Hi Vivien,
My apologies, I was a bit distracted and rushed to write back to you yesterday so I definitely wasn’t doing the best looking. I also just feel the need to express again my absolute overflowing gratitude for you and your incredible sharpness in catching where I’m caught in a misperception. No one has EVER helped me so deeply, and you don’t even know me! Ah, again, there really are no words, but my heart is overflowing :)
K: I definitely see this when I am very present with AE.
V: What is it exactly that is present with AE?
What is it that could be present or not present with AE?
Yet another really good point. There is nothing that is present or not present with AE. There’s no me that chooses to be “present” at all. There’s either looking at actual experience or looking at thoughts. And there’s no one doing the looking.
V: Is there an experience of touching at all?
K: No, that would be a concept. Like thoughts, a sensation cannot infer anything except for being a sensation.
“Like thoughts, a sensation cannot infer anything except for being a sensation.” – What do you mean by this sentence?
Do sensations making the impression of ‘touch’ or thoughts?
What is it suggesting that the sensation is a ‘touch’? The sensation? or a thought?
I mis-wrote that one, it’s definitely the thoughts that infer touch, not the sensation itself.
V: How is it known that ‘sensory experiences’ happen IN awareness?
K: That’s a good question. Well they don’t really happen “in” anything because there isn’t a container or grounding where they appear. When they arise, all that’s known is that. But the knowing of it seems to be the awareness.
V: But how is it known that the knowing is awareness?
I see that it’s definitely just inferred by thoughts- trying to link “spiritual concepts” which has nothing to do with the exploration here.
Be careful with expressions with ‘SEEMS’. A SEEMING thing is NOT an actual thing.
Every time a sentence starts with “it seems” or “it feels like” is the sure sign that what will follow is just an analogy, just the content of a thought. It’s not coming from looking at AE directly, rather from thought speculation.
Can you see this?
Yes, it’s a good reminder because in so many facets of my life experience- so much importance is put on describing how things feel. There’s this belief that describing how something feels is being in touch with a more evolved sense of intuition and emotion... but I see it’s clearly just a regular old thought!
Can experience be divided into a knower and a known (experiencer and experienced)?
Where is the division between the two?
No it definitely cannot! The knower, knowing and the known cannot be separated in any way. There’s no distinction or boundary. They are one in the same. It’s only thought that divides and claims to be a knower that uses a “knowing” ability to become aware of an object. That’s all thought creation and has no reality in AE.
K: there’s no AE of it happening in or on something. When I really turn away from my thoughts that are appearing about this, all I can say is that they appear and I can’t locate a place.
V: “When I turn away from my thoughts” – what is it exactly that has thoughts?
A trip up in languaging- there is nothing that has thoughts. Thoughts just appear.
What owns thoughts?
Nothing! No one!
What is it that is turning away from thoughts?
The “turning away” from thoughts does not exist. There either are thoughts or aren’t.
What do thoughts happen TO?
They don’t happen TO anything because the awareness just arises as a part of them. That’s all that is there.
What is experiencing thoughts?
They are simply just known. There is no thing that they happen “in” from my direct AE. And yet I still get caught up in how all people have different thoughts- but that is just thought speculation, I know.
What is believing or not believing thoughts?
Nothing! Any belief or non-belief in a thought is another thought.
K: So despite my thoughts rambling on about all these spiritual ideas like a “ground of being” and the “I am” presence and “the one consciousness”- I can’t say there there is some permanent thread like awareness running through all my experience but at the same time that thread is really just the entirety of aware-experiencing because nothing can be known beyond that. I can’t know deep sleep because there isn’t anything to be aware of. Or more like there isn’t anything aware-ing. So all that can be known is what’s appearing/aware-ing.
V: Yes, but this is just partially coming from LOOKING. The second half about deep sleep is just a thought speculation. A conclusion. Can you see this?
yes I see that! It’s thoughts trying to look for something or somewhere where “knowingness” is not. Totally pointless.
Can you see clearly (experientially) that there is no such thing as ‘awareness’, ‘consciousness’, or ‘knower’, or ‘presence’?
Yes, I can clearly see that there is no awareness or presence apart from what is perceived. It’s another really essential LOOKING point because I’ve away been taught that the background or ground of experience is awareness/consciousness and that is what we really “are”- the unchanging presence behind everything and that which everything appears within. People are always referring to “high meditative states” where they experience only pure consciousness without objects. But how can that be so? Even if it were, it’s only a state. In my AE all that can be known are the presence of thought containers or sensory perceptions. It is impossible to find a background to these appearances, they are simply all that is when they are present. All that can be said is what appears is known and that’s it. Just one constantly changing aware-appearance. But I see that to even say it’s constantly changing is a thought that infers a past. What is, is simply what is.
“Despite my thoughts rambling” – what is it that has rambling thoughts?
Nothing has them! Yet another thought claiming the rambling and claiming the having of the rambling thoughts.
Kelly