The ‘me’ is the source of all suffering, regardless of the problem we blame it on
By: Vic Shayne
Tags: Yoga, Consciousness, Enlightenment, Self-awareness, Yoga Teacher

Gurudev Amritji Desai, father of the Amrit Yoga Institute, is a teacher who understands the ‘me’ and its creation. There are very few like him.

by Vic Shayne

author

13 Pillars of Enlightenment

One of philosophy’s most contentious discussions over the millennia has been whether there is a meaning to life, and within this argument is nestled yet another one — whether there is free will. Behind both ideas is something more fundamental, which is how the egoic mind, or sense of a “me” is formed to care and wonder about such issues.

The mind is an instrument that is able to make sense of the world, for the most practical reason, which is to navigate within it. It is capable of solving problems, inventing and using tools, gaining practical knowledge, passing along knowledge, learning languages, perceiving duality, and so on. As a natural course of growing up, this same mind that is used to make life doable becomes psychologically conditioned, which in turn creates a sense of self (a “me”) that is prone to suffering. Suffering often leads one to a psychologist or some other therapist who employs her skills to try to make things better. But for most people the suffering continues as an ever-present burden, even after “successful” psychological treatment. This is because therapy rarely gets to the cause — the mother lode — of all suffering regardless of what is called the object of the suffering

We use the word “problem” to point at some specific cause of our suffering, but when we look beneath the surface we find that every problem has the same root cause, which is the egoic sense of self, or what we can generically call “me.” The “me” goes through life struggling with one problem after another, psychologically speaking. (Physical problems are another issue, and we may refer to these as the causes of pain instead of suffering. Pain is a physical feeling, while suffering is a mental and emotional response to perception.)

Two ways to go

To simplify matters, we can say there are two main approaches that people take in an attempt to allay their suffering, perhaps with the goal of leading to transformation, greater satisfaction, a greater level of happiness, and/or a sense of improvement:

To recondition the already conditioned mind; or To fully realize that the conditioned mind (also called “me,” the egoic self, the egoic mind, the sense of “I,” the center, etc.) is only a belief system.

We can further break down the above aspects like this: We either create a better version of “me,” or we can accept and fully be what is not the “me.”

Discovering — wholeheartedly, and not merely intellectually —that the “me” is only an idea, a belief, created out of an accretion of thoughts from psychological conditioning dissolves the root of all suffering. It sounds simple to some, and it sounds difficult to others, to achieve such a transformation. It’s simple in theory, we may say, but it becomes very apparent that understanding that the “me” is no more than a belief, and therefore it is not the doer, is no easy realization —for most people— that has instant application.

“Transformation” refers in this case to a new way of seeing the world and one’s place in it, but what is usually called transformation is actually reconditioning that placates, soothes, satisfies, and elevates the egoic self, the “me.”

More on the creation of the ‘me’

The “me” is created by psychological conditioning of the mind. This “me” is an accretion of thoughts arising out of consciousness and instilled in a person by way of parents, authority figures, relatives, religion, culture, tribalism, teachers, and many other factors. This resulting“me” becomes one’s “operating system,” so to speak, and is the belief that we are associated, and identified, with ideas, memories, experiences, losses, accomplishments, failures, successes, physical appearances, abilities, talents, relationships, genetics, and more. The “me,” or self, derives its security from things outside itself, such as religion, tribalism, in-groups, nationalism, relationships, and so on. Ultimately, the “me” believes itself to be fully associated with the body and all things associated with the body. When, for example, a person points to himself and says, “I have a job,” he is literally perceiving and identifying himself as a body that is engaged in a particular form of work.

The “me”does not realize that it is actually a belief within the context of consciousness, which is the totality of all that is.This is because the “me” has walled itself off from everything else, believing it’s an island unto itself. Even its display and feelings of love are mere shadows of the love that exists without the “me,” which is without a locus and therefore universal.

Practical reasons for the practical mind

Because the (practical) mind is an instrument that helps us navigate this world and solve problems, it is a valuable asset. To live in this world and relate to it and to other beings, situations, and objects, the mind must fragment the totality of consciousness into parts, or digestible pieces, so that it can experience a life in a world of duality. For example, the mind must discriminate between hot and cold, tall and short, blue and red, fast and slow, good and bad, dangerous and safe, positive and negative, and every other conceivable and perceivable duality. To play and work in this world, one must see reality as a tapestry of pieces even though it is actually a singular and indivisible movement. However, when the mind is inevitably conditioned by thoughts that create the “me,” it also applies the sense of duality to itself, setting itself apart from the rest of consciousness. This is the fundamental cause of suffering, because the sense of an individual self moves through its entire lifetime trying to be whole, which means trying to acquire, obtain, attain, arrange, rearrange, fix, repel, attract, and so on. The result is frustration, anger, rage, jealousy, hate, revenge, engagement in entertainment, abuse of the self or of others, pursuing metaphysical and religious teachings, practicing austerities and rituals, rudeness, violence, conflict, the need to find the meaning of life, argumentation, and other behaviors and thoughts that are employed in an effort to become something.

In actuality, there is no becoming as consciousness, because consciousness is already complete, dynamic, and complex. The idea of becoming originates from the egoic self, the “me,” that is compelled to find completeness. The “me” suffers because it does not know what it already is, which is consciousness. Instead, it believes that it is something other than consciousness, which is an individual apart from the whole, motivating it to find pleasure and avoid pain in an endless cycle that generates suffering.

Who cares to know the Self beyond the ‘me’?

Very, very few people want, or have a burning desire, to know what they are at the core, beyond the sense of the “me,” at any cost. Ask everyone you know and you’re likely to get some blank stares and defensive replies. There seem to be many reasons for the lack of desire to uncover this “me” as a fraud, but in fact there is only one: Fear.

The “me” was created to perpetuate itself and therefore fears change and termination. It fears annihilation, which is the perception that it may come to an end, so it most commonly resists any idea or action that may threaten its own perpetuation and delusion of self-sustenance, self-control, control over others and the movement of life, and the ability to attract success in one way or another.

In most cases, the “me” seems so real that it cannot possibly entertain the fact that it does not exist, except as a belief, does not act on its own volition, and does not determine the fate of the world (its immediate circle or the world at large), because all of these behaviors actually occur in the totality of consciousness and not at the individual level.

If one were to intensely look into her own sense of self, the “me,” she would discover something greater beneath it, which is consciousness. As consciousness, she is the doer, the thinker, and the director, but we have to be careful in understanding this delicate use of language here, because the “she” in this sentence is only a pronoun — a placeholder — that means consciousness and not the self that is the “me.” When the “me” comes to an end, and when the body comes to an end, consciousness remains. This is not a religious idea or philosophy; it is a fact — but it’s a fact that the “me” resists at all costs, because to accept it would be an admission of the impotence of the “me” itself.