THE PHANTOMS OF THE MIND.
“I opened myself too wide. I forgot there’s more outside than things and animals at ease with themselves, whose eyes reflect the wholeness of their lives. I forgot my habit of grasping every look that fell my way: looks, opinions, scrutiny. “
Rilke
The personal ego can only fake responses to life. It encounters only itself in the mirror every morning and it alternately delights and dreads what it finds there. Indeed, it overlays all that actually, factually, is, with a gossamer thin creation we’ll call… The Phantom!
The Phantom is a totally complete world unto itself; it produces, directs and stars in its own productions. From the time it rises in the morning until it sets at night, it is the Sun around which all others revolve and have their orbital existence. It’s a romantic ‘love’ story too – that is, it is in love with – quite enamored with – its personhood – its personal hood! And what’s more, it knows what’s happening too, and if by chance it doesn’t, it busies itself in figuring out an explanation it can live with that makes allowances with speculations like could be, should be, would be, etc. 😉
The Phantom thinks of itself as a red-blooded Hero or, alternately, a black-hearted Villain. However it describes itself, it’s very hard to capture this critter! When we strap it down on a gurney and dissect it under a searching light, we find the stuff of which The Phantom is made – ideas, beliefs, attitudes – are only, just…thoughts! All thoughts!…Vaporware!
Turns out, The Phantom doesn’t even have a body! It wanders in a fog like a ghost, but only in our minds!
And what we are is that which is aware of the Phantom of our mind. In Jean Klein’s words: “What is experienced on a phenomenal plane is not you.”
When we dare to confront our Phantom, when thought is seen through to the bottom, the false is seen; nothing else but truth remains. And we find that it’s not a great mystery that surrounds us, it IS us!
In fine, we discover that we are, and the phantoms of belief, the knower and the knowing, disappear. And one lives well and truly in simply alert being; in and as this that is, peacefully, beautifully, joyfully, unattached and unknown. Love, yes. 🙂
~ photo: This is not ‘photo shopped’. Artist Carlos Grasso was delighted he captured it live while in a crowd at Burning Man 2023. Thanks old friend! 🙂
