Nothing Covered
One crucial point when considering the fundamental cause of human suffering is the imaginary division that we make with the help of thoughts. By defining who or what we are by means of mental fabrication, one draws a fictitious boundary between “I” and the world, that is, you and everything other than you.
This extends to the division between “"I” and the “"future I” or “past I,” which suggests we even divide ourselves according the linear timeline that runs through our life. But when self realization is concerned, it is of critical importance that we focus on what is presently happening, rather than on what happened or what will happen. And this holds true when we read classic pointers that point towards what we have to see in order to know ourselves.
One of such pointers is the saying which appears in Luke 12:2, “there is nothing covered, that shall not he revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known.” When we see this, we may well interpret it as there being something covered or hid that awaits being uncovered. This is an example of bringing time to pointers, which may lead us astray in our journey of self realization. We think that time is needed for truth to uncover itself. It isn't . Truth is not of time. If we see this in a truly non-dual way, as those who have come to know themselves do, it should mean that things that seem covered is already uncovered.
This further points to the details of how self inquiry ought to be: inquiries are to be done based on what is happening right now. Right now here means “without any labels put to our sensory experience.” You observe not the narratives sensations bring, but the raw sensations themselves. But as I mentioned earlier, however many labels you peel off, there remains the formidable, sticky label “I,” which goes beyond its significance as a mere word. The atrocity of this sense of there being a subject perceiving the world is that this “sense” is something we’ve grown so accustomed to that it seems so natural and we don’t even care to doubt that. In a nutshell, the moment you perceive things being “over there,” which we more or less do, this sense is activated and makes a division between me and the world.
Then, how do we deal with it? One suggestion, as easy and simple as it may sound, is to keep observing, whatever may happen. Observe, observe, observe … and you forget about observing. That is when you have removed all the labels, including the label “I,” where the observer, observed, and observation are not something separate.