So, I’ve seemingly lost my sense of self, or most of it, it feels like a flimsy veil remains. I look in the mirror and don’t see a ‘me’, I speak but don’t know who or where the words come from. So strange is this current place, a book i ordered from the States arrived a couple of weeks ago; Suzanne Segal’s Collision With The Infinite. She talks of her own story, her own experience of no self which suddenly happened to her in Paris in the 1980’s whilst boarding a bus. She’d previously been heavily involved in the Transcendental Meditation corporation, sorry, i meant to say movement. She’d been a heavy meditator for years, hours and hours every day. She began to see some hefty flaws in the TM set up and stopped her spiritual practice, she hadn’t meditated for years and all of sudden ‘poof’ her sense of self completely vanished as she was boarding a bus in Paris. Cool.
Not cool for Suzanne at the time, she thought she’d gone insane, she’d spend the next twelve years of her life in and out of therapy and doctors offices only to be told ‘sorry’ we don’t know whats wrong with you, here’s some meds for the anxiety you’re experiencing, adios. It was only at the end of these twelve years after studying spiritual literature with a focus on non duality that she learned that the no self state for want of better words is the ultimate goal for many spiritual seekers. Shame the guys at TM never mentioned that, any way she learned that the daily terror she was dealing with was her minds reaction to no longer having a sense of self. Once she started to learn to trust this gaping hole with guidance from spiritual teachers, to let go in to it instead of catastrophising about it, her experience of no self u turned from an experience of terror to something quite profound.
As I read that book, as I re read it again I see so many parallels with my own story and what I’ve been going through since March ’21. I was quite shocked to read her account, it could have been written about me. The feelings of doubt, of questioning daily my own sanity, of wondering what the hell is happening to me. This has been, by far and without doubt the hardest thing I’ve ever been through, am still going through, it’s absolutely relentless, it’s exhausting and the confusion it causes is off the scale. It’s the polar opposite to all we read about the peace, love and bliss that’s often talked about in spiritual awakening.
Making any plans seems pointless as there’s no one here to carry them out, any fruits of said plans won’t be experienced or enjoyed by a ‘me’ so why bother? It feels like there’s no one here to gain anything from anything, this said i need to be mindful of slipping into doing nothing in life. I still do stuff, motivation is hard but I don’t want to lapse into complete confusion, hopelessness and idleness. If i go anywhere, say on a break for a few days away in nature, when i return it’s like I’ve not been because there’s no one here that went. I find it hard to believe that people don’t even notice whats going with me, to them I must appear normal but inside there’s a complete nuclear explosion of self going on, there’s no one here. But, things are still being done…..
Suzanne talks about the absence of a ‘doer’ in her book after her sense of self took a walk, one of her early fears was hinged on her ability to be a good mother to her daughter, her fears were of course valid ones but a good mother she was despite her lack of self. Mothering still happened, she did a great a job of raising her daughter, she studied for a Phd, she did domestic stuff, organised her life all with no sense of self. This raised the question for her about there being an actual ‘doer’; if self is gone and things are still being done, who or what is doing the doing?
This line of enquiry is now buzzing around inside my head like a wasp in a fairground bin. I look back at the last two and bit years of my life at when my sense of self started to go down the tubes, I look back at the things I’ve done; I’ve worked a multidrop delivery driver job delivering thousands and thousands of parcels on time in an organised manor, I’ve drove thousands of miles, I’ve paid my bills, I’ve done a few gigs (albeit nervously), I’ve painted the house from top to bottom, I’ve had conversations with people, I’ve worked on my van and on and on; all with no real sense of self or a doer. Which leads me to the next question – has there ever been a doer?
I already know the answer, there has never really been a doer, there can’t have been, the more i look at it the more obvious it’s becoming. I’m not done with this question yet, it’s still being pulled apart, dissected poked and pointed at, it’s not sank in fully, it still needs working out until i know for sure. It seems like my false sense of self has been masquerading as the doer all along, taking credit where it shouldn’t be taking credit, I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that there’s a perfect intelligence or ‘the big unknown’ at work doing all the doing.
Suzanne’s book couldn’t have come a better time, it arrived through a small synchronistic chain of events just when it needed to, how in the hell could I have made that happen?
I couldn’t.
Truth Seeker 