Additional Material for Part 3

Some additional material was received and the placed into Part 3 of The Simulate Self - Expanded:

A clear and indisputable sign that our simulate self or someone else’s simulate self is in situ and speaking is when we hear the spoken words “I think.” This directly correlates to Lao Tzu’s declaration —

“He who knows does not speak;
He who speaks does not know.” ⁽¹⁾

The Authentic Self, secure in its knowledge as a direct experience of Original Source, has no needs. It has no need to put experience into words. It rests in the unlimited serenity of this knowing. Thoughts and thinking, authored by the simulate self, are an attempt to simulate the Authentic Self’s experience of Original Source. Thoughts are inventions of the ego-mind. The simulate self can put the thoughts into words, and it can also put words into thoughts. Thinking continuously seeks to interrupt the serenity of the Authentic Self, but because it takes place on the surface of the mind of Authentic Self, it cannot reach the depths. Thinking has no depth capability and so succeeds in only interrupting itself and other simulate selves, like so many troublesome insects flying about our heads. All thinking, then, is disturbing.

The aware Authentic Self can also use the words of the simulate self in entirely different ways, yet it does so with rarity and brevity.It is astonishing when one begins to hear how often the words “I think” issue from the mouth of its body and from other bodies. If one listens well and honestly, then there can be no dispute that the vast majority of us are constantly seeking to interrupt one another with our thoughts, and that serenity is not wanted.

At first we are startled when we begin to hear and acknowledge what is really taking place, which is the first sign of awakening to the presence of Authentic Self. We may struggle to accept that those we admire or love, those who are famous and supposedly wise, knowledgeable and even holy, also say “I think.” We then may drift in and out of the awakening awareness, but it gradually becomes stronger and clearer each time we vow to catch the words “I think,” before it flies out of the mouth. Gradually, then, too, we will become aware of the words’ formation on the mind’s surface. Simply turning a conscious, focused attention on the feeling of the formation is sufficient enough to dissolve it. It is like the sun dispersing the mist on the lake as night becomes day.


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⁽¹⁾ Chapter 56 of The Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tzu (trans. by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English, Vintage Books, 1989).