Next time you are sitting in a room with friends, notice what is happening. Legs are moving—crossing and uncrossing. Arms are moving to pick up a cup, to adjust the position in a chair, to tap a friend on the knee. Heads are turning sideways to speak to others or looking down to the floor in contemplation. Smiles are happening. Frowns are happening. Standing is happening. Sitting is happening. Thoughts are arising. Emotions are arising. When you notice a leg move, ask the person whether she moved the leg. Was she conscious of the leg moving when it happened? When a head turns, ask the person whether she turned her head consciously or whether it just happened. When you notice some part of your body moving, notice whether you consciously brought that movement about. Even if there was a decision to move an arm, did you bring the decision about? Before the thought arose, “I’m going to move my arm,” were you consciously planning to move your arm? Didn’t the thought, “I’m going to move my arm,” spontaneously and involuntarily arise?
Isn’t it true in your direct experience that everything is just happening spontaneously and involuntarily? When life is fully living itself through you in this moment, without the false idea that you are in control, it is realized that you are not pumping blood through your body, beating your heart, digesting food, moving arms and legs, turning the head, or breathing air.
You are also not ‘doing’ thinking or ‘doing’ emotions, are you? Thoughts and emotions are also arising spontaneously and involuntarily. When the word “spontaneously” is used in this book, it means “out of nowhere, all of a sudden.” When the word “involuntarily” is used, it means “beyond your control” and “in a way that you cannot predict until the thought, emotion, action or other thing is already happening.”
Are you the doer of action? Are you a person who is in control of life and who can bring about a future? Within the mental story of time called “self,” there is the belief that you are your past and that you are moving through time and becoming something better or worse in the future. As a result of that story, you believe you are in control, that you have taken action in the past that led you to this moment and that you will take action now and in the future to bring about some later moment, event, relationship, happiness, awakening, job promotion or something else in the horizon. Thought references back in time and claims, “I did this” or “I failed to do that.” Thought references forward into future and claims, “I am going to do this” or “I won’t be able to become that.” Thought is telling a story of a self that is in control of life. Is this story absolutely true?
Do you see that past and future are merely thoughts arising spontaneously and involuntarily now in an empty awareness within the body and mind? The self you take yourself to be is nothing more than a thought stream. Where is the self beyond thought? In looking for it, you cannot find it. All you will find are thoughts arising spontaneously and involuntarily and the awareness in which they arise and fall. You cannot even find a definable entity that is looking. No matter how you try to define yourself—whether it’s as a “human being,” “Joe Smith,” or “spiritual being”—the words are merely thoughts, little images temporarily arising and falling in awareness. To even use the word “you” is false. It makes it appear that there is a solid entity there that is looking or being. In looking inward, all that is found is awareness and the word “you” arising and falling in that awareness. So where are you? Who are you? What are you? If you answer with thought, that thought is simply another image arising and falling in awareness. Even if you say that you are that awareness, the word “awareness” is arising and falling in the actual awareness to which the word points.
If there is a “you,” it cannot be a concept. If you believe you are some concept, you are admitting that you come and go in the blink of an eye. Concepts come and go. They are thought forms and all forms are fleeting. You are a fleeting concept? Is that true? Don’t answer. Just look.
In response to what is being said here, there may be a tendency to say, “I’m the one who is bringing about these thoughts.” The mind is trying desperately to be in control. That is its game. There is nothing wrong with that game. That is what the mind does. It plays in the illusion of control. But is it true that there is a separate you that is ‘doing’ the thinking? Isn’t that just another story? Watch the mind for five seconds as you would watch a mouse hole, waiting for a mouse to run out. As you watch the mind, can you know what thought is going to pop up before it actually pops up? If you cannot know what thought is going to pop up next, how can you claim to be ‘doing’ the thinking? When you look in this way, you see that thought simply arises spontaneously and involuntarily. You cannot know what particular thought is going to arise until it has already arisen. Thought arises suddenly, sometimes in response to another thought or to something that is seen or heard or encountered. You don’t think. Thinking happens. Don’t believe a word that is being said here. Just look. If it is true that you are not bringing about thoughts, is it true that you are in control of life? Is it true that there is a separate “you” that can bring about happiness, love, or spiritual enlightenment?
Are you ‘doing’ emotions? Emotions spontaneously and involuntarily arise in this moment out of nowhere also, don’t they? Anger arises before there is a conscious awareness that it is there. Great joy, total despair, and paralyzing fear all happen spontaneously and involuntarily. Please do not believe what this book is saying. See for yourself. When your attention is in your inner body, can you know what emotion is going to pop up next? If you cannot know what emotion is going to pop up, how can you claim to be ‘doing’ emotions? How can you claim to be able to employ some method to change your emotional makeup or to “feel better.”
From within this thought-based dream of self, there appears to be control. The doer believes he is choosing to act and therefore controlling outcomes. When liberation is realized, the self is seen to be illusion. Control is seen to be illusion. In liberation, there is no way to know what is going to happen next. That is why it is liberating.
Isn’t even the idea of “you”—the story of the doer—just part of that conditioning? You do not even have control of that idea, do you? “You” are just another idea spontaneously and involuntarily arising now. When the mind stops referencing a “self” in past and future, awakening happens. It is realized that Oneness, God, or whatever you like to call this inexpressible truth, is living life through your body and mind. Only thought creates the story that you are the doer of action. That story references past and future in some attempt to take credit for actions over which the story has no control. In the moment the belief arises that you are in control, there is ignorance. Isn’t the entire notion of a self only a belief? It may be a deeply-held belief, but if it is nothing more than a belief, than it must not be absolutely true. Belief, by its very nature, is something less than absolute truth. If spirituality is not about what is absolutely true, it’s about fairy tales. You might as well believe in Santa Claus.
If “you” are merely a belief, is this “you” the doer of action? Notice this idea of “you” is not doing the laundry, going to work, playing with your children, thinking or feeling. All of that arises spontaneously and involuntarily in this moment out of nowhere. When you are about to extend your arm into the washing machine to grab clothes, do you say to yourself, “I, Joe Smith, am going to extend my arm now into the washing machine to grab these clothes?” Do you give a conscious command to your arm? Of course you do not. That would be silly. Reaching the arm into the washing machine simply happens spontaneously and involuntarily. Even the thought, “I am going to grab these clothes,” that arises before you extend your arm arises spontaneously and involuntarily out of nowhere, does it not?
It appears that you have choice, right? The apparent choice is that you can either grab the clothes or not. But look to see whether even the experience of choice arises spontaneously and involuntarily right now. Out of nothing comes an apparent choice between two or more options. Did you bring those options about or did they also just spontaneously and involuntarily arise? An apparent decision is made to pick one or the other option. Did you bring about the decision or did it arise and awareness noticed it after it arose? Within the dream of thought, it appears as if you are bringing about both the options and the choosing of one option over the other. Are you ‘doing’ the choosing and deciding or are the choosing and deciding also arising spontaneously and involuntarily? Do not answer that with thought. Simply look.
The experience of apparent choice happens. Do not deny the experience of apparent choice. See it for what it truly is. Allow that experience to show you the truth. When apparent choice arises, notice how it plays into the story of self that lives in time. The idea is that, “I will choose to do something now in order to bring about some later future event, state, experience, or understanding.” Choice almost always implies future. We choose for a reason, right? We choose because a story of time is operating: “If I choose to do this, then a particular outcome will happen.” That story of time is a story of control. So the illusory story of self dreams up the idea that it can take action now to bring about something later. Cause and effect arise solely from thought. The whole notion that one needs to choose or that one has choice arises from the dream of self, does it not? It arises from the dream of time, which is a dream of mind. When that dream of time is seen to be an illusion, there is only the timeless. Do not argue with what is being said here. Just look. But do not look to achieve some later state of clarity. Do not look to achieve a result later. Simply look at what is arising now. Instead of doing, notice what is already being done. Little choices are being made within the dream of self. Those choices imply a future that is better than what is happening now. Isn’t choosing the same as seeking? The experience of choice is a perfectly valid experience. Do not seek to get rid of choice. Just notice it when it arises. Notice whether you actually bring it about. Allow the experience of choice to wake you up out of the thought-based, time-bound story that you are a person who is in control.
As you are noticing whether thought and emotion happen spontaneously and involuntarily, notice something even more subtle. You are not 'doing' the noticing, are you? Are you ‘doing’ or ‘bringing about’ noticing? Noticing is just happening. The very fact that you are alive means that there is noticing. You have been noticing since you were a baby. There was no story when you were a baby that you were in control of noticing. Noticing was just happening. It is still just happening. When it is realized that you are not the doer of any action including thinking, feeling, noticing, walking, breathing, or any other action, a sense of liberation naturally arises.
So the question arises along the search for enlightenment, “If I am not the doer of action, is there nothing I can do to realize enlightenment?” In some mysterious way, the noticing is a portal to enlightenment. Although it is true that there is nothing “you” can do to find enlightenment because there is no doer, there can be a noticing of what is already being done. A story of self is already being told. This story falsely believes it is in control. The reality is that, beyond that story, life is being done. It is living itself through you with or without your consent. Life is not asking for your effort, resistance, belief systems, philosophies, and stories. It is functioning on a level much deeper and more intelligent than that of any mind-made story of self.
The story of self is made up of thoughts of past, thoughts of future, and thoughts that resist this moment. In this story, thoughts of past shape who you believe you are and thoughts of future shape who you believe you are going to become. Thoughts that resist this moment include blaming, complaining, comparing, analyzing, labeling, categorizing and judging. It is falsely believed that you took action in the past and will take action in the future. This is the thought-based illusory “me.” To effort to try to get rid of these thoughts or to destroy the “mind-made” me is itself just more ignorance and delusion. It is the “me” falsely believing that it has control and that it can somehow exercise control over life to bring about a spiritual awakening. Enlightenment is realized only when the doer—the story of self—is seen to be a dream spontaneously and involuntarily arising out of nothing. It is realized when control itself is seen to be illusory.
This question, “Are you the doer?” is not an invitation to think philosophically. It is not really a philosophical question. It is an invitation to look. It is an experiential seeing in this moment. I am not asking you to take a position either for or against what is being said here. I am inviting you to look in this moment at what is actually arising and to see whether you—the thought-based, time-bound story you take yourself to be—are doing anything or whether life is simply being done. As you read these words, are you arguing with what is being said? If so, didn’t the thought that is arguing with this book spontaneously and involuntarily arise out of nowhere also? You did not bring it about, did you? It just popped into your head. Philosophical conclusions merely pop into the head also. You do not know what argument or conclusion is going to pop into your head until it is already there. Isn’t that true? Aren’t arguments and philosophies just conditioning—ideas to which there is attachment? Aren’t all ideas merely conditioning that spontaneously and involuntarily arises beyond your control? If so, are these ideas yours? If you cannot control whether they arise or not, do these ideas really belong to you?
The question, “Are you the doer of any action?,” cannot truly be answered through thought. Thought will merely pick one of the dualistic opposite answers and say, “I am not the doer,” or “I am the doer.” It then likes to create a philosophy out of its findings and write books and create websites to tell the others about its brilliant findings and conclusions. Do not read this book as if you are reading about some philosophy regarding free will or choice. Do not believe a word that is said here. This book is an invitation to see whether you are the doer of any action.
This question, “Are you the doer?” is an experiential question. In the vibrancy and aliveness of this very moment, I mean right now only, it is revealed that you are not the doer. That is not some rigid new belief system for you to identify with. If there is an attachment to some philosophical conclusion that “there is no doer” you have created a new version of yourself. The self is nothing more than a belief system, a fixed idea. It is holding onto dualistic, conceptual knowledge in some attempt to create a “me” where there isn’t one. So attachment to any ideas in this book, or to any other spiritual ideas, is actually ignorance. It is attachment to thought without the seeing that even the philosophical conclusion or belief is a result of mere conditioning arising spontaneously and involuntarily.
This is why thought cannot truly answer the question, “Are you the doer?” The very question and answer arises spontaneously out of nowhere. They simply pop in and out of your head. In other words, the revelation that you are not the doer is not anything that thought can grasp because the very thought that would try to grasp it is also arising spontaneously right now. Thought merely philosophizes about whether you are the doer. This is why these words may appear to be presenting a philosophy, when in fact they are merely an invitation to see the possibility of waking up from the dream that you are the doer of action. This is an invitation to wake up from the dream that you are a philosophy including the idea that “there is no doer.” You are much more than a philosophy or set of ideas, no matter how spiritual the ideas are. Spiritual liberation is not about finding a grand new philosophy to end all philosophies. That would just be another conclusion arising now—conditioning reappearing. Liberation cannot truly be put into words but it can be pointed to by saying that, in liberation, there is nothing to hold onto. There is nowhere to land. No conclusion is the truth. Yet all conclusions are relatively true. Once that is seen fully, all attachment dies. All fixed ideas are released. The idea of a separate self is gone.
When a shift happens from the personal will trying to “do” things to a noticing of what is already being done, a possibility for true spiritual liberation arises. When there is a seeing that this whole movement of self is a dream of thought, including all the ways it is grasping for control by maintaining a false sense of separateness, replaying the past and attaching to conclusions about past insights, resisting what is in this moment, and searching for future release or happiness, there is a natural relaxation that happens. No person is doing the relaxation. No person could ever completely relax. You are not the doer of spiritual awakening. Awakening is like an act of grace revealed when the dream of self is seen to be an illusion.
Liberation is a completely natural way of being, totally untouched by the belief that you either are or are not the doer of action. Whether you believe you are the doer of action or not doesn’t matter. “No doer” is a pointer, not a belief. It is an invitation to experientially see whether you are doing anything or whether life is simply being done, with or without your consent. This is about the truth as it reveals itself to you freshly in each moment.
Are You the Doer of Any Action?
