Is there a solution to the self?

When we seek solutions we add another problem to the already existing problem: There is no solution without a problem to warrant it.

Condemning the self as a problem is like throwing your most precious gift away. Of course, this statement flies in the face of the self that has constantly been proposed as our foremost ontological problem; the biggest roadblock in our evolution. So first we need to understand what we mean by self. Are we mistaking self-interest for self? Could we consider, at least for a moment, that the self may be part of the order of the universe, in harmony with everything; and if this is the case, then there  will not be self-interest, rather all-interest; interest in the all.

If we make the self the problem then correspondingly we must see the consequence of this thinking as requiring a solution. Problems are never absent of solutions, so this problem must by necessity need to be solved. In this way, we set ourselves up for conflict. This very condemnation is the problem. The self poses itself as a problem to be solved by the very same problem. This is the sword attempting to cut itself. So, before I condemn it, suppress it, deny it or try to transcend it, it may reward us to actually look at it. Can we look at this without seeing the self as problem? What if the self is a part of a whole that has no existence of its own, but is simply part of a totality of being and consequently non-existent as a separate existence? What if this self, on re-joining the whole, is transmuted in that whole and in such harmony, is no longer individual, alone, distinct and separate: In fact, therefore does not exist at all. What if all effort to be rid of the self is just reinforcement of non-existence in a mistaken bid at freedom from an illusion of independent existence: An anomaly in the Universe of wholeness?

You may say that the self brings you pleasure, but it also brings you pain. Would one in harmony experience these extremes, or are they the poles of a duality of being that is the result of fragmentation? And, therefore, is the self a fragmented figment born of an image produced by the process of choosing separation as a way of being that relies now on memory of that which cannot any longer be remembered by that fragmented figment? And, if we are to look for solutions, because this self is the problem, then this solution could be to have no solutions; simply a deep level of allowing, an openness of being that surrenders to the whole that we are and always have been and always continues to be.

Free yourself from the fed thoughts that identify the self as the body, in distinction from other bodies and allow the true source of your mind in the True Self to reveal the fact (as we have discussed before in The self and the Soul) that the self is only an apparency, an illusion that has its source in the Self. Where there is subject with no object, there the Self is. This is living from the Soul.