How is the self illusion studied?
Seeing through the self illusion is not only an experience in meditation but also in everyday life.
In the inquiry of the self illusion you don’t go “inward”. You search for the self in direct experience. With the five senses.
It is important to relate to direct experience. Not to thoughts, meditative insights, conclusions or assumptions. You want to see the truth directly!
Is there a self that thinks, experiences, chooses, decides, acts?
In the past, I would have answered, “Sure, there is. It’s the self! I think, I decide, I act!”
It is I who am directing my body! I am the decider, the one who says where it goes! The supreme decision center. The pilot.
But then something happened that threw my self off track. I took a closer look.
The self illusion is the first fetter.
The assumption that there is someone who exists independently of everything else. Someone who has a life that they direct, over which they are the decision-maker. A person who thinks, decides and acts. Someone who controls something and is in charge of themselves.
