You Cannot End the Story in the Mind
by ENZA VITA

Q: I know that the self I believed myself to be is not real, and yet I continue to suffer …

A: If you understand that the self is not real and yet you continue to experience unhappiness and misery, it’s a clear indication of a set of concepts that are in contradiction to each other. How can a self that doesn’t exist experience pain?

True liberation is not about adhering to a new belief that “There is no self,” “I am already enlightened” “there is nothing to do …” and on and on. These are just more beliefs to supplant an old belief system.

If the discovery of who you truly are remains intellectual, suffering and confusion will continue because you will continue to believe that the one who has discovered something, is a separate entity. You can’t change the ego-I-mind into something so enlightened that it ultimately stops being a false self.

Regardless of whatever it appears to be or seems to understand, no self is ever the real you. This self who wants to understand everything intellectually is not the true you, and making it clearer or more knowledgeable on the issues will not ever make it be who you are. Your attempts to try to get this self to understand all this are delusion.

You are imagining an enlightened, aware self that sees that the self is not there, but they are both the same self. That same I has just come back in new clothes and proudly announced its absence. You see what’s going on here? This is the story of the infamous enlightened ego. The moment you give interest to the story, however enlightened the story seems to be, you overlook the awareness that is always here. This is the moment where you once again begin to imagine yourself as a separate entity! This being the case, the suffering and doubts will return because you have not truly seen the root of it.

You still believe in a self that can be enlightened, but no self, no matter how enlightened, is you. You are the awareness in which all the selfs appear and disappear. True freedom is when all the stories, all the insights, all the realizations, concepts, beliefs, and positions dissolve.

Liberation is the end of the story of a separate I, and you cannot end the story in the mind, because that would be just another story.

Therefore, if you think you have found an answer, let it go. The answers that you think you found yesterday are worthless today. Let them all go.

You who are presently reading this, at the core you are the same as the Buddha or any other fully aware being currently living on the planet. You are already the awareness that you are trying to find, know, understand, or experience.

Don’t be fooled by feelings, thoughts, and sensations. The presence is all that there is, now … and now … and now. Everything else is a fantastic story also made of that.

Enza Vita is co-editor of InnerSelf Newspaper and founder and director of the MahaShanti Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to spiritual awakening. Enza is also the author of the book Instant Presence - Allow Natural Meditation to Happen, published by Watkins. For more information, visit www.enzavita.com or connect with Enza through her Facebook page.