December 8, 2008
Your True Nature
Here's another "thought" experiment — not quite a meditation practice, but something that can give you a rapid altered experience of this thing called "me."
Don't let it's simplicity fool you. Since it only takes 1-2 minutes to do, give it a whirl.
The instruction is easy:
For the next 1-2 minutes, talk to yourself (in your mind, not out loud) and describe everything you're doing, including thinking… BUT add this one twist:
Refer to yourself as "It" or "He" or "She" (while I'd recommend using "he" if you think of yourself as male and "she" if you think of yourself as female, it can be interesting to swap those around)
For example, if I were to do this exercise right now as I'm typing, here's the best reporting can do of what's happening in my head:
Okay, now it's aware of the fact that it's starting the exercise
Now it notices that it keeps having to backspace to get rid of typos… and it thinks it should be able to type better
Now it's pausing, waiting for the next thing to happen
It notices that it keeps typing
He finds this kind of funny
He thinks it makes it seem like it's a robot
It looked out the window and laughed
It's still typing and has a big smile on it's face (as it goes and fixes another typo)
It thinks that "it" is maybe more accurate than the name it calls himself…
Get it?
In a way this is kind of like pretending you're a rapper or one of those athletes who always refers to themselves in the third person.
Give it a whirl and, after you've done the exercise for a minute or two, see how your experience of yourself and the room around you is different.
For extra fun — If you want to really play with this, talk about "yourself" this way, out loud, to others! "It thinks it wants Thai food for dinner…" Do it as if nothing is remotely unusual and see what kind of response you get! 
(By the way, the opportunity this experiment provides is to see how you can reliably create a different experience of yourself and the world without having to go off into to a corner to meditate and then hoping whatever happens while you've escaped from your life will "carry over" into your regular life. This experiment can show you there may be almost effortless and instantaneous ways to shift into relaxation, expanded awareness and insight no matter what you're actually doing.)
Comments on Your True Nature »
Interesting thought-experiment that reminds of an old practice of the Taoist Huayan school:
"… The final stage when 'both inside and outside naturally fuse' occurs when there is no longer the sense of an 'I' that is repeating the 'muuu' mantra; there is only 'muuu' itself. This final stage is sometimes described by saying that now 'muuu' is doing 'muuu'. It is 'muuu' that sits, walks, eats and so forth … Consequently, when consciousness stops trying to catch its own tail, 'I' become nothing, and discover that I am, in fact, everything."
Very, very useful tool actually.