The Noself Awakening

The Noself awakening was the most paradoxical experience imaginable. It wasn’t that ‘I’ disappeared or ceased to exist – it was the profound recognition that there had never been an ‘I’ to begin with. Not that I died or dissolved, but that the entire premise of my existence had been a cosmic misunderstanding. It was like suddenly realizing that what I’d always called ‘me’ was just a mirage that had never actually been there.

The realization crystallized into three profound recognitions: I was Nobody – not someone who had become nobody, but had never been anybody at all. I was going Nowhere – not traveling to some destination, but recognizing there was nowhere to go because there was no one to go anywhere. I was doing Nothing – not engaged in some activity called ‘nothing,’ but seeing that the very notion of a doer was an illusion.

It wasn’t that I suddenly entered the void or merged with emptiness. In the instant of Noself awakening, I WAS the void. There was no movement into it, no transition to it – just the immediate recognition that what I had always been was this vast, empty awareness itself. The void wasn’t somewhere else I went to; it was what I had always been.

Many spiritual teachers say that ‘you’ can’t get enlightened because the ‘you’ disappears in the process – that the seeker must die for realization to occur. But this doesn’t match the actual experience. The ego-identity certainly dissolves, and all concepts of who you thought you were fall away. But the witnessing consciousness – what I call the Iself – doesn’t disappear. It remains as the focal point of awareness that recognizes the dissolution.

It’s not that ‘you’ can’t get there – it’s that when you arrive, you realize there was never a separate ‘you’ to make the journey in the first place. The Iself doesn’t vanish; it experiences being Nobody going Nowhere doing Nothing. Someone is absolutely present to have the realization of no-one. The awareness that witnesses thoughts, experiences, and sensations remains fully present to witness its own absence of substance.

This is why the traditional teaching that ‘you disappear’ is incomplete. The individual focal point of consciousness – the Iself – is exactly what’s needed to recognize the Noself. You can’t negate the witness and still have witnessing. The someone doesn’t disappear – it discovers it was never the someone it thought it was, and simultaneously recognizes itself as the very void it thought was separate from it.

Of course, this is my attempt to put into words what is ultimately beyond words. The actual experience transcends any description, but sometimes pointing toward the ineffable can be helpful for fellow travelers on this pathless path.

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