What happens when the appearance that seems to construct our sense of self, our sense of the one who EXPERIENCES experience…just stops?
A (previously) live interactive exploration of what’s left when YOU leave (listen to find out what the hell that means 😂). This episode of The ZDoggMD Show was recorded in front of a live studio audience…on Facebook. Which is always a little bit of magic 🪄
And here’s a AI summary of the whole video if reading is your thing!
The Absolute Free Fall of THIS
A reflection on the dissolution of self and the nature of experience
What is Free Fall?
Free fall is perhaps the most accurate metaphor I can offer for what happens when the constructed sense of “me” temporarily or permanently relaxes. It’s not awakening—there’s no one there to awaken. It’s not enlightenment—there’s no one there to become enlightened. It’s simply the falling away of the center that we believe ourselves to be, leaving only pure, centerless experience.
Imagine an infant born into the world with no sense of self—just pure thisness, where every moment is refreshed, brand new. Some of us remember glimpses of this from early childhood, before the sense of self became such a convincing illusion that it colored everything we experienced. This is the human condition before the human condition really takes hold: centerless wonder with no one having it, no separation from it.
The Mind’s Compulsive Story-Making
The mind creates elaborate narratives about this free fall. It constructs time, space, history, and most convincingly, an identity called “me” that supposedly owns all these experiences. But what happens when that apparent identity simply stops? Like leaving a room—when you’re gone, the room is no longer there for you. When the “me” relaxes or disappears, there’s just this, without anyone experiencing it.
What’s experiencing it then? Nothing. It’s self-experiencing, though even that description is the mind making something out of nothing, which is what mind does—it makes things out of no-things.
Flow States and the Dropping of Self
We catch glimpses of this in flow states, when we’re so absorbed in an activity that the sense of “I’m doing this” drops away, and there’s just the doing. No doer, just pure activity. This is why it’s called flow—it just flows without a center directing it.
The sense of “me” spends enormous amounts of energetic time creating and maintaining itself. It can only exist in time because “me” happens in time—I have a past, I’ll have a future, I was born, I will die. But when that constructed self relaxes, time stops. When you stop, time stops.
The Spirituality Trap
Much of what passes for spiritual teaching is actually a story told from the perspective of this illusory “me.” Teachers speak of awakening, liberation, freedom, bliss—but all of this is the “me” trying to make sense of something that cannot be made sense of. There is no awakening because there’s no one to awaken. There is no freedom because there’s no one to be free.
When spiritual teachers use concepts like “aware space” or “ground of being,” they’re creating more stories for the seeking mind to chase. These become new objects of spiritual seeking, perpetuating the very illusion they claim to dissolve. The seeker seeks the aware space, seeks the ground of being—but the very act of seeking is the mechanism that maintains the illusion of separation.
The Great Defeat
For this particular body-mind, clarity came through what I call “the great defeat.” No matter what was accomplished—successful career, recognition, family, meaning-making projects—there remained a deep, persistent dissatisfaction. The seeking mind constantly wanted the next thing, always trying to finally feel whole and permanently happy.
The defeat came through recognizing that this seeking mechanism would never get what it wanted. Through sitting still, through watching the mind and emotions, through seeing how past conditioning shapes everything, it became clear that we’re essentially sophisticated robots acting out programming. The mind is part of that algorithmic mechanism, constantly trying to solve problems it creates.
When this was fully seen, the seeking stopped—even if just for a glimpse. And what was revealed couldn’t be unseen: this perfect, eternal, timeless expression without anyone there to experience it. The great defeat of the seeking self was the greatest victory for the falling away of the illusion that was always creating the very problem it was trying to solve.
Beyond Free Will and Determinism
Even philosophical questions about free will and determinism fall away in this recognition. When causality, time, and space are seen as mental constructions, the entire framework for such questions dissolves. There’s nobody making decisions because there’s nobody. There’s just life, and it’s a total mystery that can’t be grasped because there’s nothing there to grasp it.
The Natural Mellowing of Age
Interestingly, age seems to naturally exhaust the seeking energy. People often report increased happiness after 60—whether because they’ve “got their shit sorted” or simply gave up trying so hard. Life beats the “me” energy out of you after a while. You try all the things that are supposed to make you happy and realize they don’t work permanently. What does work? Sitting right here and chilling out.
The sense of self is like Jupiter’s Great Red Spot—a massive, persistent storm made up of various weather patterns, conditioning, and responses to different types of turbulence. Most people live their entire lives as that storm, never having it relax enough to see the blue sky underneath. But sometimes it can relax, and then there’s the obvious expression that you were never separate, never a “you” at all—just life living, birds birding, trees treeing.
The Impossibility of Description
Using words to point to this is a losing game. You can’t use words to describe what isn’t a thing, what has no center, no direction, no meaning. It’s like trying to describe color to someone who’s never seen. Every word creates separation, makes something out of nothing.
And yet, sometimes hearing something said in a particular way can cause something to apparently drop, even for a moment. There’s no purpose or point to these attempts at description, and most people will be confused or misinterpret—and that’s perfectly fine too, because confusion is also this perfect expression.
The Perfection of What Is
When the “me” that would be okay or not okay relaxes, there’s just this—and it’s all perfect because it’s exactly what it is. You can’t be more okay than the perfection of everything exactly as it appears. Even the sense of self, when it returns, is perfect as another appearance in this centerless display.
Nothing matters, and yet paradoxically, if you’re constantly afraid, suffering, worried about past and future, this recognition can reveal what’s always been here: radiant, eternal thisness. Not that anyone sees it—there’s just seeing. And then the next thing that arises might be a self that wants to own the experience, or annoyance at someone who’s bothering you. It’s all the same radiant appearance, by no one, for no one.
The Cosmic Joke
From this perspective, watching the spiritual “me” desperately seeking its own end becomes almost comical. It’s like a mirage being upset that it’s dying. The cosmic joke is that what we’re seeking was never hidden, never absent. The seeker is the very thing that obscures what it seeks.
There’s no hope for the “me”—abandon hope completely. It cannot will itself out of existence because the very act of willing is the “me.” This is why there’s nothing you can do to make this happen. The doer seeking non-doing is still doing.
Just This
In the end, there are no profound insights, no special states, no attainments. There’s just this eternal free fall—no meaning, no direction, no purpose. Beautiful for no one, freedom for no one. Colors, sounds, sensations, thoughts, confusion, clarity—everything, with nothing excluded.
The obvious response? Silence. And even in speaking, it’s speaking from silence—the free fall continuing to free fall, falling and falling eternally out of time, with nowhere to come from and nowhere to go.
It’s just this. That’s it.
