Spiritual Practice

The Nature of Practice

Disidentification and Space

Our True Nature continues to exist through all the travails of life and is untarnished, unblemished.

The Illusory Sense of Self, the conceptual abstraction, the Ego, the mind construct, the One who we think we are, is the apparent origin of the personalized sense of self. This Illusory Sense of Self is composed of thought content only and has no existence other than in thought.

We identify with this illusion and believe that this is ME. This is a monstrous case of mistaken identity. When we talk about 'my story', or 'my suffering', the 'me' that has the story or the suffering is the one who we THINK we are - the ego. It is not our true nature.

We identify with thought, we identify with positions, we identify with the 'me' - and we suffer as a result of that. We suffer and those around us suffer. That is 'our lot' as humans.

The primary identification is with the 'me' and all other identifications are attached to that, or draw their apparent power from that.

Identification is the belief that "I am that object".

It is an identification with form.

It is a belief in the FALSE.

It can take the form of "I am that identity", " I am that emotion", "I am that position" etc.

All are objects - all are not your true nature. All are False.

The spiritual search is to "find out who we really are" - which is basically an exercise in disidentification. The primary target is the 'me' - the one who we think we are. There are no other questions in the spiritual search than that.

Who am I?

By seeing the false as false the identification with the 'me' is severed and the truth is fully available - your true nature - in full view.

Some so-called 'spiritual practices' operate in the realm of the mind and the personal story of 'me'. Thoughts, beliefs and positions are exchanged for 'better' thoughts, beliefs and positions - but are still aspects of the 'me' (which has not been seen through). It is patchwork at best.

Actual spiritual practices are really disidentifications - disidentification with a position, disidentification with a feeling or sensation, disidentification with an emotion, disidentification with an apparent 'me'.

Severing the identification of the formless with form.

Disidentifications are SEEings by Consciousness itself and occurs in an instant, in the immediacy of the present moment. There is nothing gradual about a SEEing.

The disidentification with the 'me' is a breaking of identification with a mental construct - the 'me' never at any time had any 'standalone' existence of its own. When it is seen though, the 'me' is recognised as a sham, a falsity, an imposter, a joke.

Very often a feeling of "space around it" or "a shift" or just a feeling of "space" is noticed at the time of the disidentification.

This is disidentification with the 'me', the feeling, the sensation, the emotion or the position.

The clear SEEing of who/what you are is the 'insurance policy' against believing that you are this, that, or the other thing.

Your nature, my nature, is Awareness itself, Consciousness itself.

Universal, Eternal and non-Personal.

It has always been that.

Written by Mike Graham, 12 May 2008