The Fetters

Before you go deeper, if you havn’t already, read the warnings here.

Selfing in this particular context, can be grouped into multiple layers called fetters. (There will eventually be a list of 10 fetters in the menu when I can be bothered to add more content to this site and I will write about my experience of passing through each fetter.)

This site is an ongoing project. Please bear in mind that my writing will sometimes come across as academic, or technical, or I’ll describe concepts that seem arcane. Some of the writing might even sound religious. My intention is not for you to develop another philosophical or religious framework, or debate abstract ideas about the hard problem of consciouness; NO!

With the fetters, it’s easy to get caught-up in trying to intellectually understand them as another field to navigate or a theory to entertain. The real work is done in your immediate experience, not through these steps.

Very simply, the fetter exploration asks: how many ways are you identified with experience, and can you find them all?

That is all you need to know about approaching the fetters.

Although I have chopped up the process in fetter terminology, they are by no means perfect, and there are lots of other ways to break the process down, like Zen’s the Ten Bulls, or the Hero’s Journey.

None of the stages from any other method have any real substance either, yet they recognize a journey of sorts that transcends how we as humans move through time, and fundamentally, how we relate to the world.

Therefore, if we call it a journey, then it is a journey that is totally counter-intuitive to how you have been conditioned to understand reality, which is usually in linear terms.

The quote by St John of the Cross comes to mind: ‘To come to the knowledge you have not, you must go by a way in which you know not. - so there are lots of intellectual head fucks along the way, because, well… this is not an intellectual exercise in the slightest!

Identity As A Trap

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. As described in the previous page, one could say it is a psychological trap you fell into quite innocently as you grew into the world. But here it is revealed as a multi-layered psychological constraint.

This psychological bond is not a physical thing. It 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 yourself seperated, and are actively encourage to do so by the collective, because if you don’t, your story of you will end and you see this as a terrible thing - but it’s absolutely not.

Seeing Through Identity

Once one has seen through their identity, (typically called ‘having an awakening’ or in this context, 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 - now you have to un-enlighten yourself (quiet chuckle).

After things have settled down 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 painfuly 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, (having an awakening) the fettering patterns (identification) 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 typically follow an awakening are simply the next line of fetters to inquire into: fetter 4 & 5 - desires and aversions.

Subject/Object & Inquiry

All the 10 fetter inquiries simply suggest a way to look into various types of subject/object splits, (from coarse to subtle) and to firmly plant your attention right in the middle, where the split seems to be taking place.

As you might gather, the subject, (the observer) the object (the obsevered) and the strain (you) to maintain them both are entirely situated within the mind. It’s like there's something (the feeling or sense of you) 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 and seat yourself right within those tension of opposites, neither falling one way, nor the other (most notable in the 4th & 5th fetters). Done correctly, what was once understood as a strain 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 obscurity until eventually they all dispappear.

So for many people, the fetters overlap and trial behind for a while, and thats fine and actually perfectly normal in most cases..

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 the fetters are seen to not exist, as you recall old memories of you’re seeming struggle, you can see that the fetters didn’t really exist there either - (loud chuckle).