Hi Paul,

I didn't ask a question as I feel you need to spend more time into looking into experience for any sign of a self rather than respond to questions which may stimulate your thinking/intellectual approach. I like your description of no experiencer and empty space and encourage you to spend ...

hi,

when you say

Has anything changed? I feel that I still intellectualize the process too much.

and

There is no ownership of the thought. And I definitely did not cause the thought to arise. It is just a persistent habit. The thought is definitely not me. I'm spending a lot of time noticing ...

Hi,

Before I respond to your last post I thought it may be good to check in with you to see how you are getting on with this inquiry? Are you managing to find time to look in your daily schedule? If so, have you noticed anything has changed in the way you look? How about spending more or less time ...

Hi,

When you say...

I thought about this a little more. It feels that I unconscously shift from DE to abstract thoughts when I feel the need to solve a problem (that may or may not come up in the future) or when I am thinking of a future situation that I have planned. Or my brain just starts ...

Hi,

so when you say...

What does the word/thought "I" actually refer to? Ultimately it is just a placeholder for an illusory self. It's a (too) convenient word that helps a body/brain navigate in a social world. Like most words it tries to limit a limitless being/thing/essence into a word/symbol ...

Hello,

It sounds like you have a good intellectual grasp of the situation. A classic buddhist metaphor is the man who awakes and sees a poisonous snake on his bed and panics but then realises the "snake" is merely a piece of old rope. Likewise, the stories about the self, me, I, mine can seem very ...

Hi,

So what happens when you "identify" with a thought as opposed to being simply aware of a thought?


I feel that I know I'm in I/me/mine mode because I seem to find myself wrapped up in a story about myself, my thoughts, my possessions, my past, my future, the drama of my life (nothing too ...

Hi,

This all sounds very promising :). One thought I have which I would like to share with you is that sometimes people come into this process and expect a Big Bang type revelation (and it can be like that for a few) but more usually the seeing that there is no self or I at the centre of experience ...

Hey welcome back, I am glad you had a good trip :)

This sounds great...

I had a few moments when hiking down a small mountain where I realized that there was no "I" moving my legs, and that nothing appeared to be in charge of the sounds and motions of the forest surrounding "me

What we are ...

Hi,

I hope you are still enjoying your trip.

When you say...

There is no glue that holds the imagined self of stories,images,and memories, ultimately. It's just random stories, images in memories stored in the brain, and they appear when they want to.

I definitely cannot find the anchor in DE ...

Hi,

I understand intellectually that I am not real in any way apart from my imagination. Paul is a collection of stories, images, rememberances.

So what is the glue that holds together the imaginal self of stories, images, memories? Can you find in DE the anchor which holds together the fiction ...

Hey, I am much more pulp fiction than I am friends :)

If we take what you say...

Not sure if you wanted me to respond to this. If I watch Pulp Fiction, I become engrossed in the story/plot, characters, dialogue, etc. Watching an episode of Friends I tend to deconstruct everything, the bad ...

Hey,

Thoughts seem to conjure more thoughts. A thought about a scary situation could provoke feelings of fear and anxiety in the body. I think that if you desensitize yourself to a thought (by perhaps having had similar thoughts in the past, that you would be less likely to have any kind of ...

Hi,

These thoughts do not bleong to me, they are just arising in awareness.

I would say that I am the awareness that those thoughts arise in. Isn't the witness/seer just another thought?

Can you find any sign or presence of an I in awareness apart from thoughts of I?

When you are identified ...

Hey no worries about failing anything. The exercises are ways to focus on the looking. Its the looking that's the most important thing and some exercises may not be as helpful as other ones. The pont of that one was to count how many thoughts were self-referential in some way and how many thoughts ...