' The illusion of separation '...

What you take to be a “you” totally separate from the rest of life is really just awareness contracting or focusing on (i.e., identifying with) phenomena arising in awareness. The phenomena are the body, thoughts, beliefs, ideas, positions, opinions, emotions, sensations, experiences, states and all other temporary forms. As phenomena arise in awareness, there is identification. This identification creates a false center known as “me.”

This contracted “me” energy creates the sense that you are a person “in here” (in the body and mind) that is separate from what is “out there” (outside the body and mind). The crux of this separate self sense is the time-bound, thought-based story of past, present, and future. That story is continuously fed by interpreting life conceptually and thinking of yourself as existing along a timeline. You believe you are the past and that you are heading towards future. All of that is purely conceptual.

To see through this illusion of separation between self and life, notice that what you are in the most fundamental sense is unchanging, no-boundary, non-local awareness. No matter what phenomena appear and disappear in awareness, the awareness never leaves or changes. In simply noticing the phenomena, without focusing in on it, the phenomena are allowed to be exactly as they are. They are allowed to pass without identification. In this disidentification, the boundary between self and the rest of life is seen as illusory.


Scott Kiloby, Reflections of the One Life: Daily Pointers to Enlightenment