HOW TO STOP BEING A PERSON

- and not fall into the trap of "being a person who has managed to stop being a person" (like some "celebrity nonperson")

The nonperson is natural, he is Nature

Nature is desire without ego

and destruction without evil

But these faculties are associated with "blindness". Nature is innocent because of being "blind", purely ruled by instinctual (in the case of animals) or causal conditions (for socalled "inanimate matter").

To stop being a person is not to become a "beast". Then the dictators and evildoers of human history could serve as our models.

Let's outline the exact opposite path. To stop being a person and at the same time live with increased awareness.

An awareness that is unforced, natural, choiceless, spontaneous, free in every direction

The first thing to do is to learn to love oneself. Love and accept oneself. Love ones eternal and essential nature, the higher self, but also ones weird and complex temporal "person-self". Eventually, with time, the distinction and separation between these two poles of ones being could, optimally, merge into one.

To love oneself is to forget oneself. Then life begins. Until we forget ourselves, we are too much engaged with our fears and hangups. The good and the bad... the rollercoaster will be forever moving. To be attached to ones own name and fame, and the perceived enemies and friends... Sometimes it degenerates to the point that it takes nearly all of ones time and energy.

So the reason to love oneself is to be able to forget oneself. To flow with life and See other people, their beauty and their genuine needs.

Being a person here is meant as "the persona", from latin, "mask". It's our egoself, fully engaged in our external parts. Looks, reputation etc.

Being a person means you cannot really see anything or anyone. To be fully engaged in ones personhood means projecting ones own stuff wherever one is looking.

To stop being a person is to let go of the world. Not the natural world, but the world of stories. The manmade world, the toxic society spun out of generations of wounded egos striving to arrive at the top (of the other egos). These are childrens games, and often hurtful, harming and killing along the way.

To flow with the "good" and the "bad", "success" and "failure", whatever comes, but without neither turning away from it nor being hypnotized by it.

It sounds like the Dao, sometimes called taoism. Many wisdomtraditions touch upon this.

What is called "inferior emotions" makes it hard. Among these the worst may be aversion, which is why love is so important, beginning with unconditional selflove. This is the recipe for peace of mind, freedom from the inner tyrant.

The modern self has become so much like a hungry ghost, it is almost insatiable. This makes mental disease and suffering into huge problems. Whether you live naked alone on the top of a mountain or elegantly dressed in the middle of city life is of minor importance. As long as there is a continuous inner story rolling inside the mind, the ascetic on the top of the mountain is miserable. But without this "narrator" the city man is free, if at the same time living with a heart that is open, soft and an awareness that is lucid, present and without choice.

THE ULTIMATE DREAMSELF

The celebrated person, the one we dream of, being admired, successful, gaining fame and merit and so on, is EXACTLY the same as the one who suffers. One cannot have one without the other. Looking for admiration means hating rejection, and so on...

That is the kind of path where freedom will be out of reach. The less of a person is there, the more the inner gifts can unfold without being disturbed or corrupted.

HOW TO DO IT

One cannot just stop being a person from one day to the other. It takes time, practice. But it is an unpracticed practice and an effortless effort. It is silent maturation. The path is to learn to love, but also see, know and be with the whole of ones personality. Not just the celebrated parts. All of it.

To accept it, but not buy too much into it, all the "cute" or not so cute, maybe painful, stories. Be with them without judgement. Seeing, detached like a wise parent, holding ones own psyche like a mother holding the child.

NOT A GREAT SALESPITCH

To stop being a person will sound Very Unattractive to most people.

But it is just one way of putting it.

In reality, one might very well never stop being a person completely - that is, become fully free...

In any case it is no use making it a goal in and of it self. That could leed to selfdeluded behaviour. Roaming around, careless, but still in a pretense, just fully unconscious about it...

Like a fake holy man, fake guru. This is not good. You need not search too long before you'll find several such examples.

That's why the Path is through virtue

To unbecoming a person, to flower into a non-being being, is possible through lightness.

Lightness comes from harmlessness. Harmlessness is not weakness, it is having removed the source of hatred within. This means having uprooted the inner separation, living in the unified self, the One Self.

This automatically fulfills every virtue: compassion, kindness, selflessness, justice etc

At the same time it works the opposite way. The path of virtue is the force flowering the selfless, unified Self.

It is the kind of virtue that becomes effortless, automatic. It is not for show, planned. It is wu wei - "doing no-doing". Doing without a doer. This sounds very theoretical. But it means being so fully present that there is no separation. This implies no spectator, no little commentator sitting on the shoulder.

It is full awareness without selfawareness

We all know this state, but unconsciously. It is the flow state. It is natural to our animal self, our body.

So, the practice is to fuse this natural, but unconscious state with awareness. The very first stages are of course typically meeting ones inner critic, fear, distraction etc.

But eventually we can have short moments of full lucidity without the common small self, the narrator being present.

🌹

It is a taboo, and even a "dangerous" suggestion to anyone on the early stages of the path towards this. Which includes myself. But let's say it anyway:

It is to become a god.

If one really can travel the path outlined above, timeless and universal, and travel it all the way, there is no lesser word for it.

Becoming one with the divine.

But for the rest of us, all beginners and simple human beings, lets start with practicing union with each Moment, the Here and Now.