Tag: pause

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.