Burnt Out Nothing - 3: The Self
The first thing the self is taught is that the self exists. The knot is only ever tight. From that point on, each and every other thing it learns is the self-same lesson again and again—I exist, I exist, I exist. On and on until death the self tightens and tightens.
The self’s process of learning, of knowledge acquisition, only ever comes from what is put inside it from culture, what has been gathered and passed down. The self, therefore, is a secondhand bundle of stories and concepts. It is this bundle, this knot, that considers itself separate from life, separate from the process of living. Acting as if it can know knowing, think thought, or live life, as opposed to just…this.
The knot is always conditioned. There is no such thing as an unconditioned, ‘blank’ self. How could a knot not be tangled and tight?
The self, as a tense accumulation of memories, ideas, and concepts, is dead. The self is dead. To experience as self is to not experience at all, but only morbidly translate via conditioning. Only ever what has already been seen, heard, touched, smelled, and tasted is ‘available’ to the self. The self is safe. It’s dead. To know is to be the living dead, to haunt the halls of the already dead and gone. Knowing is the realm of facts, of right and wrong, of what it is to be right! There is no one so foul, wretched, and already-6ft-under than he or she who hastily interjects the correction!
Each string of thought, each strand of memory, each rope of history, and each hawser of culture is eaten by self and digested as self; self is dead time walking. The variations of these are of interest as much as one’s differing stresses and tensions are of interest, nil!
This knowledge, that we can call world, is what makes up the self. Without this knowledge, the self wouldn’t be able to tighten the knot and proclaim itself as a separate entity. The world tightens the knot, and the knot tightens the world. Both are closed off by knowledge and facts, by what is right.
Self is synonymous with security. There is no such thing as security.
This tightening begins and ever-increases from around the age of two onward. By the time we are just a few years old, we will begin to state I like this and I hate that, I am angry and I am sad, I am good and I am bad. We state all of this in spite of the fact that the presumed totality of these states cannot be found. There is no self, there is no repository of thoughts, emotions, and experiences. There is no center to return to as to strike up a concordance.
The self’s first act is to throw up self! It’s a recursive self-jerk, that when looked at, only panics for fear of death! It begins to protest, then act intrigued, and finally it tells itself it agrees with this fire!
But there is no self there. There is no separate entity. All that exists of the I is just that, the printed letter I, the long-vowel phoneme ī, and the grasp without a fist, the knot; there’s nothing there.
Each year I find myself anew. Each month I have changed my interests. Each week I am emotionally different. Each day I go back upon the last. The self is a legion of selves that all share only a single belief: that if each says “I!” then all are the same self. The self is a contradictory knot, the contradictions of which are the very tensions of its tangle; if the self didn’t have dualistic frictions, it couldn’t be noticed. As such, the self is inherently knotted! The self cannot abide peace! The self cannot abide contentment! The self cannot be fulfilled! The self cannot rest! Everything, then, that so many state they are seeking can never be acquired, never be obtained.
When the self sees That, it dies.
The self can’t have This.
The self doesn’t want This.
The self intellectualizes the flame.
It analyses the pyre.
The self transforms this into a story.
If the self is involved, if you are saying “I!”, and there is some supposed entity leading the way, then you are on the wrong path. The truth is a pathless land because any path presupposes an agency to travel it.
Any action, direction, or motivation regarding the dissipation of the self is from self. The self strives toward peace, aggrandizes toward contentment, consumes toward fulfillment, suffers toward rest!
Nothing can be done!
Nothing can be done.
Nothing can be done.
The I dies every single moment, but exists as if it transcends them entirely. The I dies every single moment. There isn’t a moment. There isn’t a ‘present’, there can’t be, by definition—show me the present! The I dies ceaselessly, always, now, and so…
Peace will come to you only when you die.
I hope you die soon.