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Consciousness with a Big C: The Spiritual Red-Herring
In certain spiritual circles, what you’re about to read is extremely controversial. It strikes at the heart of many people’s core beliefs.
Whether you’re seeking Consciousness or Self, you’re never going to find it. Whether you spell these things with a capital letter or not, they’re just dead concepts.
When it’s seen that there’s no self, it’s also seen that there is no Self. When it’s seen that there is no consciousness, it’s also seen that there is no Consciousness. The idea that there is some special Consciousness or Self where the illusory self can hide from total annihilation is simply what it is: another form of spiritual bypass, another way for the self to continue dreaming that it’s real.
Self and consciousness, whether capitalized or not, only have meaning in a subject-object context, and the only place that can occur is in the dream of self-other. What is happening is totally and utterly impersonal, meaningless, un-locatable, indivisible, ever-changing stillness.
There is nowhere left for a self of any kind. Outside the tiny dream of self, there is nothing that has any quality that even closely resembles the dream-concept we call consciousness.
I’m looking at a pen right now. What we call “seeing” is what is happening, and that’s all that’s…
