To prove I is a phantom

From my investigations and some texts I have come across (most comedically the work of George Cockroft AKA Luke Rhinehart AKA The Dice Man) it is seen that this notion of self, the driver to the life you live, is never the same one twice.

We connect a thread through I-holes (pun useful and intended) of needles and link all of the I's we ever were together forming the wormlike thread through the 4th, time, dimension of space-time.

I ego is a backseat driver who is a product of events and is made, for good reason, to take blame or reward and add sense of continuity to the events unfolding. Ego is a perfectly valid and useful tool in this role, but does not drive.

The Bhagvad Gita says to "Work without lust of result", to operate without being attached to the fruit of the action is the Gita's way of saying "don't let ego run the show" and it suggests this as, while ego loves reward, it also suffers failure, and so the size of ego defines how high the rollercoaster will go, and so how low it will fall. Some Ego's buzz off the challenge of riding a big rollercoaster and this is great within their period of success. Ego is useful and entirely essential to all beings, the sense of I-ness is the basis for relationships and much of living.

What we have brought about though in the modern world, and this surely existed in truth for thousands of years, is a society that reaffirms the reality of the ego to the point that most people believe themselves to be the I, and that I has a body, and that I has a bank account, house, car, iPod, internet account...

But these I's are after effects, the show happens and the I is produced as required to attach to thoughts and actions. But it is a unique I each time, not real and not lasting, we link them all together and call them the ongoing us. The I who blew out the candles on their birthday cake aged 5 is not you now and the I now, is not you who woke up this morning, but the continuity is from memory.

With no memory we would be in an extended empty state. Life would go on a continuum of change and no I would exist. Instead though Now happens, a memory is brought up, and the two compared - so is born dualism, and I is produced to link the moment to the now.

Again thoroughly useful, but not real in the sense of everlasting. What can be made can never not exist, what does not exist can never exist, but falling in a hard to define area is the I who does not exist, so can not ever exist, but seems to exist, so goes on seeming to exist.

It is never though the same I twice, you can investigate this, and once proven it is a powerful experience.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao