Is The Ocean Me If I Can Hear It?

One definition of being somebody is an individual known by a name and separate from everything else, moving within the world from here to there. My experience in the ashram saw the individual shatter. The experience known as ‘Paul’ disappeared, but the Witness to the experience known as Paul remained. As the ‘personality’ of Paul returned, the Witness did not disappear but stayed constant. Paul appears and disappears, but the Witness does not. Paul is a pattern. A habitual response to stimuli. The Witness, Self, Light, or Consciousness by which ‘Paul’ is known is present before any sound, feeling, thought, or movement. It exists before any manifestation of personhood. Paul is unaware of the Self, but the Self is aware of Paul. Paul is like a ripple on the water's surface, indicating life below it, but Paul is not life itself. I point to the moon for our dog. Lola. Lola just follows my finger but does not look at the moon. Think of Paul as the finger and the Witness as the moon.

Always the self returns to the Self.

The natural state of your being will continually press the reset button and return you to being the Witness.

Paul is an experience, and this includes all the different roles. No experience is constant. Only the Witness is consistent. I was a boy, and then I was a man. I was not a father, and now I am. I was asleep, and now I am awake. I was awake, and now I’m sleeping. I was a fetus, but now, I am a pile of cluttered bones drying in the sun. I remember. I forget. I love you. I hate you. I jump. I fall.

Nothing is constant except that which knows. Everything else is moving, disappearing, concentrating, dissolving, falling, rising, slipping, grasping, and yielding. Touch the past, and it has no more substance than a dream. The future is the same dream tossed into the air like a coin. It will never land in the palm of your hand. All that exists is NOW. Paul is a figment of the past and a projection into the future. Without the illusion of the past and future, there is no Paul. There is only Being, and this can only exist as Now.

Paul is a unique expression of the one Consciousness from which everything manifests. So, on the one hand, this makes me unique. Good for me. But on the other hand, Paul is a name in the sand, and the tide is about to erase it. It’s like watching the windscreen wiper on the car wipe away a raindrop. It simply is. I would be frightened if I were identified with the raindrop rather than knowing I was the observer. The only thing which makes the raindrop unique, above all the others, is that I’m observing that particular one. Apart from that, they are all the same. All are water. 

I am normal. I do normal things. Thoughts and emotions occur. The difference between my former state and now is my relative lack of attachment to them. I heard the sound of the ocean today, but this does not mean the ocean is mine. To claim it is me would be ludicrous. A thought arises, a little wave in the ocean of mind, but I am not that either. It is something I heard, like the sound of the ocean. It is not mine. It is not me.

I feel an emotion. I reach down and feel the floor. Which of these two feelings is me? Am I the feeling ‘inside’ or the feeling ‘outside?’ Each is just a passing experience. Something touched on some level that reveals something is present to witness each occurrence.

I am that Something which is not a thing.

You are that, too.

Emotions, desires, and ideas occur. You can watch them or pursue them. Ideas and passions can sweep you along in their wake, but they will not last. Always the self returns to the Self. The natural state of your being will continually press the reset button and return you to being the Witness.

I enjoy the experience of being Paul and feel blessed, but this experience of being Paul came, and it will go. Understanding the transience of everything is significant. I would not change how I had spelt a word in the sand, knowing the tide would erase that word in the next moment. I have no regrets because they, too, are taken by the tide. This continual surrendering of everything is an act of unconditional Love. Acceptance of the constant rising of everything as it happens and comes into being is also this act of Love. Surrender is the outward breath. Acceptance is the inward breath. Your actual being is between these two acts of Love.