‘That which you are seeking is causing you to seek.’

‘That which you are seeking is causing you to seek.’

I read that in the writings of Cheri Huber years ago and it has baffled me until now. I believe it means the pursuit of the self actually ‘creates’ the self. The self creates the thought or illusion of the self, the conviction that if there is seeking there is something that will be found. But there is nothing to be found because the self doesn't exist. There’s just futile seeking. Of course the ‘self’ doesn’t ‘create’ itself, really, but it does create the illusion that it exists. It creates a chimera which it pursues, to no avail. What I am seeking doesn’t exist and that’s why I can’t find it. It’s actually merely a figment of my imagination.

Another way of putting this is that the self is dreaming itself. And dreams are not real, as we all know. Usually, we think of there being a dreamer and a dream. The dreamer creates the dream. But it's still a dream. The self creates a self but it still does not exist - it's a dream.

Hamlet’s famous soliloquy ‘To be or not to be…’ presents a false choice. From the point of view of the self being and non-being are issues. But from the point of view of not-self they are not.

I also see the quote, ‘That which you are seeking is causing you to seek’ is equivalent in meaning to “Things are not what they seem, nor are they otherwise.”

To understand ‘Things are not what they seem, nor are they otherwise’ you first have to ask: how do things seem? Well, you can look everywhere (which is what the self constantly does) and you will not find a self anywhere. If I am pursuing something and can’t find it the logical conclusion would be that it’s not there. So, it would seem there is no self. But the phrase says: ‘things are not what they seem’. So if it seems there is not a self and you negate that statement you end up with asserting there is a self. But then you have deal with the rest of the phrase: ‘..nor are they otherwise.’ Which, as I see it, comes down to: first there is not-self, then there is self, then there is not-self.