Ever-changing Me

The second challenge in the Documented Life Project is a ‘selfie’.  I had to read further to discover what indeed a ‘selfie’ is, and it turns out it is a self portrait – which is only one syllable longer to say . . .

I enjoyed making this.  It ranges from a baby picture to now.

There is a bardo practice where you go into retreat with lots of photographs of yourself.  Starting with the earliest, you look at the photograph and try to return to being the person in that image.  Discovering the contact and/or lack of contact with the person you were in that photograph can be a powerful experience.  It helps us discover the emptiness of ‘me’.

Realisation depends on finding awareness in the present moment – each and every present moment.  The present moment tends to elude us and practices such as silent sitting can be challenging because they demand presence in the moment.

At first recognising the changing moment—each moment dying, each moment arising—can create a sense of discontinuity: staccato awareness popping into each moment; but eventually this strobe effect can explode into a continuity of present moments.