Step 1: The First Noble Truth

The closer you look at your experience, the clearer it is that you are regularly not entirely at ease.  You must look closely, however.

If not, you’ll just think, “Well, this is the way things are.” Or you’ll think: “Everyone around me is like this.” Or you’ll think: “I’m generally peaceful or happy.”

None of these three statements is true.

A very keen self-study will reveal agita, worry, concern, ambient anxiety, fluttering anger, moments of aggression, times of hopelessness, and so forth.

Even the words included in the last sentence are “too vague,” “too abstract.” You may just notice a fidgetiness, a restlessness.

In the end, you grasp, experientially, the First Noble Truth.

This is Step 1: an embrace of the First Noble Truth.

Step 2: The Inward Turn

Here is where it gets interesting: the question of suffering turns into the question concerning who is suffering.

Who is worried? Who can’t sit still? Who is fidgety? Who, indeed, is walking, or talking, or not sleeping well, and so on?

What cannot be denied is that suffering is occurring to me.

Three strange words emerge: I, me, and mine. And I don’t know what they mean or to what they refer.

This is Step 2: the inward turn.

Step 3a: The Direct Path At A Glance

A common line of inquiry:

1. First, separate the knowing from the known, the witness from the witnessed. A simple question we’ve already often asked: “Am I aware of this experience?” 
2. Second, investigate the nature of Awareness Itself. It’s–perhaps–eternally present, infinite (spaceless), self-luminous, and peace. Check that this is true.
3. Third, turn back to objective experiences and see (a) whether they arise IN Awareness and (b) what they are ultimately made of. Are they made of Awareness?

As for 3, consider the Sufi line: “Wherever the eye falls, there is the face of God.”

Step 3b: Screen And Image Analogy

How do we “add color” to the discrimination teaching, the teaching that distinguishes (provisionally) the Witness from the witness.

We can appeal to the screen/image analogy:

What you essentially are is like a screen. Any character is just an image appearing on you. You remain as yourself, the screen, when there is a character present and when there isn’t.

Any I-thought, me-feeling, or me-sense is, in fact, just another image temporarily appearing on the screen. The screen that you are always knows this I-thought, me-feeling, or me-sense.

Therefore, it is my object; it is not a problem for me, the screen.

Explore Experientially

Take any I-thought, me-feeling, or pain:

• An I-thought: “I am alone.”
  • Ask: Am I this I-thought, or is this an image appearing to and on me, the screen?
  • See what this is like.
• A me-feeling: “I am very upset with you.”
  • Ask: Am I this me-feeling, or is this an image appearing to and on me, the screen?
  • See what this is like.
• A pain: “My back is really hurting.”
  • Ask: Am I this pain, or is this an image appearing to and on me, the screen?
  • See what this is like.