Who is holding the bear?

 

When we sit to meditate we take this body/mind./person and we sit them down and we get them to concentrate. This person is me we think.

But actually how can this person be me? I am looking at this person! I am looking at what they are feeling and what they are seeing and thinking. This person is existing but existing over there. I cannot be this person,

But I cannot be anybody because were I to be someone else I would just be the thoughts and feelings and senses of this other person and those would be where ever they were but not over "here" with "me."

The picture of the bear being held above is actually how we see the whole world including every part of what like to call "me." It's all over there. Just replace the bear with a thought we are having or a feeling or anything we think is "me" and its all the same. "me" is ALWAYS being held over there.

The person behind the camera here can never be seen. If we turn the camera around to show the body its important to note we are still not BEHIND the camera! You can't get behind the camera because there is nothing behind the camera!

Now we can look at a real wedding photo shoot and see the photographer on one side and the married couple on the other side of the camera. We know there is someone there behind the camera. But this only works for what we can sense. The analogy does not work for sense itself!

You can sense people in front and behind a physical camera. You know there is physically someone holding that bear above. But we are not talking about that. We are talking about who is behind what you are seeing right now as you read this blog!

That space behind what you are seeing cannot be accessed because it does not exist. There is no one and nothing there! And if there was it would just become something else we were looking at and experiencing and it would just be in front of the camera again.

There is a feature of experience that what is "sensed" occurs there (in a way). Literally in vision it is there, but also more generally what appears in experience is Present and so is not me, for I am doing the experiencing.

So the I actually becomes nothing, it just becomes the experience itself, and every time we make the mistake of thinking we have an experience of our self, we can just step straight back out and see that we are doing the experiencing and not the thing experienced. This step is always open to us whatever is being experienced.

I AM THE EXPERIENCE NOT THE EXPERIENCED.

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At risk of messing the above up, I have person experience of the next level to this. When using normal visual experience because of the way the eyes work looking ahead, visual space just exists going ahead. We cannot see behind our head. It is feature of visual experience that I used above to set up the camera with the seen in front and the non-existent behind.

But actually there is a space above this that occupies all space. When you experience this you experience a space that lies in all directions even behind your head. Now there really is no place for an imaginary self to exist. You become the brightness of space itself.