Re: urgently in need of help

PART 1 - In the Sea of Change, Who am I?
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There is a part of you that remains constant, unchanged, through all changes and fluxuations in your life. It was there when you were a child, it's there now, and it will be there when you are old. It is there in both happiness and sorrow, love and fear, peacefulness and anger. It is there regardless of your identity -- whether you're a Christian, an Atheist, a Hindu, a Muslim, a boy, a girl, a doctor, a beggar, or anything else. Look at all the fluctuations in your life, all the "changeable" things, all the experiences, and ask yourself: "What is it that is always the same?"

Is it your name? No. It may have been with you since you were born, but it's just something external. Something given. It could have been any other name, and it can be changed easily. It's just an external "label" applied to your body.

Is it your body? No. The body never stays the same! It's always changing. It's not the same now as it was when you were a child, and it won't be the same as it it now when you grow old. Eventually it will die and decay. "Dust to dust" and all that stuff...

Is it your thoughts and personal identity? No. Those things are always changing! One minute thoughts of happiness are coming in, the next minute thoughts of anger are coming in. One minute you are interested in painting and say "I am a painter", but then you lose interest and move on to join the Army, then you say "I am a soldier." Then you experience traumatic events of war and move towards a life of "religion" ... you start studying the Bible and then say "I am a Christian". It never ends, it's constantly changing. Your thoughts -- and your identity when it is rooted in thoughts or "the world" -- are never the same.

So what is it that stays the same?


PART 2 - The Perceiver
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For anything to be known, there must be a knower. For this moment to be perceived, there must be a perceiver. If there was no perceiver, then you wouldn't be experiencing this right now.

When you dream, there is a feeling of "being in" the dream. It's what's happening "right now" and you usually don't know any reality other than the dream. When you awake, the dream dies, but the experience of it, the "memory", still remains. You remember the dream because there is a continuity of awareness ... the same awareness that was perceiving the dream, is also present in your "being awake". Without that continuity of awareness, there would be no memory of ever having the dream in the first place. No feeling of ever "being in" the dream. It would just be blank, nonexistent. This is partially evident in the many people who say "I don't have dreams" ... Really the vast majority of them DO dream, they just aren't "present" enough, aware enough, during the dream to remember it. But because of that lack of awareness, it's as if the dream never occurred. This is not a perfect example! but I hope it's adequate enough to convey my meaning...

If when you died, the "perceiver" died as well, then this entire experience would vanish, as if it never existed in the first place. If there was no "perceiver", or awareness, that remained after the death of this body and identity, then there would be no possibility of "remembering" this experience RIGHT NOW! The "proof" of life after death, is in the fact that you're perceiving this moment, right now. But "life after death" is a wrong idea. Life comes and goes. When death comes, life ends. And when life comes, death ends. It's better to see it as "awareness after the cycles of life and death".

Instead of fleeing from thoughts of death, accept them. Use them as a great catapulting force in the search for yourself. Your body will die. Your current identity will die. All things in the world of change perish. It's inevitable. All of these things are only temporary. If you invest your sense of self in these things, the only result is pain and misery when they are inevitably taken from you. The only "escape" from death, and all suffering, is in knowing yourself -- the "self" that always "is". The "same self" that can never be anything other than itself. That "self" is already here, now, completely free, completely untouched by death or anything else. You just aren't aware of it yet. You just have to uncover it. So start digging. :)

--James

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