When Selfing Stops Being a Problem

Not because it’s gone, but because it no longer matters.

There’s a strange thing that happens on this path. Even after deep seeing, after the structure of identity has been exposed, selfing still appears. But not everyone means the same thing when they talk about it.

For some, selfing is the reappearance of ego: narratives of lack, identification with thought, emotional reactivity. For others, it’s the subtlest energetic contraction around experience, like the faintest sense of being someone in relation to something. And then there’s an even more refined layer, where selfing isn't a belief or a feeling, but simply the formation of a center point, a position from which life is seen, responded to, or expressed.

It’s that last layer this writing points to.

Because what becomes obvious, if you're paying attention, is that expression, even a seemingly clean, true, heart-centered expression, often carries the residue of identity.

You speak, and a center forms. You respond, and there’s a sense of a someone responding. You take a position, and suddenly there's something to defend. Even if it’s just a tone, an implication, or a subtle tension in the body.

The most deceptive part is it doesn't feel like ego. There’s no grand story. No strong clinging. Often it feels clear. But in speaking from clarity, a speaker gets subtly reassembled. A small contraction around a view. A quiet impulse to land. A hope that something is conveyed well. A preference for how the expression is received.

And at some point, this becomes deeply uncomfortable. You notice the residue after expression. You see that even the movement to stay quiet can be a performance. You feel the system forming itself again, not in confusion, but in subtle control.

And that leads to friction:

If I speak, I seem to re-form the self.
If I don’t, is that just another stance?
If I try to manage all of it, isn’t that the deepest selfing of all?

So what’s left when all of that is seen?

Not a new position. Not a conclusion. Just a loosening.

A willingness to let the system do what it does, while not being the one doing it. A kind of collapse into the simple fact that selfing, at this level, isn't even a problem. It's just the final flickers of something that has already burned out.

Expression continues. Silence continues. Life continues. But the reference point begins to erode. There's no more posture behind the words. No more tension behind the pauses. And if it appears again, that’s fine too. You let it pass.

This isn’t about getting it right. It’s about seeing clearly that even the cleanest expression can carry a flavor of identity, and that this isn’t something to fix, just something to stop pretending is not happening.

And in that stopping something relaxes.

No speaker. No strategy. No need to purify what doesn’t belong to anyone in the first place. Just this, moving as it does, with or without a name.

Selfing, in the end, doesn’t need to be conquered. It only feels like a problem for as long as it's being resisted, judged, or protected, which only perpetuates the selfing. Once it's seen clearly and left alone, it loses all significance.