Personalizing the Known

When one ponders an experience or engages another in an exchange of ideas one has a tendency to personalize. One thinks from a center of experience that is the image of self. That image represents the permanency of experience as ones identity. We personalize in order to understand through the image of self. That understanding is limited by our accumulated experience which is our point of reference. This point of reference is the content of the conditioned self. This activity is thought that comprehends from a position of knowing. The known is the security of self image. One argues to protect that image which one would like to believe is infallible or at least in the process of becoming infallible. One thinks in terms of right and wrong, good and bad. Even when one admits to fallibility one justifies that fallibility in a manner that reinforces the image of self.

The image of self is all important, it is our point of reference for comparison and conclusion. We measure life in terms of what we know. The known is the accumulated self which is seeking conformity and confirmation of belief. What one perceives as separate from self is an illusion. One can only observe through knowledge which is the self. What one actually perceives, as a movement in time, is the projection of self. It is the overlay of our own egotistical knowledge that we look through. When one observes through the self one is moving away from the truth of the moment to the pretense of what should be as the modified projection of what was.

If there exist (psychologically) a personality which thought identifies as the self, then there will always be conflict and confusion. In the separation of the me and the not me there is the conflict and the violence of division. When one is divided, one projects that division as the perceived reality of conceptual thought. It is however not reality at all but only the supposition of recollected memory organized according to ones beliefs. When we personalize the external world it becomes a challenge to the concept of self. That perceived challenge is the result of division that is the duality of thought.

If one is aware of the movement of thought as the projection of self, then it is possible to move from a state of personalizing the external through the known to a neutral state that is not a choice or conclusion. One is neither negative nor positive. One is simply "one" with what is. One may have the realization that this is the "great middle way" that Buddha spoke of. One is centered psychologically, moving neither to the right nor to the left. Consciousness that is the dissipation of right and wrong, good and evil, heaven and hell. When one is aware of the movement of thought as the duality within, one is centered on the reality of the moment. One has had full realization of the yoga of oneness, which is the dissipation of personalizing existence.