Those of you who are regulars to this blog know that I see daygame as a tool of self-discovery, of finding out who you are, along with meditation, travel, living from your core and being honest. I’ve been trying to get my feeling process into words for some time. Since it’s my feeling process, no one else’s words will do. Unfortunately, my words won’t do either, no matter what I write. But if I want to teach this, I’m going to have to communicate it somehow. I don’t want you to understand it because that’s not possible. My best hope is for you to feel it.

I’m watching this video as I write

And I’m thinking about crystallizing and going deeper than what Julian is talking about here.

There are so many layers to this, this discovering who you are malarkey. Here is my best attempt so far to conceptualize them. See if any of them rings true with you.

1. Believing you are the crappy self-image you have been brought up with. You’re the guy who’s in his head. What are you doing there? You’re tailoring yourself to fit in with your surroundings. Welcome to being human. You defer to parents, bosses, society and – of course – women to get along with society. You add layer upon layer of bullshit over yourself, and you believe you are this person. This is the level of person who asks someone: “when should I go in for the kiss?”. It is because you don’t trust yourself to know, and you don’t know yourself to trust. You trust the opinions of outsiders to guide your innate feelings and biological impulses. Again, welcome to being a “civilised” human. Most of us are brought up like this. Parents tell us when to eat (even though we have hunger to tell us), when to sleep (even though we have tiredness to tell us), alarms telling us when to get up (we have an in-built system for this, too – it’s called waking up). We are indoctrinated to mistrust our own instincts. This leads to us passing on this same shitty mind-based existence onto our own children, and the cycle continues.

2. Believing that you are your experiences. This is the next level, it’s the pop-psychology level, where you believe you are the product of your experiences. I am a white, middle class, liberal type person. I am educated, polite, treat people with respect, but confident of my social standing and socially aware of what goes on around me. I respect my parents and feel like I need to achieve in life, like I perceive my peers and siblings do. This is the level many reside at. I did, therefore I am. The above description would describe me, if I brought into it any more. This belief will tailor your behaviours, make you filter what you say, watch what you do, and again you will suppress your desires and inner self to match what is expected of you.

3. Believing that your personality is who you are.  The next level is buying this “personality” that you have created, and taking it as you. You believe that you are this type of person, or that type of person: “I’m a good person”, “I’m a bad person”, “I’m a liberal person,” “I’m a generous person”. You believe that you are a collection of adjectives, and equate your being with this. This also leads to beliefs such as: “I am a moral person” which – of course – leads to eventual inevitable hypocrisy, whereby you break your morals, but still claim to be “a moral person” because you are aware that you broke your own moral code. Congratulations, Mr. Moral.

4. Believing you are the new better self-image which replaces the crappy old one. This is any new self-image: “I’m not going to be that person any more” the convert cries, who thinks he has found the ‘Red Pill’. Now you are the PUA or the liberal or the religious convert or the rebel or the spiritualist on a ‘quest’ or the bad boy or the pimp or the saint or the lover or the one who says “I don’t have a self-image”. You replaced your old self-image with a new one, and you now believe that self image is you: “I’m not going to be the person I’m expected to be any more” (to quote one contemporary advert). Welcome to your new self image. Better for you than the old one, but still bullshit. Welcome to psycho-cybernetics and self-help.

5. Realising that you behave in different ways around different people, so assuming that you are many people. You realise that you don’t behave the same with your mates as you do with your granny. You don’t behave the same with your girlfriend as you do with your dentist. The conclusion? You are many people, or you are “different versions” of you. I hear this a lot in management training courses: “There is no ‘you’, there are different versions of ‘you’, which you use in different circumstances.” This is considered normal. Congratulations, you are now a self-confessed schizophrenic, with multiple personalities. And that’s supposed to be normal.

6. Believing that any of these are who you are. You pick whichever personality you feel the least uncomfortable with and say: that’s me. I’m “me” when I’m with my friends down the pub. I’m not me when I’m at work. I’m not me when I’m at the dole office. This is the belief that you are you at some point, then you are not you at other points. This is the belief that you are not you. I am not me. Read that again for a belief: “I am not me.” So who are you when you’re at work? Someone else? Who is that, exactly? The erroneous belief is that you are you with your friends down the pub, and not you when you are somewhere else. We humans are messed up, ce n’est pas? Or are we?…

7. Believing that you are your thought processes. Behind all this, the belief that you are your thought processes. “Why do I always do that?” “I annoy myself sometimes.” “I know I can do this!” “I love myself!” All different sides of the same coin. Still schizophrenic. Still madness. The mind tinkers away, as it has evolved to as an analytical tool, and you think you are this mind. Of course you think that – thinking takes place in the mind, after all! This is I think, therefore I am.

8. Believing you are what is behind the thought process. Now you are getting closer, you feel what is beneath during moments of awe, revelation, no-mind, stillness, beauty, truth, danger, wonder. You come to a point where you feel just: “I am”. Not “I am moral”, “I am intelligent”, but just “I am”. Not as words, but just as a feeling. Not an emotion, just a feeling. Now you are a spiritualist: you post quotes from the Buddha on Facebook, you create a religion, philosophy or ideology, or you write a blog about it (hello, me!). You’ve taken this “I am”, the non-conceptual, the timeless, and written it down, put it into a thought. It’s now just a concept in your mind. This can happen if you experience moments of awakening, and then turn that into an event (people call this an “awakening”). You then say, “two weeks ago I had a moment of awakening” and voila! It is a concept again, in the past and you want to strive for it in the future. Back to believing you are the thought process.

9. Knowing who you are. Feeling who you are is a better description. You are living in the moment, taking it as it comes. You no longer strive to be any kind of person, or even a person. You don’t think of yourself as anything. You don’t need to think. You trust yourself to do whatever needs to be done. Through repeatedly living in the moment, through being true to yourself and dropping concepts, thoughts, analysis, judgements and everything else related to the mind, you see yourself, which is not seeing yourself, because you realise you are one person. You trust yourself through experience. You don’t say “I trust myself”, you don’t think “I trust myself” and you don’t even feel “I trust myself.” You just “are”. This is called:

10. Being. You are. That’s it.

With this comes unconditional trust. It’s not a “state”, unless that “state” is alive, because that’s all it is: alive. Your being is there. Alive. The rest of everything else you do, whether a Yad stop or a same day threesome, is effortless. Because there is no fight – no fight with yourself, no fight with the world, no fight with your mind, and no fight with the universe (not that such a thing is possible!). The illusion of conflict slips away: “there is no conflict.”  There is only one way to describe this in words: no words. And there is only one way to describe this in sounds: silence.

I have experienced step 10 many times. Of course, when I think about it, write about it, wish to be in it again or remember being in it fondly, I’m at step 7. In writing this blog I’m at step 7. Maximum. In wishing to attain step 10, I’m at step 7. In believing I’m enlightened, I’m back at step 4. In believing that there are steps, I’m at step 7. In believing there are no steps, I’m back at 7. In believing that by believing there are or aren’t any steps, it’ll make any difference, I’m at step 7.

If you can’t get your mind around this post, there’s a good reason for that.

I invite you to join me in losing your mind and coming to your senses.

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