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When I meditate – which I'm able to do a bit more formally now, sitting on my bed in cross-legged fashion, back propped against the wall, eyes closed, for a half-hour or so at a time – the experience I have is that of feeling my awareness to be a sort of cave, into which enters that which I suppose might be called the "life-force" (i.e. the "flow of experience"), of which I am one particular manifestation.  This cave is, of course, only a metaphorical description of my experience of my physical brain, the storehouse of my personality.  And as I meditate, it's as if I can feel pinpoints of light flaring up inside the "walls" of my "cave" – i.e. I imaginarily feel what I assume to be electrical charges going off in my brain, bringing into consciousness now a memory, now an analytical thought, now a passive observation, now an emotional response.  Observing these flickerings of consciousness, I feel that I'm observing the various descriptive attributes that make me who and what I am.  Collectively, they are what constitutes what I call my ego.  The "flow of experience," or "life-force," inhabits my ego in the same way that impulses from my nervous system might be said to "inhabit" my hand.  Hence my rather disturbing feeling that my ego is merely the passive recipient of some greater force (consciousness as "the ground-of-all-being") flowing through it.  Although this greater force may manifest itself according to the particular attributes of my ego, I am sometimes left with the feeling that "I" as ego have no control in any fundamental sense over which attributes shall be brought into conscious awareness at any given point in time.

With regard to this, I have recently undergone another experience in which it would seem that life has ordered itself with the specific intention of bringing me a message.  I've recently developed an irritation, a slight inflammation, in the upper lid of my left eye:  it's become puffy, itchy, and has grown very tender to the touch.  I'm fairly certain that I scratched the lid, or perhaps the eyeball itself, while rubbing it (I don't think anything more serious is indicated); but, while I don't doubt that the symptom can be traced to a purely physical cause, I also cannot help but notice that the same sort of symptom has manifested itself more than once in my dreams.  That is to say, I have on more than one occasion dreamt of myself as having a red, infected, or inflamed eye.  Whenever this has happened, it's lent itself to a quite simple interpretation:  my "I" (that is, my sense of self), feels "sore" – i.e. I'm feeling an emotional reaction to some sort of perceived damage to my ego.  Indeed, since it's the left corner of my left eye that is inflamed, I might well interpret the symptom (had I dreamed it) to mean that my "I" is "sore" because it feels somehow "left out," or "left behind."  Such visual punning is a common feature of dreams.  I might further theorize, assuming I'm correct that I scratched my eye while rubbing it with my hand, that it's my recent concentration on the analogy of my ego to a hand, and my concern over the lack of self-volition able to be manifested by that "hand," which has caused my ego to feel "left out" and "sore."

It would be a simple matter, of course, to dismiss this correlation between life and dreams:  as I say, I don't doubt that the inflammation of my eyelid can be traced to a purely physical cause.  But I've had too many examples of life's manifesting itself in a manner analogous to dreaming to dismiss such a possibility as mere wishful thinking on my part, or as being a matter of "projection," of validating some inner concern by forcing a correlation between it and my external reality.  Rather, I believe that there exists some sort of energetic flow between the subjective and objective realms which in some manner actually alters physical reality.  I'm still uncertain as to how this works, or if it's a matter that can be understood through the sort of analysis I've been engaging in here.  Regardless, I can now see that my ego, while it must be described as essentially passive, also must be acknowledged to have an active element.  That is to say, it's not merely energized by the life-force, it also gives shape to it.  Likewise the life-force is not only active, but also passive:  it energizes the ego, but is also shaped by it.  As the ego becomes more fully employed as that which "experiences the experiencing self" – or, to put it more simply, as it recognizes itself to be, primarily and essentially, an experiential entity – its relationship with the surrounding environment, both externally and internally perceived, grows less distorted.  As this relationship grows less distorted, the ego's operational effectiveness in relation to the life-force increases.  The ego operating in accord with the life-force realizes that it is the life-force, and at this point its struggle for self-definition ceases.  Perhaps, along with the lessening of this struggle, the border between the subjective and objective realms also grows more fluid.  I am not certain of this – but the idea strikes me as being distinctly likely.

I have yet one other experience to add.  In my day-to-day existence I frequently feel, as many no doubt do, frustrated by life.  That is, I often feel as if I could accomplish much more than I do now if "life" weren't always putting obstacles in my path.  The other night, for example, I was sitting in front of one of the windows in my apartment smoking a cigarette.  This act (obviously) does not represent an "accomplishment" of any sort; it was just something I wanted to do.  I had been having, as they say, a rather rough time of it that day, and I simply wanted to sit quietly for a few minutes in order to relax and collect my thoughts.  I had the window open so as to let the smoke drift out, but it so happened that there was a wind blowing at the time, and the smoke kept blowing back into my face.  This threw me into an (admittedly childish) state of ill temper.  Why couldn't I be allowed to do even this one simple thing in peace?  Why couldn't the smoke just go out the window?  Was that really so much to ask?  The other window in my apartment is not a comfortable place to sit; I don't like to have cigarette smoke blown in my face; and all I wanted was for this one, small thing to happen:  that the smoke go out the window.  But it simply would not.  Finally, I gathered together all my will, all my "ego," as it were, took a deep inhalation of smoke (I normally do not inhale), and blew it with all my might towards the open window, as if I could by brute force make it do what I wanted.  And what happened?  The wind blew the smoke right back into my face.  It was such a little thing I was asking for, and yet life would not let me have it.  Why?  My irritation suddenly boiled over into rage.  It's absurd to relate, but I actually grew dizzy from the explosion of anger that this minor episode, coming on top of all the other irritations, some large, some small, that I'd been experiencing that day, caused in me.  And then – suddenly, and oh-so briefly – it all changed.  Some realization, some slight shift in my consciousness, some small reorientation in my understanding, occurred.  I don't know how to describe it.  It defies rational explanation.  It was as if, for one split second, my conscious awareness continued unabated while my mind simply . . . was not.  This seemed to occur during the brief pause which, like the pause that occurs between the exhalation of an old breath and the inhalation of a new one, came between the moment I was feeling most consumed by my emotions of frustration and anger and the moment when I let those emotions go.  The only way I can describe this momentary sense of "no-mindedness" is by analogy:  it was like apprehending the blankness, the pure white blankness, of an empty page.  And against this blankness everything else, including the manifestation of my exploding ego, achieved its true measure and found its just orientation.  I know now that this blankness, this "mindless" state of attention, has always existed within me (and indeed, exists within us all), that it is against this blankness that I have always oriented myself, albeit in ignorance.  I also know that, in relation to this blankness, I am not suffering passively in the face of the obstacles of life.  This suffering itself is a mere illusion.  What is not illusion is the truth of that "blank page" of "no-mindedness." To understand this, and to live this understanding, is to live in a state of happiness.  It is also – or it can be, I think – to live as a Warrior; for it is through the realization of this state of "mindless attention" that the Warrior is able to most directly, and with the greatest amount of detachment, experience experiencing.

Having now come to a point of completing, after many days and weeks of examination, this analysis of the nature of experiencing, I find myself wondering what its real worth has been.  When I meditate, or, after meditating, as I make my way through the rest of my day – indeed, as I make my way through all my days – I am constantly asking myself:  "How do I feel now?"  And, "How do I feel now?"  With each step I take along the path, I'm constantly asking:  "How does it feel to be me at this moment, and at this moment, and this?"  This is how I find my path – by constantly examining the experience of my existence, and by reaffirming my existence through the process of this examination.  What else is there, really, but the experiencing self, regardless of the how's and why's of the experience's manifestation?  I do not, of course, wish to deny the relative value of any psychological, philosophical or moral ramifications which result from an examination of the experiential self.  I do wish, however, to assert the primacy of the experiential self – the primacy of experience – above and beyond all other considerations.  And I wish to assert finally that experience, considered in and of itself, is fundamentally amoral in quality.  The how's and the why's of one's experiential existence are constantly changing, constantly evolving as part of the revelatory nature of communication, which itself constitutes the dialectical exchange between the states of enlightenment and unenlightenment of which "I" am part.  But it is only by acknowledging the primacy of experience and the experiential self that a truly useful relationship can be achieved between the self that acts and the self that is acted upon.  In the end, there is nothing but experience.  That is to say, there is nothing but the story of a life; and that story can only be told via the experiential act of its telling, whatever form that telling may take.  When the truth of this is realized, it becomes clear that it's the self-revelatory nature inherent to the act of communicating which gives the ego its active power.