Seeking true stream entry

[graceabounds]

Beautiful!

Next, I am going to offer a series of questions to you to work with. Their purpose is to excavate anything that remains unexamined in our conversation, any sticky spots. If you can use the quote function to reply to each that will be helpful, I may also share your answers with the community of LU guides for any further opportunities to clarify/deepen.

Simply LOOK at each inquiry and respond from what is “obvious ordinary basic” and present here now. :)

1) Is there a separate entity 'self', 'me' 'I', at all, anywhere, in any way, shape or form? Was there ever?

2) Explain in detail what the illusion of separate self is, when it starts and how it works from your own experience. Describe it fully as you see it now.

3) How does it feel to see this? What is the difference from before we started this dialogue? Please report from the past few days.

4) What was the last bit that pushed you over; made you look? Was there a moment of shift with a distinct before and after?

5) Describe decision, intention, free will, choice and control. Consider and describe each if these separately.

6) What makes things happen? How does it work?

7) What are you responsible for? Give examples from experience.

8) Anything to add?

In gratitude,
Becca

[plume]

Awesome. Thanks for all your guidance and patience, Becca. This has been an incredible experience, a truly special dialogue, and I’m so appreciative of you for taking time out of your life to help people like me.

Ok, responding from a place of LOOKING but not intellectualizing… forgive me if any of this doesnt make sense…

1) Is there a separate entity 'self', 'me' 'I', at all, anywhere, in any way, shape or form? Was there ever?

No there is no separate entity Me, there never was. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing, it just means the sheer energy given into the Me label was just a label, thinking its way into “existence”. All of this is all of this. Including the thoughts.

2) Explain in detail what the illusion of separate self is, when it starts and how it works from your own experience. Describe it fully as you see it now.

The illusion of separate self is a particularly sticky stream of thought that “This void of seeing / feeling / hearing / experience is actually Me. This body is Me.” The thought is so tight that it is assumed as true, so that it is not even seen just that, a thought. From my experience, thought protects, and it is often paired with some “physical” sensation (in the gut, chest, head, throat, limbs”. Contracted sensation, sheer fear and terror and pride. The contraction reinforced physically and mentally (memories, stories, selfishness, victimhood, etc). Even as it is known that the self is an illusion, “I” traverse deeper and deeper, as suppressed thoughts and sensations arise that are stickier and stickier, more and more cherished stories that keep ”Me” contracted. But even in all of this, there is the nameless space from which this saga even arises, contracts, relaxes, etc. The entire project is simultaneously a path to deeper realization and no realization to be made at all, just experience experiencing itself.

3) How does it feel to see this? What is the difference from before we started this dialogue? Please report from the past few days.

The first word, relief. The second, laughter. Like, wtf this is so obvious, it’s right there to be “seen”. It doesn’t feel like the honeymoon phase when I had my first big shift last year (that was deemed “stream entry” and lasted a couple months)… it feels like a constant recognition… no technique “caused” this, but just looking for myself revealed what is and always has been. Physically, feel a lot of twitching and “falling off” of tensions. Less impulsive, thoughts feel freer yet less like they run the show (because there’s no one there to run the show). Continuing practice seems obvious what to do next. No seeker, no desperation, just growing more accustomed to what is.

4) What was the last bit that pushed you over; made you look? Was there a moment of shift with a distinct before and after?

When Becca pointed to memory also being an I-thought… it sent me hurtling down a dark space that there’s No Self at ALL to hold on to. I kept looking and looking and pressure kept building and building, and I realized there was something beyond my hopes of fireworks and kaboom. All of this selfing, even coming to this forum to seek liberation, was complicit in keeping me from seeing there is no Me. I woke up the next day and things felt different, relaxed, clear, free flowing.

5) Describe decision, intention, free will, choice and control. Consider and describe each if these separately.

Decision is a thought after something has been done, claiming “I did that”. Intention is a thought “I *will* do that”. Both are claiming ownership over that which has no owner/manager. “Free will”… there is no free will because there is no Self there at all to be “free” to choose. “Choice” is the illusion of a chooser, because things happen on their own accord, following contraction and relieving it. “Control” is the illusion of there being someone there orchestrating the happenings of life. The Self is the illusion that there is a controller who intends to do things, chooses to do things, and decides their doing.

6) What makes things happen? How does it work?

I don’t know. Not Me. But not nothing. It seems all very interconnected, a mesh of sensations influenced and being influenced.

7) What are you responsible for? Give examples from experience.

This isn’t just nihilism— the very nature of this illusion of self seems to change / fall off / transform its contents as it becomes more cognizant of its own illusion. The illusion isn’t “real”, but its beliefs can carry real impacts in the world. The deeper the realization of no-self, the less self-referential/obsessed/absorbed/protective this illusion becomes. The very nature of thoughts changes, the heart feels split wide open. When in the past I may have yelled in anger at someone who cut me off in traffic, the anger rolls through me freely without the associated “How dare he do this to Me!”

8) Anything to add?

I am reminded of my childhood. It seems I realized no-self a long time ago but didn’t recognize it as such. It seems what went into overdrive was the seeker of “enlightenment”. So being “back here” feels so familiar. Im curious to see how the next few months go. Thank you for all your help 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽

[graceabounds]

Well friend,

Beautifully expressed, all these words about this exquisite THIS. I have no further questions and neither do a few other guides who read through your responses today so it appears that the Gateless Gate has been crossed… but as you know there is no Gate, no one to cross it, and no end to the journey.

Soon you’ll receive an email notifying you of a PM from the forum, inviting you to join LU's Facebook groups. It also has other information that might be of interest. Your username will change from green to blue and this thread will be moved to the ‘Archive’ section of the forum, but you will be able to access it.

The experience in the past couple of weeks is just the beginning of exploring. It will also be the beginning of cleaning up of all sorts of old beliefs and habitual patterns of thought. This can be an emotional process and a nonlinear one. If you have any questions or any hiccups at all, you are welcome to drop a line on your thread here and I will respond.

It has been a pleasure to walk beside you here. Of course it is not necessarily the end of our conversation. I’m not much in facebook these days so my email is becca@supportedawakening.com if you’d like to stay in touch. Once the dust has settled from this nonevent you are also invited to consider guiding if that impulse arises. :)

With gratitude and love,
Becca
🙏

[plume]

I can’t thank you enough for this. This has been the most patient, incisive, and steadying guidance I’ve gotten in my life! So much gratitude for you and for this forum!

I would love to pay it forward and become a guide too, once the dust settles a bit from this non-event.

[graceabounds]

I would say you did all the heavy lifting, though another perspective is available that THIS was here all along, no doer or doing needed. So I simply play along backwards from it already being clearly seen. :)

That said being present in this way is the most rewarding way to spend now that I can imagine. Life changing. World changing.

Someone saw this first for me here too. Would love to show you the ropes sometime…

Much love,
Becca