So it seems I keep coming back to this fascinated thought/possibility. Is it that at the end of all this one is almost as if slapped with a joke - that life was already always happening of its own accord. That what ‘I’ amount to in the end is like a cloud of illusion directing this flesh and blood body to act in this and that way. But ‘I’ can already see that as the ‘doer’ ‘I’ never had any genuine agency, and as the ‘beer’ ‘I’ am not in charge of life either.
This is fascinating to contemplate because a fact brings freedom from deliberation.
After-all it was this very experiencing (of the breath breathing itself) which got me back on the wide and wondrous path. I saw in that moment (about 5 years ago now) that just as the breath breathed itself, life lives itself.
It is like what Richard wrote, that it is when ‘I’ come to feel/believe that ‘I’ know better than the universe how life should be lived that the problems begin. And it is weird also because ‘I’ experience ‘myself’ to be separated from the rest of existence and yet ‘I’ feel that ‘I’ am somehow in charge of what happens. It seems this is how ‘I’ substantiate ‘myself’, ‘I’ try to have an import on what happens and in this way ‘I’ can appear to be genuine - this is what pride is no?
That in order to exist ‘I’ must assert ‘my’ role in what happens, but this goes against the facts. ‘I’ am maintaining ‘myself’ against the facts - no wonder it is a painful endeavor.
And yet as I write this now pride still remains, and what I mean by this is this fundamental feeling/belief which states that ‘I’ am somehow required, that ‘I’ know better than the universe, that this moment is incomplete if not for ‘my’ tinkering with it. But really this is like a self-fulfilling prophecy, because it is ‘I’ who is the arbiter of how this moment should apparently happen and then when it does not go according to ‘my’ demands ‘I’ take it as proof that ‘I’ am required.
This thing of pride it really does seem to be a key aspect of how ‘I’ maintain ‘myself’, in fact can any identity exist without pride? It is like Richard wrote that ‘I’ am proud of ‘my’ biggest achievement which is maintaining ‘myself’ as an identity.