I have thoroughly enjoyed our dialogue. You have a very vivid and beautiful way of describing experience which has been a joy to read.

I have really enjoyed it. You have an elegant laser-like economy of guiding which I found very helpful to keep focused.
And I appreciate the time, insight ...

Hi Valentine,

That was a lovely read, thanks for taking the time to lay that out so fully :-)

I think our work here is nearly done (though I would like to get some other guides to take a look and see if there is anything they would like to clarify further)

Before I do that, there is one of the ...

Describe decision, intention, free will, choice and control. What makes things happen? How does it work? What are you responsible for? Give examples from experience.

Decision
Decisions are thoughts which have a direct result in my actions. I am not sure how all decisions are made. I can see that ...

Thanks for the above!

Describe decision, intention, free will, choice and control. What makes things happen? How does it work? What are you responsible for? Give examples from experience.

I want to spend a bit of time on this
I'm travelling and offline for the next couple of days
So a fuller ...

Is it ok to leave that as just unknown without calling it 'self'?

I'd say so, how do you feel about it?

I feel ok about it. I mean, it's a mystery but then it always a was a mystery , Using the word Self is a convenience that means you don't have to look into it further and live with the ...

Looking into and gently quizzing this fear, this holding on: what is being protected? what is being held onto?

This fear / tension in the gut goes back way beyond the start of this inquiry. I think it may go right back to the beginning. In one sense, it is the physical correlate of my sense of ...

If you have concluded that neither free will nor fatalism describe experience, and you don't even feel a strong need to pin down an alternative theory, then are you free to live fully with the knowledge that no self can be found?


Yes, I am free to - though I don't know what that means yet.

Now ...

Hi Valentine,

Thanks for filling that out. Let's look some more into 'participation' vs 'ping pong ball'....

Does awareness make a difference to anything?

For instance, at the start of a meditation, you might take awareness to parts of the body where there is tension.

Or after thinking about ...

Can you elaborate the view for me? What is the "fatalistic / deterministic system", and how does it necessary follow from volition arising in dependence upon conditions?

Hi Perry

Ok, you asked for it, this is just what is going on - not a coherent argument:

There is a feeling of being cornered ...

Hi Valentine,

Remember what it is like when watching a film that you have been engrossed in, and for whatever reason, you start to lose the 'suspension of disbelief' - you are no longer able to fully 'buy into' what is going on, you cannot quite take the plot or characters seriously any more ...

Hi Valentine,

Remember what it is like when watching a film that you have been engrossed in, and for whatever reason, you start to lose the 'suspension of disbelief' - you are no longer able to fully 'buy into' what is going on, you cannot quite take the plot or characters seriously any more ...

Hey

The point is simply this: don't assume that dropping the false idea of 'free will' commits you to the false idea of 'fatalism'.

That's really useful

I am suggesting that you suspend belief in these free will / fatalism stories for a while.

How, practically?
I mean what is a method to do ...

Hi, thanks a lot for your detailed and thought provoking response.

When questioning the reality of 'free will', it is so easy to imagine that if there is not a "self" freely directing operations, then there must just be awareness passively observing it all, like a ping-pong ball floating down a ...

Hi!

This was very useful

so this is the 'thought/idea' component of the belief .... essentially, that "there must be free will, because the alternative is fatalism" . An here, I think, we have reached the nub of it all.

Yes you nailed it, this, it seems, is the nub of it for me.

Are thoughts ...

Hi Valentine,


Hello Perry

As strange thing happened. Since the weekend a sort of cloud of thinking descended upon me - making it quite hard to focus on the process. The clarity of the last few weeks was replaced by a sort of fog obscuring my looking. Maybe that is some resistance

"Describe ...