    • However, notice that although we may not be able to say who or what we are, we do know for sure THAT we are.
    • Existence is doubtless.
    • We have to exist to even doubt or deny existence.
    • Staying with the simple recognition that you are, and not knowing what or who you are, is the end of trying to define yourself (even as Awareness or No-thing).
    • Any definition limits you to a concept and your understanding of that concept — and you’ve limited yourself to the mind once again.
    • If you say you are Pure Being, you’re the mind’s idea of Pure Being, which of course isn’t Pure Being at all.
    • Can you simply know that you are and add nothing to that?
    • The bare fact of pure existence, without any label.
    • Knowing that I AM — without adding anything.
    • Keeping it completely open and free, but utterly undeniable.
    • I AM. Refusing to define it or limit it, only being it.
    • The mind can continue to try to define me. The world can slap all its labels and roles onto this body. In interactions, I can take on the roles or resist them, according to the conditioning of this body. It’s all fine.
    • Always I remain as I AM, free from any conceptual limitation and the stress and suffering caused by such limitation.

    🙏 Kat.

    As always: take what resonates and leave the rest. If you have feedback for me, or would like me to write about a specific topic, just reply to this email!

    * The event I’m referring to is The End of Seeking — a free series of online conversations on nonduality. It’s hosted by my publisher, Hierophant Publishing, and I’ll be in two of the sessions, one with Chris Niebauer, and one with Salvadore Poe.

    Katrijn Van Oudheusden
    Am Heiligenstock 30
    61200 Wölfersheim
    Germany

  • No answer, no problem!

    No answer, no problem!

    Seeing No-Self

    A free email from Kat:

    The event

    When you’re crazy enough to host open meetings where people come and ask questions, the conditioned pressure to give (helpful, satisfying) answers can go through the roof. The Kat-body-mind is now perfectly okay with saying she doesn’t know, or not being able to answer helpfully. But when I was still seeking, of course there were endless questions — the questions are pretty much what seeking is made of. And there was a formidable demand for satisfying answers to those questions, along with incredible frustration about not getting those answers.

    The mind’s interpretation

    We are all deeply conditioned to ask questions and demand answers to them. But it is the mind that is conditioned to ask them in the first place, then frame them as compelling, important, and in dire need of an answer. It can sometimes seem like a life-or-death matter. This may have been the case for questions such as, “Where is the saber tooth tiger’s cave?” But it is not useful — not even relevant — to what we’ll call knowing the nondual. If I could rewrite the book Seeing No-Self today, I would put in more about this: For nondual inquiry, only the question is relevant, the “answer” (at least in the way our minds can understand) is not!

    The inquiry — please pause at every point to check if it’s true and take your time!

    • Right now, notice a nondual question the mind presents as in need of an answer. It could be something like: What is Awareness? Who is the one doing the inquiry? What is nonduality? What is suffering? Why are we experiencing this? I’m sure you’ll find one!
    • Pick one, and ideally, write it down in large, convincing letters. Maybe on a nice sticky note. Or put it in your favorite notebook.
    • Read it a few times and let the question sink in.
    • Let yourself feel the pressing need for an answer to this question. Feel the itch of it — an itch you can’t scratch.
    • And then drop that need. Just let it be. Drop the idea, as well as the very possibility of the question even having an answer.
    • Instead, let the question itself percolate in you, if that is what naturally happens. Let it marinate without forcing anything.
    • Swim in the question without looking for an answer.
    • Consider: “I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in the silence, and the truth comes to me.” — possibly by Albert Einstein.
    • What is it like to ask the question and swim in silence? Notice that.
    • No need to try to describe it, just notice.
    • Is there a knowing in the silence? It would be a silent, wordless knowing, so it wouldn’t be in the form of language or thought.
    • Is there a knowing that doesn’t translate into an answer, that doesn’t “compute” in the mind, but is still known?
    • Don’t worry if there isn’t, just live with that question too.
    • If there’s a sense of what is being pointed to:
    • What is this knowing that is wordless, contentless, mindless, and yet clearly present, and doubtless?
    • Again, don’t answer, but wordlessly know the knowing.

    🙏 Kat.

    Katrijn Van Oudheusden
    Am Heiligenstock 30
    61200 Wölfersheim
    Germany

    Infographic added by Holger,
    generated by notebookLM,
    based on the text of the inquiry:

  • Nothing is happening

    Nothing is happening

    Seeing No-Self

    A free email from Kat:

    The event

    I don’t remember much detail from my years of seeking but I do remember the endless, frustrating feeling that nothing was happening. I was not seeing my true nature, I was not recognizing the natural state, and I was not abiding as Awareness because I could not find any Awareness as described. All I found when I looked was my sad self. I found neither peace, nor joy, nor beauty, nor freedom. I was constantly stressed, depressed, and felt the opposite of free. The seeking didn’t care though. It just continued.

    The mind’s interpretation

    The mind at the time was convinced that I was looking for something called the nondual. It was described in various ways from stark to poetic, from cryptical to lyrical, from bloody obvious to deeply esoteric. All I knew was I didn’t have it and I wanted it. Even the descriptions clearly saying I already was it only made me feel more strongly that I wasn’t!

    What I’d like to look at with you today is this persistent, incredibly frustrating feeling that when we look, we don’t find anything. We try to look at THIS, at what we are, at what is present and aware — and we find … nothing. I must be doing this wrong because nothing is happening! Well, let’s look:

    The inquiry — please pause at every point to check if it’s true and take your time!

    • Right now, notice there is presence. There is being, aliveness, awareness. If not, there would be no experience.
    • We need to use a word to communicate, and some words may resonate more than others, but the word makes it sound like a thing. It’s not a thing, it’s transparent, like air, energy, or space.
    • It’s the simple knowing that you’re not dead. You’re here, alive.
    • This transparent “quality” of presence is not a thing or object we can ever find. Let that sink in: you are not ever going to find it!
    • Trust me on this one: you are never going to find Awareness. If you look for Awareness (or Presence, or Being), you will find nothing and it will seem as though nothing is happening.
    • Instead, notice that you can’t turn off “being here.” No matter what you do, think, meditate on, or achieve — you are here, experiencing that. If there is no experience, you are still here, experiencing the lack of experience.
    • Notice that this simple fact of being is not dependent on any thoughts or sensations. Pure being is just this incredible, irreducible fact of being alive, present to experience.
    • It’s naked, empty of the content we usually pay exclusive attention to.
    • If we’re looking for something, we’re looking for content. If we need something to happen, we’re looking for content.
    • So you see: wanting to find some object, event, or action is not it, and takes us away from naked being-knowing.
    • Consider: your desire to find is blocking the recognition of what is.
    • What knows the desire to find Awareness?
    • What does the desire to experience the nondual arise in?
    • What is already present before any thought of looking for it comes up?
    • What is the pure fact of being that any seeking arises in?
    • Just what is — pure being.
    • This knowing-being itself is without content.
    • Content (thoughts/sensations) arise. Let any such content point back to what knows its arising.
    • This knowing is effortless. It already is all the time, noticed or not.
    • It only feels like nothing happening, because “feeling something is happening” requires attention to some content.
    • But always, independent of content, you are already here, aware.

    🙏 Kat.

    You may have seen that I highly recommend Salvadore Poe’s 7-week Online Intensive (starting in a week, on May 17th). Sal’s direct inquiries confirmed the end of my search in 2016. His intensives are the end for many who take part as well.

    “The Online Intensive takes place twice a week, Sundays and Wednesdays. Each meeting will be recorded, video and audio, and you will need to listen or watch each day in between meetings. The more you listen the more the message sinks in. There will also be supplemental audios. We will go through all of the inquiries needed to bring a lasting paradigm shift. This is not philosophy or dogma. It is not fodder for the mind to ruminate upon. It is a real cognition of and abidance in and as your essential being.”

    Katrijn Van Oudheusden
    Am Heiligenstock 30
    61200 Wölfersheim
    Germany

    Infographic added by Holger,
    generated by notebookLM,
    based on the text of the inquiry:

  • The nature documentary voiceover

    The nature documentary voiceover

    Seeing No-Self

    A free email from Kat:

    This week I’m not offering a new inquiry but sharing from the transcript of the Nondual Inquiry Lab. We were looking at doership with the inquiries from the book Seeing No-Self and it was powerful. You can listen to the recording on the website but I think it’s helpful to read it as well.

    So here it is.

    Let it sink in slowly …

    It’s like the voiceover on a nature documentary, humanizing the animal behavior by implying agency. That is what the brain is doing all the time in the human. This is a human body-and-mind-organism just spontaneously being lived by life, but there’s a narrator in here that narrates it as though there is a self with agency making things happen.

    And I believe that if I don’t narrate thinking and doing to myself, thought and action won’t happen. But this is only a voiceover added onto the nature documentary that is our life.

    The human bodymind comes with a narrator. Whatever the body is doing or thinking, it’s just happening. It’s nature naturing. It’s the human humaning. The body is moving and the narration is happening. So we’re just the nature documentary plus an added voiceover claiming doership. It comes along with the organism in our case.

    The narrator narrates as though you’re the thinker, the actor, the chooser and decider. It will even tell you, “Oh, this is me observing myself in the nature documentary. Look at how well I’m seeing this, doing the nondual inquiry.”

    It’s all still the voiceover in the documentary. We never leave the nature documentary because we are nature. We’re just nature that comes with a voiceover. And who knows, maybe dolphins narrate being a dolphin to themselves. But we think we’re special and have free will simply because we narrate that to ourselves!

    So right now, notice your breathing. Suddenly it seems like you’re doing the breathing, right? But that’s only because our attention just went there and there is an internal narrator saying something about doing the breathing. It’s just happening. This body, including its mind, is a set of processes, a system that simply runs, just as a bird is a set of processes, only that the bird doesn’t have the voiceover as far as we know.

    What makes this so complicated to see is that the voiceover narrates its own agency to itself.

    That’s the only thing making us believe we have agency, that our thoughts tell us that! But if we look, if we just notice what is going on, there is no indicator that we can make anything at all happen. Thoughts just come, including the thought to inquire into thought.

    So imagine you were told from birth that you make the sky blue. Because of you, the sky is blue. You adopt thoughts that say, “Oh, look how beautifully blue I’m making the sky today.” And that narrates itself to itself over and over, and by the time you’re whatever age you are now, you’re completely convinced you are making the sky blue, because you’ve been narrating that to yourself for decades.

    We’re brainwashed into believing that we’re doing our lives. It’s only the narrator creating that illusion. We’re told we’re doing the thinking, making at least some actions of the body happen, and are in charge of choosing and deciding. But when we look at this directly, is there really a doer or author of any of it?

    🙏 Kat.

    Katrijn Van Oudheusden
    Am Heiligenstock 30
    61200 Wölfersheim
    Germany

    Infographic added by Holger,
    generated by notebookLM,
    based on the text of the inquiry: