In the Hall of Mirrors, all there is is light, shining down an infinite cascade of reflections before refracting into a faded obfuscation.

In the eyes, all there is to see is sight. In the mind, all there is to know is conception. In the body, all that is felt is feeling itself. In the nose, all there is to smell is the scent itself. In the ears, all that is heard is sound itself.

In consciousness, there is only experience itself.

Where the I is, Self is not. Where Self is, I is not.

The self is empty, good for nothing. It must be so. In order to observe something, there must be a blankness for something to appear.

It is the invisible which makes all else visible.

It is not this I, because this “I” is a static description, a snapshot for reference, a point in time and space, defined by its context.

The self does nothing. It is not the witness, nor is it the things that appear, nor is it the one that proclaims “I am.” Nor is it the one who asks “Who am I,” nor the one that states “This is what I am.”

It is not the one shining attention or focus, widening it or sharpening it, dividing it or consolidating it.

It is the capacity for the seer and the seen, and it is empty of this “I” so that the “I” may appear at all. It is the capacity for even blankness itself to appear.

When thoughts are tied with feelings, and feelings with thoughts, they create the picture of “I,” like threads weaving together in a tapestry, knitting its appearance.

When each thread is separated into its own shape, the woven picture no longer appears.

Yet the strings by themselves seem uninteresting. A dull mind finds them dull; a curious mind follows each thread and finds richness in the unraveling.

Following each thread, one finds it unbinds not just the “I,” but that the threads come from a much larger tapestry that seems to endlessly unravel as you follow them.

Ignorance arises unendingly, yet it never began. It weaves the infinite threads of the narrative, of appearance, of separation. We have done it all our lives. Everyone we know does it, or at least we think so. If we pull it apart, it all seems like it will break and disappear, and the work will be gone forever that was making the tapestry.

This is a trick: the threads are not seen as they are, because they are all the same string, with no ends, because it is a circle when unraveled.

When it finally becomes unraveled, you see that death and birth are the same; that nothing new is born and nothing old has died. There is no start. There is no stop. There is no first. There is no last. There was no one born, no one dead. There is no one other.