For the last few days I have been trying to find even a single thing that I am doing. When I look outside, I am very certain that I am not moving the clouds or spinning the planet or creating the waves in the ocean. That much is very obvious to me. I cannot take responsibility for any of that.
Lets move things closer to home. My body and my mind. The various experiences relating to the mind and body are thinking, movement, actions, emotions, feelings, imagining (also thinking) so on. Lets look into the gross first and then go subtler.
Right now I am writing using my pen with my hand as words rise up in my consciousness. Can I say I am writing? My hand is holding the pen, moving it over the paper. It’s my body doing it. I am aware of this phenomenon happening. It is happening for sure but I am not the doer. My body is just the medium through which the current activity of writing is happening.
Now, I can say that I can stop writing any time. Therefore I am in control and therefore I am doing the writing. Here is where things get a little interesting.
The idea to stop writing just to denote control popped into my mind in the form of a thought. Who created that thought? It certainly wasn’t me because I did not know the thought before it came into my awareness. Now, I can say that the thought came on its own but I decided to think the thought. I can say that I am the thinker of the thought. Buuuuut….
The thinking is happening and I am aware of the thinking. If I am the observer of the process, how can I be the thinker? I am observing the thinking happening and another idea has popped up as a thought telling me that I am thinking. The ‘I am the thinker’ is also a thought that came out of nowhere just like the ‘I can stop writing’ thought.
Its first important to understand who ‘I’ am. The true I. Not the idea of I that comes and goes. I am the consciousness, the aware presence that is watching everything. It is watching the world, watching the body and watching the mind. It is also watching the non-true I that is spontaneously created and dissolved by the mind. It is the watcher. It cannot be the doer. I am not doing anything.
Why is this realization important? What are the repercussions of this discovery?