When David Carse experienced a complete spiritual awakening, a critical component of that experience as the complete recognition that he did not exist, had never existed; that ‘there was nobody home.’

Carse saw what the sages and seers have been pointing to across the millennia: the individual self if an illusion, a dream character. This is no doer, only doing. We are not living lives, we are lives being lived.

But until we discover this for ourselves, the illusion of a me moving through a life, destined to be born and die, remains firmly in place.

Finding Flow

Artists, musicians, and other creative types often speak of disappearing into a state of flow, a stretch of time where the process itself takes over and they’re witnesses to rather than architects of the experience.

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” – Lao Tzu

In essence, the artist is a conduit through which the art is transmitted.

Understandably, the ego is not going to embrace the whole non-doer thing very well. In fact, it can’t. Because the thing mind can’t think itself away. Or as Eckhart Tolle put it:

“The mind can never find the solution, nor can it afford to allow you to find the solution, because it is itself an intrinsic part of the ‘problem.’ Imagine a chief of police trying to find an arsonist when the arsonist is the chief of police.”

For many, this idea of the mind as culprit is an epiphany. It’s also maddening.

Because the mind is the instrument through which we not only process the world around us, but ourselves as the central player in that world.

“The reason why many are still troubled, still seeking, still making little forward progress is because they haven’t yet come to the end of themselves. We’re still trying to give orders, and interfering with God’s work within us.” – A. W. Tozer

So how does one cease to identify oneself with the mind? According to the tenets of Advaita Vedanta as well as other mystical and esoteric traditions, there are two paths:

Self-Inquiry: The one who imagines herself to be the doer must begin a process of investigating itself. Who am I? What am I? Through increasingly deep (still) meditation, the source of that I is sought. The mind begins the quest, the heart (metaphorically speaking) completes the process.

Surrender: Here we are encouraged to ‘give it to God’ (or creator, source, One – choose your label, doesn’t matter). By quietly surrendering and sitting in silence – even for just a few seconds to start – we gradually begin to weaken the sense of I that pervades everything. Because the ego is unable to surrender, however, this can be a more difficult path. Which is why self-inquiry is known as the ‘direct path.’

I found both of these paths initially to be quite difficult, mostly because my mind was always interrupting. But over time, I found it easier to practice one or the other depending on the state of my consciousness on a particular date.

On the days I felt a bit crushed by the world, I surrendered – basically said, “Here God, you take it today, I can’t do it.”

On the days where I felt more serene and peaceful, I’d close my eyes and inwardly repeat “I” or “I am” or otherwise turn the attention inward on that sense of I. And allow the silence to envelop me.