|
Inner
Frontier Fourth Way Spiritual Practice |
Inner Work For the Week of February 10, 2025
Beyond Subject and ObjectThe dyad of subject and object is our fundamental illusion and thus a crucial gateway on the path toward the Sacred. Egoism, oneness, love, separateness, desire, identification, greed, hatred, freedom, flow, and transcendence — all that and more depend on the subject-object dichotomy or its absence. Indeed, a hidden approach to solving the issues of egoism, separateness, clinging, identification, greed, hatred, and negative reactivity consists of working directly to transcend the subject-object split. We define the subject-object dyad as the seemingly absolute but illusory divide between you and what you see, between you and what you hear, between you and what any of your senses present. Life engages us with many people and many things, many objects of perception, and we need to interact with each appropriately. Yet we can live on more than one level. At the same time as we are engaging with people and things in a subject and object kind of way, we can inwardly be in a state that does not separate us from people or things, that does not separate subject and object. We can even live that way. It is possible to make that state stable and lasting, make it our station in life. It is possible to live in that unity of non-separateness. Before that though, we grapple with identification: an important case of an imaginary resolution of the subject-object split. When we are identified with something, our world narrows down to that thing, as we, the subject, enslave ourselves to the object. Though shackled together, the split grows stronger, as we define ourselves in terms of the object. The problem with identification is that we get so lost in it that we do not realize it is happening. In the Real, by contrast, neither subject nor object are defined: no experiencer standing apart from the object experienced. Rather, they melt into a unified whole within the continuous field of consciousness. One of the more insidious types of identification is with our thoughts, with believing that we are our thoughts, with believing that they inherently reflect and embody us. This is a major way in which the illusion of a separate self, the illusion of a subject separate from the objects of perception, is created and maintained. Yet it is so commonplace that we never question our relationship with our own thoughts. The comfort of the familiar voice in our head lulls us into staying identified with it, into staying in a state of separateness. We believe that voice is us. We believe that this intimate pattern of thoughts, emotions, and physical impulses defines us, is us. It is not us. To find ourselves we must let go of that illusory self, let go of being the subject in the duality and emerge into the seamless reality. Here's a practice for transcending the subject-object split. At the end of a period of meditation, when your body is relaxed, your heart is tranquil, and your mind is relatively quiet, stay in that state of peace while you open your eyes. Without necessarily focusing on any one person or thing, let the whole scene before you present itself. In that state of peace, there is nothing arising to define you, to mark you out as a separate self. No name. No feeling of self. No need to define anything in the scene before you. It just is. Just as the visual scene just is, other senses continue to present impressions such as of the body, sounds, and aromas. Thoughts may come, but without disturbing the peace. All of it just is. Nothing labeled. Nothing defined. Nothing separated out. There is just seeing, hearing, and the rest. No you separate from the objects seen. In this state, there is only one whole, the experience of the seamless Now. After abiding in this wholeness for a time, emerge from the meditation session. But let go of your self-defining, self-separating stance and return to that perceptual unity at safe moments during your day. To be clear, your body is still here and fully functioning. Your mind is still here with its thoughts, opinions, commentary, plans, desires, goals, dreams, memories, and the rest. Your emotions are still here, from the petty to the sublime. What is missing however is the very idea, or even the pseudo-perception, of a self, an ego and its walls, an illusion that ties it all together and gives itself your name. In its place, in your core, there is what at first appears to be nothing, the hole in the middle of every scene you enter. But later this reveals itself as your true identity, your I, your will, that is inseparable from the One Will within everything and everyone. Inseparable. No wall. No dyad. No subject-object split. In those simple moments of transcendence, like a drop returning to the ocean, we enter the loving embrace of the Whole. |
|
About Inner Frontier Send us email Copyright © 2001-2025 Joseph Naft. All rights reserved. |