Thanks Vivi : )

I want to extend a big thank you for the patient enthusiasm throughout this process. Great kindness was felt from your part. Thanks for helping double check! lol.

Best wishes, Ben

Hi Vivi,

There are no doubts. I checked inwardly and pondered if breathing and movement are the same, does movement have the same automatic quality as breathing? I couldn’t see any reason to doubt that they don’t come from the same source.

Kind regards, Ben

Hi Vivi,

I would describe my present experience as same but different. Life is the same, I’ve just done a full day at work. There is a feeling that something has dropped away and a slight disconnection feeling. There was a time at work today when I wrote an earlier reply on this forum and I was ...

Hi Vivi,

Well I took a break to walk around the office building where I work. I’m not at home at the moment. Where I work is s a big corporate office building with lots of corridors and stairwells which you could easily get lost in.

Moving around is automatic, no one is moving the arms or legs. It ...

Hi Vivi,

In answer to the latest questions:

Do you experience that others have thoughts or do you believe that they have?

I don’t experience that others have thoughts. I experience movement in perceived others which could lead to the belief that they have thoughts. For example I can experience ...

Hi Vivi,

No I can't find any separation with objects in direct experience. Others I struggle to see where their thoughts must come from.

6) When you say "I", what are you referring to?

When I say 'I' I am referring to the direct experience which is "Ben", I is a pointer for the convention of ...

Hi Vivi,

In relation to objects it seems they can’t exist or that they exist only due to labeling which is a process to make sense of something that we can then associate and interact with.

Kind regards, Ben

Hi Vivi,

Examining body and not-body, body and chair. Without labeling, beyond this, there is no way to distinguish where one starts or the other one finishes. With eyes closed now, without labeling it seems it’s not possible to direct experience the existence of anything, as if nothing really ...

Hi Vivi,

Looking into this no the ‘I’ was never real and could never have been real. When I think back to past events I see that they happened and then labeling thoughts would have followed but the ‘I’ was never real.

I tried the hand on table experiment again. If I sit and look beyond the ...

Thanks Vivi, I will try my best to answer these:

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

There is not a real me, not that I can point to. There is awareness, that is all. I don’t think there was ever a real me just thoughts of a me in the past which came up ...

Hello Vivi,

I found it difficult to answer what objects are. The best I can come up with is that they are tangible things. Things the senses can detect or things we can grasp. For example a laptop is an object.

As far as I can tell nothing is missing from seeing that the ‘I’ doesn’t exist. I had a ...

Hi Vivi,

I sat with this a little bit, either one of two scenarios now happen when thoughts occur. Thought stops of it’s own accord or another thought interrupts it. Interrupting is my mind I think, the interrupting thoughts are like “this is just a thought” or “you’re in that mental cinema again ...

Hi Vivi, thanks so much for replying, very kind of you!

Thoughts seem to come up less these days than they used to as a result of meditation and spiritual texts I’ve read it seems. However thoughts do still come up and often I snap out of them half way through. Throughout this process I am going to ...

Hello, may name is Ben. I’ve been a spiritual seeker on and off for a couple of years. The last couple of months I would say I’ve had a bit of a spiritual awakening and I have been more intensively searching, moving from one teaching and book to another. I found my way to Elena and Ilona’s batgap ...