I don’t have time to write this carefully, sorry.
I’d like to express my reaction to the conversation in comments yesterday about “I’m not the doer” and “I’m not the desirer.”
The feeling that I’m doing, the feeling that I’m desiring — the I in those feelings is a mental construct.
You are not the I in those phrases.
You are something else.
When people hear the instruction “you are not the doer,” some of them probably think it means that the feeling “I do stuff” is false, but they assume or take for granted that they are the I who has the false feeling.
I suggest to you that the real meaning of the instruction “you are not the doer” is that you are not the I that thinks it’s a doer. In other words, it’s not just the feeling of doing that’s illusory; the I that has the feeling is also illusory.
The way this gets recognized is by paying attention to yourself as you really are. Since you’re reading this blog you’ve probably heard yourself described thousands of times as consciousness. I think it may be a little clearer to call you “knowing” (hear “knowing” as a noun not a verb, like “breathing” in the sentence “her breathing was deep”).
When I say pay attention to yourself as you really are, I mean these words in an ordinary way. You can and should learn to be aware of pure knowing, to have your attention on it. I’m calling it “it” because it lacks the mental-construct I, but it’s you. It’s the unseparated undivided unadulterated knowing that you always sense you are but can’t seem to find. Look away not just from desires and doings and all other objects, but also from the I that seems to experience them, and now you’re cooking with gas.
People sometimes compare recognizing yourself to “backing up” from the I that feels like a doer, desirer, etc.
That backing up is the same thing as discrimination (viveka).
Sometimes people call this “dis-identifying.” If we use that term, my point here gets expressed like this: you should dis-identify not from doing and desiring but from the I that feels like it’s doing and desiring. As long as you identify with that I the first approach is probably impossible, but if you carry out the second approach the first happens automatically.
By coincidence an article by Jan Frazier arrived by email a few days ago (I’m on her subscription list) that addresses this point. She comes at it from a different angle, from the I that thinks it lives your life, but her mental-construct I is the same as the one I talked about here. The mental-construct I is an ill-defined multi-faceted cluster of mental activities. The reason I’m linking Jan’s post here is that if you back up from the I she starts with, you’re also backing up from the one I wrote about on this page. Maybe you’ll find her article helpful or interesting.