The Fetters

The word ‘fetter’ means ‘anchor’ or ‘constraint’. It’s the hideen assumption that drives identity.

So in the simplest terms, a fetter is a mental shackle or a psychological bond. It’s not a physical thing. A fetter is a powerful, unconscious pattern of mind that ties you to a limited self-perspective within the closed container of sensory experience.

As such, self-identity always follows the contours of separating the self-idea from the world. From this separation spawns an experiencer and simultaneously what they experience - they both arise together. 

The self belief is a product of the experiencer and the experience, and your inner world is given to you in two parts (subject/object, the knower and the known, or you here, and the world over there).

The strain is in the persistent need to keep these parts separated, (sometimes called suffering) which is simply what fetter inquiry is about: looking specifically into the various layers of straining that seem to tether an experiencer to an experience. One could say the strain is existence itself, or put more liberally: the particular way that human consciousness displays itself.

Therefore, you want to keep it seperated, and are actively encourage to do so by the collective, becouse if you don’t, your story of you will end and you see this as a terrible thing - but it’s absolutely not.

Once one has seen through their identity, (1st, 2nd & 3rd fetter) it becomes clear how much energy went into maintaining that dualistic strain. As a result, a huge amount of energy is liberated from that bound-up state, and it immediately rushes back into the body as vitality. But you have only scratched the very surface.

After things have settled down the the strain of the 4th & 5th fetter becomes rather obvious. All the unconscious patterns that were kept hidden by the self (fetter 1, 2 & 3) are revealed. 

That can be a very interesting and challenging period, and can cause all sorts of issues. It can even turn a person into a fundemantalist or a guru, or a non-dual speaker on youtube, so strong is the desire to be recognized in the world.

So, even after passing through the lower fetters, the fettering patterns themselves still continue, often appearing much stronger and can show up as intense pushing and pulling, fixations and fears. This can create a lot of doubt about your initial insight.

These often common and predictable chaotic patterns of behviour that are typical of awakening, are simply the next line of fetters to inquire into: fetter 4 & 5 - desires and aversions, but they have identity at their core, which are still the lower fetters (1, 2 & 3).

As you might gather, the subject, the object and the strain to maintain them both are entirely situated within the mind. It’s like there's something holding the subjective point and the objective point with both arms, like how you might pull (or push) two people towards you from opposite directions; that is the fetter.

With fetter work, the idea is to look directly at that thing that is pushing or pulling the tension of opposites, thereby creating an identity. Done correctly, what was once understood as a strain (fetter) is seen to be an assumption, meaning it’s not actually anything - and what a fuckin’ relief!

Not everyone moves through the fetters in perfect chronological order. Often the fetters are dynamic and alive, but for many as they go deeper, the lower fetters gradually dwindle into obscuraity until eventually they all dispappear. So for some people, the fetters overlap and trial behind for a while, and thats fine and actually perfectly normal in most cases..

Just to throw another spanner at your intelect: although there are 10 fetters, and I write (and speak) about them as if one moves incremenatally through time and thus their stages, (1 through 10) that is not actually the case. 

Awakening is totally counter-intuitive to how you were conditioned to understand reality. You don’t move through them, and there is no end destination. Once they are seen to not exist, as you recall old memories of you’re seeming struggle, you can see that they didn’t really exist there either.