No Self, No Form, No Goal

Tutorial for March 24, 2021
No Self, No Form, No Goal

What happens when the separation between the one who experiences something, the object of the experience, and the experience itself disappears? One Life Awareness, Liberation, Enlightenment, Awakening, are just four of the many terms used to express the same thing—accepting the absolute reality of no self, no form, and no goal.


No Self
To have no self does not mean that you do not exist, to have no self means that there is nothing that is you that is independent from All That Is, from One Life. When you look at what you call You, you see a version of a body-mind—an image that you have cultivated over time. Yet what you are is the universe. There is stardust, the ocean, the mountains and skies contained within you. No self means that the self that you identify as You, is just a momentary description of something that could never actually be You. There is no permanence in a self that you identify as You, there is no reliable independent substance that is You. Nothing exists separately. Everything is connected.

Though the illusion of a separate self is profound, the first door of One Life awareness asks for the acceptance of the truth of no self. This is not a nihilistic denial of being, but a liberated understanding of One Life. In order to understand the value of letting go of your illusion of self and embrace the knowing of no self, it is wise to become clear with the nature of this illusion. By looking deeply into the illusion of self, you find that it is basically a belief in an unchanging essence that you think is the real You. At the same time there is the You that is the mind-body apparatus, and probably all sorts of Yous that constitute You. No single version of you is ever all of you. You are truly much like a mirage. You appear to be substantial, and seem to be real, yet, you cannot locate You, reproduce an experience of You, nor can you rely upon a You that fixed. Just like the mirage, the notion of a self that is timeless, unchanging and knowable is a misinterpretation of the momentary perceptions of sensory input that create an illusion of a body of water in the case of the mirage, or an illusion of self in the case of You.

No Form
When the deeper understanding that there is no self arises, the experiencer is no longer a separate entity, and maintaining an object of the experience is no longer possible. This is the understanding of no form. This is the opening of the second door where you can appreciate that nothing has intrinsic form, nothing is what its form indicates, everything is formless. The outer appearance of things are not the things themselves. In the world of things that seem to be solid and have color and shape and form, quantum physics exposes the universe to be energy without form. At the fundamental level, incredibly small particles seem to enter into reality for a fraction of a moment then vanish even more quickly. When this is realized, it becomes easy to accept impermanence and that everything is ever-changing.

Knowing there is no form that exists as a solid, while acknowledging transitory and superficial illusions of form in your relative existence, allows you the opportunity to see “behind the curtain” and release any attachments you have to form. It is impossible for form to be experienced by no self.
 
 No Goal
Without an object to experience, you become free of objects of pursuit. Goals fall away, and if you have no goal, then you are finished seeking outcomes. The third door of One Life awareness opens. Suddenly everything is as it is, with all that you need right here, right now. Then there is no need to struggle, to strive or search for something that does not exist in the here and now. Great happiness results in the simple knowing that competing is unnecessary, and that you lack nothing. 

For many, it is difficult to recognize that their life is actually perfect exactly as it is. This is not an idea of static perfection, but a notion of everything being exactly as it must be. Accepting life as genuine, and knowing ultimately that there is no self, no form, and no goal is all there is.

​So, what happens when the separation between the one who experiences something, the object of the experience, and the experience itself disappears? Nothing actually happens, but everything occurs. Nothing needs to be done, everything is done, and it all becomes simple: just be as you are.

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