How to See Non-Self in Your Own Life!

The Following is an excerpt from page 38 of Dr. Christiane Michelberger’s excellent “Finding Awakening: A No-Nonsense Buddhist Path to Peace and the End of Suffering”:





**Preparation for the Inquiry**

Take some time to see whether you have any reservations about seeing that there is no ‘me’ like I did. It would be normal.
Which feelings come up when you read, “There is no me, there never was, and there never will be?”
Is there something you don’t want to happen?
How do you expect it to be like when it becomes clear that there is no me? How will it feel? What will change and what will stay the same?
There is no right or wrong answer, simply answer honestly. Honesty will be one of your greatest assets on this journey.

**The Method to Look for the Truth**

Understanding how to look for the truth is crucial for the journey through all fetters. When you know how to look, the truth will be obvious.
You have to look in your first-hand experience.
What is the first-hand experience?
For example, we don’t hear “a dog barking.” We are hearing a sound. The sound is the first-hand experience. “A dog barking” is already an abstraction level. The experience has been put into words. The words are not the experience though. The experience is the sound.
Most of us spend the majority of our lives living on the abstraction level of names. Rarely do we actually experience what is happening. This virtual reality of thoughts is accepted as a substitute for the experience.
It’s as if you had a flat tire and were waiting at the roadside for help. AAA comes and the mechanic says, “I can help you; I have a spare tire of your size.” You’re so happy! And then he hands you a sheet of paper with the words “A spare tire of your size” printed on it and an image underneath. What a disappointment! Words and a picture on a page won’t fix your tire. You need an actual tire which the mechanic can touch and mount to your car.
The words are never the experience. Mental images aren’t the actual experience either. You can dream of your last holiday at the beautiful beach, walking into the warm, crystal-clear water, and feeling the gentle breeze on your skin. Yet, you are still sitting at your desk, dreaming of your holiday.

**Awakening can never be found in the abstract world of words and mental images. Awakening is found in the experience that is happening NOW.**

I suggest that you begin with finding out what the actual experience is. Take five minutes for each experience. You don’t have to do them all in a day or even two. Play with the experience as long as it takes, maybe one experience a day. Enjoy! It feels good!

**Hearing**

Listen to the sound that is called
- A car passing
- Cutting a vegetable
- Your favorite music
- The computer fan
Do you notice how much more immediate the sounds become when they are experienced as a sound, not as the concept of “a car passing?”

**Touch**

Then move to touch.
How do you know that you’re sitting when it comes to touch? There is a pressure on your behind, the soles of your feet and your back if you’re leaning against a backrest.
Feel the touch. This is the first-hand experience of sitting.
Also, feel the touch sensations in many other situations.
- How does “warm water” feel?
- Walking?
- Lying down?
- Touching somebody?
- Touching your pet?
- Typing on the keyboard?

**Smell**

Play with smell.
- What is the raw experience of smelling coffee?
- A flower?
- Cigarette smoke?
- Poop?
**Taste**
The experience of taste will also feel different when you just pay attention to the taste itself.
- What is the taste of toothpaste like?
- The taste of something spicy?
- Which experience is described by the name “sweet?”
- Or “salty?”

**Sight**

Turn to sight. Usually, names are most quickly added to what is seen, so it will naturally be a bit more difficult to tune into the actual experience of what is seen. It is alright that you still know “this is a tree, a car, a lantern pole” and what it’s for. You will always know that. Explore the visual impression of the object, maybe as if you were looking at a painting.
Take a fork out of the kitchen drawer.
Explore it, the lines, the gaps, the shadow it casts. This is just the seen.
- Walk through your town or village like a tourist who has never been here before and take in what is seen.
- Look at one of your shoes. What is the visual impression of a shoe? Try to paint it.
- Do the same with your bookshelf, the curtains, a tree, a table, and a chair.
You don’t need to strain yourself. Tuning into the sensory experience feels relaxing and enlivening.

**Thoughts**

Now, notice your thoughts. Thoughts are a very interesting phenomenon. It is clear that thoughts arise. The names which we give objects arise as thoughts.
Turn your head slowly from right to left and watch the colors and shapes passing by. When are the objects getting their name? Before, during, or after seeing them?
The content of thoughts is never a sensory experience. The images we think of are an imagination. The sensory experience comes through the senses.

**Thinking**

Thinking will slip in easily while you’re trying to explore your experience.
Simply turn to what is actually experienced and let the thoughts move into the background. It is like meeting a friend in a jazz club. When you focus on the music, you won’t be able to understand very well what your friend is saying. You would need to focus on your friend. Then, the music will be more in the background and you can hear what your friend is talking about.

**The Next Step: Looking for the Me**

You are looking into your actual experience for whether there is indeed a ‘me’ which thinks, decides, acts, controls, and experiences. Is there an agent, a controller, a homunculus of you inside, looking out of your eyes and hearing with your ears?

**Sound**

It is easiest to start with sound.
Listen to the sounds that can be heard without actively reaching out for them.
The labels will be added, “a child calling”, “a truck passing”. Which sound is labeled that way, what is actually heard?
Where is the sound, outside or inside?
Outside or inside of what?
Notice the thoughts as they are arising.
Where do they come from, where do they go to?
Can you predict the next thought, and if you don’t like it, stop it from arising?
Think of a number between 1 and 49.
Did you know the number before it was there?
Is there a thinker?
Again, only refer to what is actually experienced.

**Decisions**

What is it that makes decisions, simple ones, like the decision what to wear (okay, this may not be so simple), or what to have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?
Is there a decider?
Watch what is happening in your first-hand experience, while the decisions are made.
When something more complex needs to be decided, for example, whether and how to do a project, look for the “decision point,” the exact moment when a decision is made. Which parties are involved in making the decision?
Can the decision point be found?

**Control**

The question of who is in control can be a big one. Many people are very afraid that their life might spiral out of control when the ‘me’ that seems to control everything falls away.
Do not worry!
There never was a me. You’re not losing anything that was really there. You are only losing a wrong idea about something, just like seeing that Santa doesn’t exist. Control will still be there just as it is now - there is only nobody in control. This will certainly sound like a Koan before seeing it.
Find out where in you is the “control room.”
Where is the place where everything is monitored?
What is it that adjusts decisions and actions when something is not going well?
Again, only take as a result what can be found in the actual experience.
Look at a big decision in your life, for example, whom you married and which professional career you went on.
Did you decide to meet your partner? Did you decide to feel attracted to them? Did you choose to continue to get to know them more closely? Did you decide to fall in love with them?
Was it your decision to receive information about the career you pursued and to find it interesting, you pick the talents for it so you can do it well?

**Responsibility and Free Will**

What about responsibility and free will?
What are they and which entity executes them?

**Looking for the ‘Me’**

When I would ask you to point at the window, you’d point at the window in your room.
Now, point at the ‘I.’
Where are you pointing?
Usually, the sense of ‘I’ or ‘ME’ is located behind the eyes or in the upper chest or heart area.
How do you know that the ‘I’ is there?
Which sensations can be experienced and how far do they spread?
Explore the sensations.
Where in them is the information that this is the ‘I?’
Try to find the ‘I’ wherever the sense of it arises.
Can it be found?

**Acting**

Hold one hand in front of you, palm facing up. Then turn the palm down. And up again. Keep turning the hand.
Watch like a hawk.
What is it that is turning the hand?

**“I Am the Awareness in Which Everything Arises”**

You might have heard this phrase and maybe you hold it to be true. In this inquiry, we are looking for proof. Is it true or not?
You will need to question even your most cherished beliefs.
Start with finding ‘awareness.’ This word is used in all kinds of context. But which experience is it the name for?
Everything that cannot be directly experienced is a concept, an idea. It is only a word not referring to anything.
Sometimes, experiences we normally have get a name that sounds more spiritual. For example, you might be experiencing silence or quietude. Nothing much is happening and it feels good. Some people call this “awareness.”
Or you might have phases in which you’re deeply immersed in what you’re doing. You’re “in the flow.” Do you call that “awareness” or maybe “presence?”
Explore the actual experience, leaving all names behind. Which sensations are present, or is it just silence?
Where in this do you find the ‘I?’

**Do Not Jump to Early Conclusions**

I already wrote that there is no ‘me.’ You could now believe that this is true, and since you can’t find the ‘I,’ you conclude there is none.
This is the first step.
The next step is to see it for yourself. Only when it is seen in a first-hand insight that there is no ‘me,’ the sense of ‘me’ can no longer be produced.
You will know when the insight happened. There will be no doubt. It will be one hundred percent clear that there is no ‘ME’ and never was. This and all other fetters except for the 9th fall away with a shift, a noticeable change of perspective. It might be much subtler than the shift I experienced; everybody experiences it differently. In the shift, the truth is seen.
Keep going until a shift happens. Should you have any difficulties, maybe consider asking for the help of a volunteer guide on www.liberationunleashed.com. This platform is specialized on helping you with the first step to awakening and offers guiding in different languages.

**The First Three Fetters Fall Together**

When it becomes clear that there is no ‘ME,’ the next two fetters fall with it: doubt (#2) and the clinging to rites and rituals (#3).
It will be clear beyond doubt that there is no ‘me’ and if you’re a Buddhist, you’ll now know from your own experience that what the Buddha said is true.
Rites and rituals will lose any meaning. They are seen for what they are: empty words and actions to which some meaning is attributed.