It Is Not a Struggle to Find the Self

I feel to say something about this… You said before that the idea you had someHmes is of an empty experience of that being Awareness. Now, if you mean by that as if it is an empty room (then many of us make this sort of error to feel like a dark empty room or some vast spaciousness, which is actually spaHal in nature) we feel like that is Awareness. But actually even in that what we may call an ‘empty experience’ there is sHll a percepHon. You may be perceiving darkness. You may be perceiving the absence of light, so that is not an empty experience. A truly empty experience is a non-phenomenal experience, which is your experience (so-called experience) of the Self. Non-phenomenal - not light, not dark, not big, not small, no Hme, no space. Only the Self is like that. So now you are recognizing this, you are recognizing this although the mind may keep presenHng this [waving of two hands in the air] imagery to you saying ‘Ahh, the vastness, so bright…’ because we have the experience of outer space and this kind of thing, so it presents these kind of imageries saying that ‘Okay maybe we will buy into that noHon of Awareness, that image as a noHon of Awareness or something like this.’ But we cannot actually imagine or perceive an empty experience. Can you have an experience without a quality that would be empty… without an aZribute? What is the experience without a quality? Blank is also quality no? Blank is what… blank may be like full white, like a blank wall or full black like outer space or something like that, like a limbo or some idea like that, like an abyss or a limbo, but all of these are also quality. You can say ‘black, white, light, big,’ What is that which is beyond heat and cold, shape and size, all of these qualiHes, what is that? What is the experience of that? What is the experience of that? That is a truly empty experience. Our conceptual open and empHness like our inner open and empHness allow us to experience that empty. That is when you say ‘Okay, so are you Aware now?’ That ‘you’ what can you say about it? How big is it? Is it cold? Is it old, is it young? Yeah, I cannot say things. Then if somebody else was listening to you they then these things they may say ‘then you have not found anything.’ How can you find something which has no quality? [Smile] But you do, isn't it? This ‘I’ is apparent to you but it has no quality. (Who is with me and who is not?) So this empty experience is a beauHful term actually, empty of all phenomena… which is not like a dark empty room. If that was it to come to the discovery of Awareness, we would make a dark room and say ‘look come inside there not a ray of light comes from anywhere, just look around that is Awareness’ so do not confuse that to be Awareness. Who is aware of the percepHon of even that? What can we say about that one? You have said it is ‘I’ and that is very irritaHng for the mind probably. [Smile] It is probably very irritaHng to the mind. I say ‘Who is aware of the percepHon of this hand?’ Grudgingly you may say [Smiles] ‘I cannot deny it. I have to say I.’ [Smile] SomeHmes you say ‘I don't know’ but even that you say ‘I’… I do not know. It is ‘I’ but I do not know who that is. He said that no ‘It is I but I don't know who that is’ then how do you say it is ‘I’? You must be knowing who that is to call it ‘I am.’ So it is so, so naturally ‘I’ that you can't help it. So absent of any experienHal confirmaHon, any perceptual confirmaHon, any conceptual confirmaHon, it is available and to say ‘available’ is too smaller word.