The Split in The Mind

there's a split between the inner and the outer of our of our being and it's in i find it's an interesting thing to actually think about i mean these things are not as i said they're not intellectual things to think about they're actually things you have to grapple with you have to sort of force yourself to think about them a little to work with them to begin to actually potentially experience something that's very different than what you normally experience but i want you to think a little bit about this whole mind world inner outer division which to just about anybody you would talk to it would seem as obvious as the fact that the sum comes up every day that there's an inner and outer i mean if you think about your own experience now you actually can do it you look around the room and this is definitely obviously outer you know this is outer my hands are out you know they are out you can touch things they are definitely on the outside that's why you can touch you see that's outside and then you think now if you take your attention now this is actually even interesting to consider how do we know how to do this you take your attention and you point it at some mysterious inside and you can see i can see oh i can see i'm nervous i can see i'm excited you know you can see quote unquote your inside emotional experience i can see the thoughts where does that inside actually exist it's not inside your head i mean you could take a human body and you could cut it all up into little pieces you'd never find this inside it doesn't exist in there it's not inside the body you know and and you know but we're very identified with the body so if you look at the way you experience yourself you tend to experience the outside as outside the body and the inside as inside the body but have you ever seen a body that's opened up it's all outside in there you open it up it's all outside you take if you take things out they're still outside there's no way to get to the inside in there it's just a different variation of outside you see because because the outside is not it's not here you know it's not it's more uh i mean the only way that i can you know the way that i most feel like i can grasp it is it's actually a different dimension and and if you really think about your experience and you this is another pointing out exercise it doesn't work with glasses but unfortunately a lot of pointing out exercises don't work with glasses because they're on the outside and they give it away but if you just stand so now i can't see my own body so if you look forward you can't see your own body you just see what's in front of you and you keep looking that way and you can begin to get a sense of the fact that you're almost like a plane and on one side of the plane is the quote-unquote outside and on the on the other side of the plane is the inside and you are the dividing line between the outside and the inside and as you move around the dividing line moves around it's that separates what's outside of you versus what's inside of you you see and this is an example this is another one of these pointing out exercises that see we don't actually contemplate the nature of our perception of reality that deeply we sort of accept it we just there's a lot of things about the way we perceive the world that we just accept as the way it is because we haven't thought about it that deeply but when you start thinking about these things every single thing that i bring up to you if you take it seriously and you begin to feel oh that's right what is what it's all gonna you'll want you'll see it all leads to the same place which is a question which is the question who am i that's what these things all lead to in the end they all lead to the same question which is who am i really because when you start to when and when that question starts to arise in a legitimate way then you start to you start to realize well i actually don't i mean beyond superficial definitions of who i am i don't necessarily know i mean you know and who am i is a little it's actually in our culture it's a little bit i'm not sure it's the most useful way to ask the question because who am i is this kind of something that we have a lot of ideas about already to me it's almost better to ask what am i what actually am i you know because that already kind of knocks you a little bit off balance because because who already implies a person and it's just what's the identity of that person is kind of the thing you want to attach to it but if you say what am i you're leaving the field wide open because you're not really sure and then you start getting into this kind of thing and you well what separates me from you because there is a separation but what it's not the body that's not the thing that separates there's more to it than that