Hi Everyone I wanted to name something I’ve been sitting with.

In this conversation around the middle way and the dissolving of self, I sense a tension, that’s not disagreement, but perhaps a difference in how we’re approaching suffering.

Some responses seem to come from a therapeutic frame, where the self is the one who suffers and must be protected and healed. That makes sense, especially when pain is raw and personal.

My reflections, and I think James, come from a spiritual contemplative frame, where the self is seen less as a fixed entity and more as a pattern, a rhythm that can soften, loosen, even dissolve, without denying the reality of suffering.

I realize now that speaking from that frame may have landed as bypassing or erasing the one who suffers. That wasn’t my intention, and I don’t believe it’s the intention of any of the wisdom tradition. Though this confusion often arises, especially when language brushes up against pain.

As the Buddha indicated, I don’t experience the dissolving of self as the end of suffering, but as the end of identifying with it. Jung put it simply: when we no longer identify with our pain, the small-s self dissolves (loosens), and something deeper, the capital-S Self, is revealed. How someone relates to that capital-S Self is personal and not easily communicated so should also be handled with care.

I’m hoping naming this tension might help bridge the gap between the therapeutic frame and contemplative (spiritual) frame and any misunderstandings that have arisen.

It occured to me I may have confused things with the last notion where the seeker becomes the sought.

I was imagining that in the sense that “what you seek is also seeking you”

In Sufism, this is viewed as seeker longing for union with the Divine, often called the Beloved. The path is one of love, devotion, and surrender. But the deeper realization is that the seeker and the Beloved were never separate. The search itself dissolves, and what remains is the recognition that the seeker is the sought.

As Rumi writes: “You wander from room to room hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck.”

So, becoming the sought means awakening to the truth that what you were looking for was never outside you, it was your own essence all along. We return were we started – “we were never born and we never die” – “It is just What We Truly are”

Hi James

I feel we’re describing the same landscape, just from different elevations. You’re speaking from the summit, the view where even the observer dissolves, and thoughts arise and fall within the Unnamable. I’m describing the descent, the moment when the “I” returns through the doorway of thought and language.

I don’t view the return as a failure, but part of the rhythm of being human. The clarity of total disappearance is real and so is the reappearance of identity.

“It is nothing other than what We truly are”. – Life as it is.

Hi Everyone

Alessa – yes, I feel James is saying the same thing, or at least we land in the same place: “nothing is born and nothing dies.”

I was drawn to Anita’s question about whether such a nondual space is soothing, and also to the role language plays in shaping our experience. Many who encounter this kind of dissolution report a loss of inner dialogue, a kind of wordless presence, or even the absence of presence itself.

In such a state, the question of soothing fades. One is neither soothed nor not soothed. The image that comes to mind is climbing a mountain and arriving at the summit, where everything is clear. But Life has one demand, that it be lived. We are not allowed to stay, the summit may be clear, but Life asks us to descend.

James – I hear you when you say body and mind work perfectly without a “me” function. And I agree: identification with the body as person inevitably creates suffering. What I’m exploring is how language itself, not just thought, gives rise to the illusion of self. Language doesn’t just describe the “me”; it builds it. Without language, there is no scaffolding to hold the illusion together.

This was something I experienced when waking after a surgery. I was ‘aware’ of ‘being’ without any sense of I, until a question was thought… who or what was aware… where was the I… Immediately I was pulled into consciousness, building my ‘self’ with all the labels… all the while a second thought – Noooooooooo.

That moment of self-return was like a ripple on a still pond. It marked the transition from unstructured awareness into the architecture of identity. The thought itself was not just a question; it was a summoning. It called forth the scaffolding of “I”… the labels, the history, the body, all the familiar furniture of self.

This mirrors creation stories where the world begins with a word:
– In Genesis: “In the beginning was the Word…”
– In Hindu cosmology: “Aum” is the primordial vibration – waking, dreaming, unconscious, silence – waking, dreaming, unconscious, silence….
– In Buddhist thought: the arising of nama-rupa (name and form) marks the beginning of duality.

That experience of being pulled back by a single thought, slowed down perhaps by that anesthesia, is perhaps one that occurs on each waking… felt like the seed of separation, the moment the mirror turns and reflects a “me.” And I wonder if the inner Nooooooo was the soul’s recognition of the cost: the return to form, to story, to suffering. Yet even this return is sacred as It’s what allows us to walk, speak, love, and create.

So, when we return from that summit, from the clarity of total disappearance… does the experience soothe?

My observation, sometimes yes, sometimes no. No, when it’s mistaken as a goal or a possession. Yes, when it loosens the grip of identity and teaches us to hold words, and selves, desires… more lightly. At least that has been my experience.

Hi James

Language and thought are only tools of communication. They arise and fall — It true all things arise and return – sound arises and return to silence, motion arises and returns to stillness, time arises and returns to the eternal, which isn’t a measurement of time or a measurement at all.

Still, I don’t feel language is only a tool. Language arising from the eternal is what gives birth to the sense and illusion of self. Without language, there is no self to describe, no continuity to uphold. In this way, the “me” is not just a bundle of thoughts, but a structure built from words. When language loosens, the scaffolding collapses. No language, no self.

“The central point of the world is the point where stillness and movement are together. Movement is time, stillness eternity.
Realizing the relationship of the temporal moment to the eternal — not moment, but forever — is the sense of life…
Realizing that eternity is right here now, that it is within your possibility to experience the eternity of your own truth and being, then you grasp the following: That which you are was never born and will never die.” – Campbell

At this point in my life I don’t feel the radical nondual disappearance as a path, while learning to hold words lightly has… soothed my soul. We are unfortunately limited to language to speak of what can’t be spoken. In the end we find the words that suit us and then let them fade away.

Hi everyone
I’m also finding this discussion helpful as I explore the tension between the concepts of ‘triggering’ and forgiveness.

When I first encountered the idea of trigger warnings, I understood them as a compassionate gesture, an invitation for those who are aware of their wounds to choose whether they’re ready to engage. That made sense to me. But it also raised a question: what about those who aren’t yet aware of their triggers? What responsibility does the community carry then?

This is where I struggle…

To be candid, my personal view is that the individual holds primary responsibility for their triggers. I realize that may sound harsh, and I don’t mean it to dismiss anyone’s pain. (I suspect this view originates with my father…)

It’s just that I’ve come to see triggers not as something others cause, but as something within me that gets revealed. I sometimes picture it like walking around with a loaded weapon, if someone bumps into me and it goes off, it’s not their fault I was carrying around a “loaded weapon”. That image helps me take ownership of my healing. I also find this perspective empowering though I know I don’t always feel that way in the moment. (Copilot suggested I soften the image but that would not be honest as I can’t seem to separate the association of trigger from weapon. That is something I’m continue to self examine.)

Today, when I notice a trigger, I see it as an opportunity to understand myself better and to care for the wound that was touched. In that sense, triggering can be a gift, even if it doesn’t feel like one at first.