A Practical Approach to Separation

A Practical Approach to Separation

One of the things that our teacher has shown us on our journey from multiplicity to unity, is that it is much quicker and easier to recognize and separate from whole ‘groups’ or ‘categories' of ‘I’s than it is to manage each ‘I’ on an individual basis.

We were instructed to observe our imagination (the constant cycling and re-cycling of thoughts in our heads) over time and to begin to organize them into related groups or topics.

Let us say for example that I was able to observe the following ‘I’s over a period of time: concern about my bank account, happiness about the nice job I got at work, irritation with my wife, an unpleasant interaction with my boss, discontent with a sore knee, friction with a co-worker, realization that I have not been to the dentist in a long time, remorse that I was selfish in an interaction with my son, shock at a higher than expected cell phone bill, I haven’t called my brother in while, where will my mother go if something happens to my father, frustration with a difficult job at work, It’s time I got some new boots, I missed my nephew’s birthday, and on and on and on, each new breath bringing a new (or old) ‘I’ with it. What a daunting task for that little part in me that wants to awaken, that needs to separate from all of these ‘I’s. It is a rather chaotic situation.

However, if I examine this small sample of random ‘I’s, I can see that there are really only four topics of imagination here: 1) money, 2) health, 3) family, and 4) work.

It is a fact that we only think about things we are interested in. It is also true that each one of us only has a small handful of topics that we have ‘I’s about. Although we literally have hundreds and hundreds of ‘I’s every day, they are mostly limited to about five to ten general topics.

If we organize our ‘I’s in this way, we begin to bring order to the chaos. We begin to be able to recognize imagination by the topic. We begin to be able to set more practical aims regarding our ‘I’s. One can verify for oneself the great difference in the practicality of an aim to avoid getting lost in thought about money or work over an aim to just avoid getting lost in thought in general.

Try it and see.