[Anagogy]

Originally Posted by Ariel Bravy

Duality arises with the creation of a sense of self, of "me."

My thoughts, my actions, my creations, my reality, my consciousness, my awareness, etc.

Thoughts, actions, creations, reality, consciousness, and awareness can be experienced dualisticaly or non-dualisticaly. What matters is if there is a buying into the thoughts of if there is "someone" here to experience all of it. Even a someone who is "one with all that is" is still another someone with a sense of identity of this as opposed to that. It's a "unified me" as opposed to a "separate me." No, it's about dropping the me altogether, not simply changing its identity to a more spiritual one.

It is only when there is an energetic contraction around something which arises and an identification with that contraction as the "me" that the world of duality arises yet again. When you separate yourself from All That Is, the world of duality is born.

I've written about this separation process in more detail here, looking very closely into the creation of the self.

Watching a Separate Self Be Created | You Are Truly Loved

It is by undoing the illusion of self, not by silencing the mind, that the world of duality vanishes.

Thanks for the response and link to your article. I have a couple of questions about it.

Foundation

At the core (heh.. there is no core, there is no center, but I don’t know what other word to use…), there’s this vast emptiness. Literally nothingness. Just an infinite spaciousness.

Within the space, everything arises and everything passes. Everything exists in the nothingness, the same way that all form in physical reality is surrounded by space and even full of space.

Within nothingness, bodies appear, thoughts arise, and all temporary passings show up within the eternal silence.

Why do the thoughts arise and disappear?

Clinging Begins

The question “Who am I?” then arose in thought and some answers arose accordingly, and they all just passed through with some, but very little clinging, and they were quickly let go of when the clinging was recognized for what it is.

One answer which came up was, “I am no self. There is no self here. Nothing is here.”

The mind then took this idea of “no self” and made it into a something to identify with. At first this something was let go of and it passed right on through, just like everything else, except there was a temporary resistance in order to hold onto it as it passed through.

From your perspective, would identifying with All That Is also constitute a form of "self" or would you define that differently?

So what exactly is this false sense of self?

It is the concept “I” as something that can be defined, and anything that one would possess, such as “my” energy, my body, my thoughts, my consciousness, my opinions, or anything else that one can be in possession of.

For example, “the keys that are being held here” is a very different statement than “my keys.” You can even play the disassociation game to help make yourself more conscious of this difference.

The separate self is identification with something that arises within nothingness, including even the idea of nothingness, which is yet another subtle ego trick.

An idea is something. Nothing is not something. This is KEY!

I like a lot of what you write, but I'm still not altogether clear how the illusion of duality arises from the emptiness you spoke of earlier.

What is the impetus for identification in the first place? That's what I'm really curious about.