Consciousness is going through the doors of the senses and meeting itself here. The mental process then claims I am the one seeing, doing, etc., saying, t’s my body. This book offers a plan of escape. If your attention left the mental process, if you weren’t so addicted to the idea of being a self, if your attention could entertain, “Possibly I’m not this that I’m so absorbed in and as,” you would see there is no need to get out of self because there was never a self to be in. Sensations of the body are hijacked by the mental process which spins out a story of feelings about you. About what was you and what is going to be you. Then the thoughts reinforce that. Obsessing over self all day. We are saddled with the proscribed way of looking called self-centeredness. Everything is perceived as to how it pertains to me. The thing to do is to turn the light on it to see that all there is, is subject; there is no object called me as a subject. There’s just subjectivity. That’s the truth. Then enlightenment and all these goals become non-goals, because you realize there is nothing to seek. You already know what the game is like when you’re identified as the body. Now you might see how it goes when you’re not. The narration about the journey is the heaviness. You’ll see the solution by the problem’s absence. When that narration is dismissed you realize, “That’s what I was suffering from!”
An invitation—or a series of them, if you count the individual examples (all excellent, many laugh-out-loud funny)—to entertain the notion that the seer is not the seeing, that "I" is something I've trapped myself inside of, and that freedom is as close as letting go of the belief that this body I walk around in is actually me. The message is not new (thank god), but the voice telling it is one I can actually hear and feel. Hallelujah!
"In earlier days I wanted to be Chinese. A Chinese tai chi master. I studied tai chi for a long time. I had this mythical idea of what it would be like to stay above everything. Be a man of the five talents. I was into it. I had a lot of intent. That mythical idea of the sage. My mind was really into that.
Totally bogus, as I think back on it. It was just insane."
Saw Paul talk in Portland and picked up this book. It's essentially a long winded non-sequitur - probably effective and direct getting your internal narrative to silence or something like that. Nothing to intellectualize about really, maybe you'll only know the book the way it's meant to be known if it's the last book on the subject you ever read. It does have a great title.
I commend Mr. Hedderman 's unique and original perspective on our shared human challenges. I would recommend this book to anyone, and look forward to reading more from this gifted author.