Cecilia opened the gathering by reading a text entitled “Nomenomynomine” by Anamika. Oh my my!!!, did we all think...
Tony Parsons in his uncompromising way went further expressing that there was never a "me" in the first place... which left some of our new guests rather baffled and gave rise to some discussion. Tony Parsons in Vienna
Deepak proposed 2 types of practical exercises to try to bust out identifications and constant labeling by the monkey mind that leads to the sustaining of a “me”.
We talked about this habit that we all have -or may have had- to try to find meaning and purpose in the thoughts that come, the things we do or that others do to us or to themselves. Relating to this specific feature of the human mind, Cecilia read another text by Anamika called “Shape shifter” that describes in a clear and simple way how the “me” gets inevitably constricted into an illusory self over the course of our life; an illusory self that strives to be a better me, a more functional me, a me that has problems to solve... as if the problems belonged to a “me”, rather than mere problems arising and going in consciousness.
A short text by Jeff Foster was read from “Life without a center” about a robin that doesn't care about finding itself, or reaching for a state in liberation, and the text ends with these lines: It is the very search for purpose that creates purposelessness, and it is the search for meaning that creates meaninglessness; which led us to a deep moment of silence.
Then it was time to watch a few minutes of a video that could be called “from delusion to awakening” whereby Gary Walsh explains how the striving “me” seeking to better itself and find meaning and purpose to its existence. It may find itself in a place at one point where, after feeling good for a while about its progress/achievement through effort or grace, it feels cornered as if stuck. That is the moment when the so called person, an abstraction, stops to look real. That is the moment when the so-called “I', an abstraction that has cleverly crafted its story spinning on itself through a life time, stops to look real too.
Paul Hedderman called self-centeredness a painful and detrimental habit – that he calls “selfing”. Human beings seem to cling to self-centerdness like alcoholics to their bottle, not minding the consequences in the future to only satisfy now the craving of what we identify as "self", as a person. Paul Hedderman – Self-centerdness