Me, Not My Self
Edited extract from a Gold Coast Talk, 26 June 1993
When I am just my body, just ‘me’, I walk down the street and I am pleased to be alive. Then I have no self. The thing is to reach this place as an uninterrupted state. And it is possible.
The way to start is to practise ‘going into me’. The essential reciprocal of that is to get my life right externally - out here in the world of awareness - because if that world is not right for me, I will be made more and more emotional. And that will push the buttons in my old unhappiness, the past inside of me, and I will not be able to have my perception, my intelligence, travel down into me in peace. I will always be stopped by the Guardian of the Threshold, my self, which will say, ‘What about me?’ My self is always claiming to be me. But of course, ‘me’ is not my self at all.
My self always wants to get something, whereas when I am me, I give. It is the nature of me inside the body listening to these words, to give. Check this in your own experience, please. Do you not enjoy giving love, right love? Do you not enjoy giving to another? Do you not enjoy giving wherever you can give? Of course you do. As a woman, do you not enjoy giving to man? Of course you do. It is your fondest desire. As a man, do you not want to give to your love, to woman? Of course you do. You can’t help it because it is your nature to give. That comes from ‘me’.
The Objective Truth of the Psyche