Ideology of self and the presence of freedom, 2017
The ideology of self and the presence of freedom
Read this short piece of writing by James Low, 2017
The ground is not changed by its display.
This display is the play of awareness, of presence inseparable from the ground.
The ground seems not to be present when there is absence of presence inseparable from the ground.
This absence has no other source than the ground it is not aware of.
To be unaware of the ground is to be unaware of the actual origin of ourselves and everything that occurs for and as ourselves.
This absence of simplicity, integrity and clarity manifests as the energy of the ground appearing as subject and object, self and other.
These polarised ideas are taken to be real self-existing, seemingly self-originated, entities possessing both essence and substance.
Identifying as self, other is displaced, pushed out and away as forever not-self.
This delusion is maintained in the face of everyday connectivity such as breathing, eating, moving, speaking.
This gives rise to so many entities. There seems to be too much stuff. For the ego, only selectivity can prevent overwhelm.
Then our restricted selective attention is fed by attachment to the seeming givenness of what is apprehended.
The impact of the apprehended arising has a consequence, for we react by either adopting or rejecting what ever we think has impacted us.
Being symbiotic, the subject needs the object to avoid going unconscious.
Hence the subject recruits the turbulence of desire, aversion, pride, jealousy and so on to maintain the vivifying play of excitation.
For the anxious hungry ego, attending to the unadulterated simplicity of what is occurring generates boredom and dullness.
This experience returns the ego self to the busyness of distraction and excitation.
Yet the unchanging ground is always available, always present, always inseparable from whatever is occurring.
Therefore relax and release. Relax body, voice and mind. Relax fusion with habitual tendencies of arousal and mobilisation.
This relaxation is itself releasing, revealing the self-liberation, the self-vanishing of all that arises.
Resting in this primordial purity, openness and ungraspablity of awareness, we find that all display is intrinsically free.
With this we are free. Free, relaxed, contented and without need for either subject or object although they may continue to arise in the manner of a dream.
James Low 2017