Yogi: How does identification work?
Sayadaw: The self is an idea/belief that the mind holds – when there is sufficient wisdom, there’s a shift to the (experiential) understanding that it is cause and effect which governs what is happening.
Identification (the result of moha) is a belief; it’s so strong that it feels like it’s there all the time. When the mind gets glimpses/an insight that something happening is just nature, at that time it’s very clear that there’s nobody there; that the belief that there’s a self is just a construct, not a reality.
We have to practice so much because the delusion is very strong.
When that wisdom is absent, identification is there; when that wisdom is present, identification is absent.
There’s more identification with the awareness than with the objects because awareness is in the mind and identification (moha) is also in the mind – ‘I am the mind’. (Both the indriyas and moha are mental factors.)
It is important for awareness to gain momentum because when there’s momentum we can also recognize the awareness, and they both help us to see that the mind is a process and it’s not somebody there. (Awareness is the condition for awareness to gain momentum and for wisdom to arise.)
Seeing the momentum of work shows you that there is a process going on; that ‘you’ is not involved.
When awareness has momentum, when the practice is practicing itself, at that time, what is happening is not you and what is knowing is also not you.