Being Someone is Just as (Un)Important as Being No One

Self and/or no-self?

Self or no-self?

Both, neither, far beyond either.

The self cannot be found as anything particular or pin-down-able, sure.

This is the great Buddhist insight.

Yet that does not mean there is no self.

It’s just that the ‘self’ is a swirling, ever-shifting, inconceivable conglomeration of data.

A mirage-like apparition in a sandstorm.

And yet this apparition is here.

(Some of the time at least, hah!)

We all know this most basic, familiar, intuitive sense of being a person.

Sure, if you look closely at it, our experience of personhood is never the same from one moment to the next.

And yet still, there it is.

Our human-being-ness.

Our unique flavor and song and texture and spirit and heart.

Exuding, radiating, morphing, being, shifting.

It feels a certain way to be you.

There is a JB-ness, in my case.

Sure, that JB-ness is not static and cannot be concretized or precisely located.

And yet it also has a surprising degree of continuity.

JB been a wild, silly, funky-free soul since day one, ya dig?

“There’s no one here” is a great pointer and mantra, though.

I’ve been repeating it to myself a lot today—probably 100+ times.

It’s great for snapping me out of habitual reference points.

Snapping me out of the tendency to concretize ‘me’ and everything else.

‘Me’ is the first concretization—the root solidification—which then naturally leads to the concretization of everything else.

It leads to being locked into a partialized perspective that sees only solid, separate objects persisting in time.

When really, if you look closely, every ‘separate’ thing is also non-separate, non-objectified, and continuously changing—buzzing, morphing, flickering—in the timeless, spaceless unicity of Here-Now.

In a profound sense, you never meet the same person twice.

Everything is always completely NEW.

And this freshness is glorious.

Let yourself feel it.

AND YET…

And yet…

You do meet the same person twice.

People do have recognizable, differentiated flavors.

A certain jazzy-soul-essence.

A signature radiance.

Unfindable, sure, yet definitely taste-able.

From here, it seems obvious that God loves for His children to experience themselves and each other with a sense of continuity. Else this would not happen automatically for ~99.9% of us.

And that’s groovy! It’s fun to be a non-separate, non-solid individual dancing and floating through/as Pure Light with other non-separate, non-solid individuals!

We’re here, fam.

We’re here.

We really, really out here.

Lol. Told y’all I’m silly.

Are we real or unreal?

Both, neither, far beyond either.

Both real and unreal.

Neither real nor unreal.

And far beyond any classification or dualistic categorization scheme whatsoever!

We bouncin’, slippin’, slidin’.

Free.

Free from all stuckness and rigidity.

Look closely and you can’t find us.

Yet here we are.

The miraculous intimacy of non-separation.

Weightless love.

Utterly transcendent, yet utterly personal.

Amen.

Love,
J

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Jordan Bates is a dad, husband, space holder, men’s coach, rapper, course creator, blogger, truth lover, co-creator of Apotheosis, and author of four books.

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For Paying Subscribers: A Few More Words on Self VS No-Self and My Weird Journey of Integrating Right-Hand & Left-Hand Paths, East & West, Love & Power, Christianity & Radical (Buddhist) Non-Duality

Yo Fam,

So I first wrote the above words some weeks ago…