Insight on self and no self

[OldManCorcoran]

There are lots of analogies about the existence of individual selves within existence.

Many of them are things like, for example, waves in an ocean. In a more mainline view, when you are unconscious or something, it's like a wave temporarily going down under the ocean but being the same wave when it resurfaces.

However, I think this is probably applied by most people to mean their "I" is a wave, and the wave is the essence of them. Because people are sort of disavowing the external world trying to look inwards for an essential component.

In other words, it causes a sort of idea that there is a wave, and the wave is aware of something else around it. So a wave and around that wave is sights and sounds and thoughts which the wave is aware of.

In actual fact, it is not that way at all. The wave isn't your essence or soul, the wave is the entire experience taking place. So rather than being the consciousness around which red appears, the wave exists as the very seeing of red itself. There is never anything "doing" the seeing except from the ocean itself, and rather than the ocean seeing things, it exists as things. So rather than a wave being you, the waves which appear are transient experiences which appear in the ocean and made of the ocean. Rather than a wave consisting of a seeing entity around which are sensory perceptions that entity knows, the seeing of red itself is the wave.

Being knocked unconscious and waking up after some hours is not a wave temporarily going under the ocean and resurfacing. The wave is the very experience happening which is transient in nature, so when you fall asleep tonight, or even as things change around you, it's not a wave self which remains, the wave is the elements which are transient. The only essence of you is the ocean itself and all of these transient experiences happen within it and made of it.

The only difference between your "wave" and my "wave" isn't that there is a different soul in each, but only that there exists two different forms of experience. So perhaps your sight of the landscape around you and the landscape which appears around me. The distinct sights are the wave elements, not any form of self or soul. There is only one soul and it's the ocean only. That's the only thing which is unchanging. None of us have little wave selfs, waves are the very experiences happening. They might consist of thoughts related to ego, but that's it.