What has always been here, experiencing life? Don’t try to answer, but notice where the question points.

* What has always been here, experiencing life?

* What was here when you were 5 years old, 15 years old, and is still here today?

* What will be here when you are 80?

It is always the same, aware aliveness. It doesn’t come or go. Your essential being is always the same. It is eternal.

Take a metaphorical step back from the mind. This pulls us into what seems like the background. It can seem like a spacious, silent vastness or a vibrating, energetic field of potential. It doesn’t feel personal. At all.

There is no knowledge and there are no concepts here. There is only aliveness, being, knowing life as it is now. Silently and effortlessly look at this being, this aware presence.

The verb looking is used as shorthand for perception. We are not trying to see anything. Don’t worry about anything happening or doing this right. Just try to look.

Look directly at this alive, aware sense of being without trying to perceive or understand anything. It doesn’t matter how long you look. A fraction of a second is enough.

Try, with all your heart, to notice and recognize what is aware. Notice that this aware presence isn’t empty or a void. It is vibrantly conscious and aware.

The mind can’t understand this. It doesn’t compute mentally. So to the mind, this presence can feel boring or scary, an empty, infinite hole or void that will swallow us up. If such thoughts or feelings come up, just notice them and let them pass.

Presence is sometimes described as a warm, subtly tingling aliveness. But don’t worry if it doesn’t feel that way for you.

This awareness is the very presence of YOU.

YOU have never been born. YOU will never die.

— This is one of the 33 inquiries from the audio version of my book Seeing No-Self: Essential Questions to Reveal Our Nondual Nature.

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Hear something often enough and it starts to feel like you know it. Repeat “no self” sincerely enough and it starts to feel like truth. Meditate on “all is awareness” deeply enough and it can feel like direct insight.

But without all that:What do you know for sure?What is not hearsay or second-hand?

That is all that counts.The rest of it is useless.

When everything ever heard goes silent, what still is?Don’t name it or try to understand it.

What remains is not something we’ve heard somewhere.It already was before we ever heard anything.

It seems like nothing because it has no substance. But the direct, preverbal, mindless knowing of it, is what can free you from the belief that you were ever separate from it.

This ordinary aliveness is doubtlessly present.

What is not doubtless is the story of self or no-self in that aliveness. What is not doubtless are the endless explanations, meanings, and consequences concerning it.

If it’s not clear, pretending won’t help.You don’t wake up on borrowed truth.

What needs nothing from you to be the case?You can look (know) directly and wordlessly.

This feels strange and frustrating but you might persist.

Realize it as all that ever is, and the need for any explanation of it ends.

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We have access to everything on the internet, and AI to digest it for us. Plus, we have all those books and videos we’ve been consuming for years.

We’ve heard it all before: completely jaded but still unsatisfied.

So even the most direct pointing is heard as something already understood.

Yes, I get it, this is not-two, undivided.Yes, yes, I know, there is no separate self.But why is that not changing anything?

The biggest obstacle is believing we already know what this is. It completely blocks the direct, unmediated noticing of it.

But maybe we can trust that it really is that stupidly simple: noticing what already is without concluding anything.

* Without listening to any interpretation of what this is.

* Ignoring anything the mind provides as an answer.

* Just noticing, mind-lessly.

Any understanding of what this is only obscures it.

It really is about less, not more.Less understanding, less getting it, not more.

That only feels impossible because our entire identity is built on what we think we know — including what we think we know about what is being said here right now.

I think, therefore I feel like I know things, giving me the false sense of control and security that I’m a tangible, separate self.

But noticing what already is before thinking is possible.It is already going on all the time.

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Any appearance, any experience can point us back to recognizing our true nature.

Take any experience of separation, constriction, limitation, stress, or suffering. It’s always due to the interpretation by the mind, the selfing mechanism. Always.

So any inquiry, any clear noticing of what is really going on, can take us home.

Noticing the raw thoughts and sensations, and the mind’s interpretation relating them to a supposed separate me … if that is simply noticed, there’s a natural falling back into what is aware.

The trick is not to get stuck in more judgment, more thought about what is only happening spontaneously, without anyone’s control. Let the inquiry point all the way back to what knows, to the freedom and peace of pure being, before any mind.

Inquiries tend to work better with things we find stressful but really any experience at all points back to what experiences.

It seems difficult at first, to pull back from the mind, to fall back from selfing and into the freedom of being.

Inquiry, the way I share it, uses what the mind throws up as the way home. It uses the mind’s own b******t to go beyond it, like following the breadcrumbs out of the forest you were lost in.

Then any situation, any experience, is the pointer to the peace and freedom of your true nature.

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To be free and know peace, right now, as you are, is going against every thought you were ever taught. It’s contrary to the entire cultural conditioning of wherever you grew up.

To know your true nature, no longer exclusively identified as a body or mind, means no longer buying into the supposed ego / free agent / self that humanity claims is who you are.

It’s the end of belief in the consensus, along with all its norms and expectations.

The human is a social animal, where being outcast means death. Even the idea of breaking from consensus can bring up existential fear.

The fear is that very same conditioning, doing its job, keeping you trapped.

And yes, stories of those who break free are shared. But they’re shared as though they’re highly exceptional. Poor you will never achieve it, not in this lifetime. You’re not advanced enough, too flawed, not cut out for it.

All of it ensures you remain identified as a personal self, who must own and live their life.

But you are already free, right now. Peace and ease are truly, completely available, exactly as things are right now.

The conditioning is stopping you from noticing, from even looking in this direction.

Because what YOU already are knows the entire, conditioned drama. And that knowing is unconditionally free. All it takes is noticing that.

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Before the explanations, before the information, before the concepts, before the words, before the thoughts, before the ideas, before the intuitions … YOU already are.

YOU are without border or edges, without limits or constrictions, without separation or duality, without characteristics or traits, without story or identity, without body or mind.

YOU can effortlessly rediscover YOU in any moment.

YOU are already right here, it’s just that attention is narrowed down into a tiny fractal of YOU.

Notice that there is always YOU, aware of whatever is going on: all of the perceptions, sensations, thoughts. And just notice how expansive, spacious, and unencumbered YOU really are.

YOU are always this unencumbered expansiveness, no matter what is going on. YOU always already are. It all appears and happens in YOU.

Innocently, unavoidably YOU lose awareness of this expansiveness that you are, and become exclusively identified with the appearance of a body-and-story.

Effortlessly, spontaneously YOU rediscover this spaciousness and notice that limitation to a body and identification with a story never actually happens — only seems to happen.

It’s only a misunderstanding that never actually occurs except as the belief that it does.

There never is a separate self who needs to see they don’t exist. There never is a someone who needs to find their way back to truth.

Always, always there is only YOU and everything appearing as YOU.

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After years of seeking and more years of trying to communicate this, what is most essential seems to be the direct, experiential discovery that there is no personal self.

Talking about the consequences of that doesn’t seem so helpful. It only creates more ideas about it instead of encouraging the direct recognition.

What I can say is that the compulsion to project, protect, and promote a “me” disappears.

There’s all the drama of living, but it’s no longer personal. The bodymind is more or less involved in that drama, like being more or less immersed in a movie. But it’s not about me — not my drama. If it sometimes feels that way, it never lasts long.

All of it is known, and that knowing is utterly without problems — untouched, free.

Is that Awareness? Source? The Self? Who cares?

The freedom is in knowing what I am not, and the resultant knowing of what I am — much too simple a proposition for the sophisticated mind.

No one is separate from what is or needed to do anything about it, although many things are done. None of it ever involves an imaginary character called “me.”

Until this ordinary fact of no-self is seen, it’s all very complicated and “I” desperately need to figure it out!

Relief is the discovery that there is no one.

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You can think about being alive. You can have sensations that tell you you’re alive. Or you can just know the fact of aliveness.

You can think about awareness. You can have sensations that indicate you’re aware. Or there can simply be the knowing of awareness.

There can be attention going to thoughts. There can be attention going to various sensations. Or there can be the direct knowing of being, without resorting to thoughts or sensations about being.

For many years, I knew inquiry was the key to this realization. But all I did was think about inquiry. I pondered all the pointers to what I was not and all the pointers to what I was, from dry and technical to poetic and mystical.

In meditation, I felt what I believed were the correct sensations of inquiry: calmness, peace, expansion.

But inquiry, which is simply seeing what I am not and rediscovering what I truly am, doesn’t involve thinking or feeling at all.

It’s a “falling back” from thoughts and sensations and knowing what is aware.

Trying to think or feel inquiry isn’t even noticing what already is before, during, and after those thoughts and sensations about inquiry.

What already is knows all thought and sensation as objects.

It’s not a thought, not a feeling, but a transparent, undeniably aware presence.

It is what you are.

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This is not about a better bodymind experience. It’s just not on offer.

What’s on offer is knowing your true nature, which is not limited to the bodymind you’ve innocently identified with and shrunk your world down to.

Your true nature is unlimited, unconditional, total peace and freedom — and those are just words.

You have to recognize it. Whenever the mind shuts up, there can be the recognition of the naked fact of being. The mind doesn’t recognize it because “mind” is a thought happening in it.

There’s no problem at all there. It’s the problem aspect of life that disappears.

You need thought, the self, the ego to construct problems. I mean problem in the sense of an issue to solve, not in the sense of it’s all beautiful and fantastic.

No separate self, no problem, no limitation, no constriction, no suffering — we can know this in any moment if we just look without using the mind.

It’s freedom from this entire compulsion to do or fix or improve — completely gone. It’s the end of the need to fix the personal life, because it’s clear that I am what the entire apparent identity or dream of a separate person appears in.

Most people want to fix themselves and have a better life. And that’s fine. But that’s not on offer here.

(Adapted from an open meeting — details to join on katoudheusden.com)

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We demand proof that there is no self.

Good. This isn’t about trying to make ourselves believe there is no self. But scepticism requires that we equally inquire into what we already assume to be true.

Instead of only demanding proof of no-self, we can turn it around and demand proof of the existence of a self.

Because maybe the assumption that there is a separate self, is what lacks evidence.

If we’re looking for a separate self as our identity, then we would need to find something that:

* is continuously present and never not present,

* exists independently of impermanent thoughts and perceptions or sensations — or else it would be nothing more than those,

* is directly findable and not just assumed or inferred.

Our concept of a self doesn’t meet any of these criteria!

If we really look instead of just assuming we already know, then no self is ever found.

All we find are recurring sensations and thoughts (or mental sensations) from which we infer the existence of a self — but none of which constitute an actual separate self.

This doesn’t prove anything. We can’t prove the absence of something. But it can be an invitation to further testing.

If the separate self can’t be found despite repeated looking, that absence can start to speak louder than the belief in one.

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