It is only ideas that create the notion of separation.
When it is seen that everything rises and sets in you,
what can you be separate from?
Wu Hsin
Moi is the “me” in French. It’s actually a nice acronym—My Own Interference! What does no-self really mean? After all, I have a body that everyone can see. When you meet me in the grocery store and my shopping card is in the way you would say, “Christian, can you move please, I need to get to the bread!” The “I” is a physical reference point in this web of Oneness.
No-self refers to the fact that we are a whole, and that there is no psychological identity that separates us. “I Am” is before thought and feeling, before pain body and longing. I am not saying that I am always operating in that mode! I am not enlightened. Yet, it is easy to see “MOI” at work, in every psychological thought and in every feeling that something is amiss.
It is naïve to think that we can find a technique to step out of this story of “me” and somehow be that “I Am” before psychological thought and feeling. After Awakening we certainly have glimpses of Oneness, but the old pain body and engrained desires always come back. Spiritual living is transforming this self identity—it’s a purification and healing of our conditioned mind. It’s an invite to see “MOI” at work.
The reason why the spiritual quest sometimes appears confusing and frustrating is that we toggle between two mutually exclusive states. When we connect with the Light the pain body and the latent longings are not. Yet, once psychological thought and feelings return, we only see a distorted version of the no-self state. The answer lies an examining these self-made interferences just as reconnecting with “I Am.”
Can we spot “My Own Interference” at work? Can we reconnect to the “I Am” state after the interference is realized and worked through? That’s spiritual living in a nutshell. It’s actually a lot of fun once we realize the problem statement at work.
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