Despite my best efforts to repeat myself because we both know sometimes we drift off reading these things and miss what’s being said, you may still be wondering why we refer to brain-self instead of just saying self. It is because the brain, not you, must give you up. That’s when self gets re-contextualized in heart. This is a point I made, but never really explicitly stated, in Urgency. To my mind, Our Undoing is like Urgency. in slow motion: we’re taking it frame by frame, if you will, to explore the depths and expose the meanings of every detail. Truths within truths within Truth.
When we talk about giving things we deem important or joyful or temporarily satiating up, you likely think, ‘I don’t want to give that up!’ But it’s not you giving anything up. It is the want for it falling away as the brain sees the folly in finding temporary satisfaction in objects and ideas. The brain’s seeing of this is the releasing of desire. You may want, may desire, may clutch onto the things that you believe define you, but it is the brain that must see the impotence of this. The brain must relinquish want and desire and then “you” won’t want the object of desire anymore. In Truth, there is no you that wants this or wants that so badly; you are that craving, not a person with desire who controls or indulges cravings.
Objects of desire are only attachments. The reactions to them are what you are. But you don’t want to hear that. You want to be a self in control of desire, as if you-in-reaction is an object. You want to be a master of choice. You’re not. You’re an addiction machine. Telling you to just give it all up is a fruitless exercise. It would be the wrong move on my part because, again, you are the attachment that must go, not the attachments you feel so intimately connected with that you refuse to let them go.
Those other attachments are all noise. It’s the brain who must hear this. It is the brain who must see the futility of the self in its search for wholeness as an add-on. See the futility of self, dear brain, and wholeness becomes you. Truth becomes you. The selfless brain is the state of non-attachment, the impersonal state, where the transcendental lives.
Truth is not within the realm of thought and self is thought. All self can do is hear truths and try to live by them as ideals, or discard them and move on. Both are ignorance. Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is a carefully guarded misstep. Ignorance is you now. Bliss is human nature. Bliss is the real you waiting with infinite patience for the illusory you to die. Not physically, mind you. Not suicide. But relaxation into oblivion, and that oblivion becomes a re-contextualization into proper healthful operation: heart-self transcending and including brain.
And more. But let’s get there first.
Now watch yourself. Watch how you react to all of this, but specifically the phrase, “And more.” Is it tantalizing you? Is it becoming a motive to transform? What is this more that I speak of? Can we skip heart and get to that?
I already know heart. You’ve explained it. I seek the mystery beyond!
And so you keep seeking to never find, because that which waits to be found may only be found when the seeker is no more. There may be more but if that more is an enticement, you will never find it.
In fact, either way, you never will. The more becomes one when brain stops its selfish activity. When brain refuses, the more remains a dangling carrot.