Excerpted from a 2006 Palo Alto meeting. Adyashanti uses the image of an onion to describe self-inquiry: each examined layer of identification is found not to be one's true nature, leaving an empty center as the residue of the search.
Transcript
So this might seem elementary or philosophical or hopelessly abstract until you start to look subjectively at yourself. At this supposed person that you are and you really start to look and you say "Well where is it?" Where is this me that I apparently am? Where is this person that everything seemingly um applies to? Where is it? And of course, when you go in search of yourself all you find are the elements of yourself correct? I'm doing it fast because I can't lead everyone through and most of you who've been here before, I hope you've done this on your own at least a few hundred times. Or one time really well is all it takes, actually. But when you look into yourself, all you'll find is the building blocks. You'll find a thought here and you'll find there's no self in the thought, it's just a thought. You'll find a feeling, there's no self in the feeling, it's just a feeling. You'll find a foot, there's no self in the foot. You'll find a belief, there's no self in the belief, it's just a belief. On and on, you'll find a memory. If you go, "Where is the self in the memory? Where is the me in it? Where is it?" You'll just find a memory, you'll find no self. And you'll keep looking for yourself. That's basically what spirituality is, right? It's a it's like a hunting expedition. You are hunting for yourself for your true nature. And the more you hunt and the more simple you get and the more single-minded you get and the more determined you get to find the very nature of self and the more you look inside and look inside and look inside all you'll find are these various building blocks. Thought here, feeling there, memory here, twitch in your toe there judgment there, blame there, shame there, happiness, sadness, da da da. All these things just floating randomly around in your experience. As you search for who you are, who the experiencer is you keep coming up quite empty-handed. Empty-handed over and over and over. But of course, for most people, you can't believe this. Even when you see it for yourself, you go, "This can't be actually true." So you keep looking and you keep looking and you keep looking and you keep looking and you keep coming up empty-handed right? And of course, the nature of yourself is empty. Disassemble all the parts and there's nothing there. Does that make sense? It's like peeling the onion peeling the layers on an onion looking for the onion. What's an onion? Well, let me peel the layers and find out the onion, the onion inside of the onion that's inside of the onion, the core of the onion, the essence of the onion. How much more romantic can I make it, right? The divine substanceless substance of the onion. And you start to tear the the the layers away just like you look beyond the layers of yourself, right? This layer and then that layer and then that layer. And when you get down to the final layer and you're ready to un cover the final layer of the onion and you take the un the final layer up and you're ready to find the essence of the onion you realize it was only layers. That's all it was. You unlayer it, there's nothing there. There was nothing but layers. Layer after layer after layer after layer after layer. Look under all the layers nothing. You're sitting there with layers of onion at your feet and absolutely nothing left in your hands. When you look into the nature of yourself or anything for that matter, but starting with yourself you start to see that everything you thought you were was just a thing. You thought you were a thought. You thought you were a feeling. You thought you were a memory. You thought you were an idea. You thought you were a whole bunch of things. You thought you were good or bad or smart or stupid or tall or small or and everything you look at, you keep recognizing everything you think you are is just an object that you are perceiving. That's all it is. It's something you are looking at. And then you start to ask yourself, "Well then if everything I think I am is just something I'm looking at well then who's doing the looking?" And then you look at who's doing the looking and there's nobody there. There's just the looking. That's all there is. There's just looking, there's no looker. There is just awareness, there is just consciousness, there is no little entity in there who you can call you. That's why we call it liberation because what you're liberated from is your false idea about yourself.