This exercise is for Stage 4 of the Odoki Method.
If we can recognise that, for example, a car does not exist aside from its parts, then the car is a concept. That concept is extremely useful (try driving a car without the concept that it is a car!!), but it is still, a concept.
So, we want to explore the same thing, experientially, regarding the self.
If we can accept that the self is an aggregating feature - an amalgamation of the various components of our experience, this is progress, but we need our felt-sense to believe it.
This exercise is designed to help our felt sense come on-board:
- Close our eyes
- Identify in experience all the sensory components that make up experience
- We can check: are they mine? Great if they are
- Now, if we have more than one thing that is mine, they can’t each be me, or there’d be more than one of me.
- So we ask, “Can we find this concept of ‘me’ in sensory experience?”
- And we keep looking. And looking, until we get a simple, straightforward “no” from our felt-sense.