Self-Realization and Other Awakenings

psychotherapist, or challenging external
circumstances, such as a life crisis, death of someone
close, divorce, etc.
Yes, seeing that there is no ‘I-Center’ certainly can
begin an astounding transformation as the conceptual
system begins to collapse and we begin to see the
world differently, without concepts, and as Seung Shan
might say, with a mind as stupid as a rock, without its
constant chatter and interpretations.
The world seems fresh, brilliant and vivid, our
responses immediate and not mediated by thought.
Then we become One, ‘I’ versus the world disappears,
and there is just one experience, unity consciousness,
with no time lapse between something that happens
‘outside’ and our (inside) responses.
But the lack of an ‘I-entity’ certainly does not
mean that we do not have behaviors, abilities, a
personality, skills, and a body available to us, as well
as seeing ourselves as in relationship to a world and to
another.
When we say the sentence, “I had rice for dinner
yesterday,” we are not talking about some nonexistent
‘I-entity’ that we can see through introspection; we
are stating that in our memory we know that yesterday
‘I’ ate a certain meal, this body-mind had rice and
other food to eat. We are not saying there was an ‘I’