Anyone new can begin here

[Elizabeth]

Hello newcomer.
If you are ready to start the conversation, I'd like to hear a little about you :-)
Welcome.
Elizabeth

[alexnas]

Hello, Elizabeth :)
I'm ready to jump down the rabbit hole...
My name is Alexander. I am from Russia. I am 55. Last 22 years was in the practices to find "The Self". And now - new turn. And I am ready to give up all I knew.
Last three months I am in Tiruvannamalai, India. I was looking for the similar "rabbit hole" and several days ago saw on the desk the piece of paper with LU web address. Now I am here.

[alexnas]

Once more, hello, Elizabeth :)
At the same moment I sent my letter to begin conversation with you, my state have changed abruptly. Several minutes later I found that there is a fear. The fear is now in my body. I didn’t expect this reaction, because I supposed that years of work with emotional reactions …., etc. And OOOOPS 
Another one new and interesting thing – in the same moment I am very quiet, there is no any agitation. I watch this reaction in the bottom of my belly and a little bit in the throat like I watch a scene outside the window. Surprise…
OK… It seems that we didn’t begin yet, but the process had started already.
Also I recognize in these senses in the body the taste of resistance. Of course, it is a resistance. And it is just more predictable.
And also doubts…Just after the letter was gone, I tried to find a button to return the letter and to correct something. Thoughts began. May be I made wrong decision… May be I need to prepare myself one day more, to read more material, to examine the experience of other people…etc.
Ok. It is only analysis. I need something to do. It is old habit to react with doing (who is doer?).
Joking apart, Elizabeth, is it right to do something with all this stuff? Or I need only to watch how it’s going?
The fear – it’s just feeling in my body. I only recognize the fear. Who recognizes?
It is strong feeling. Unexpectedly strong. Does this feeling of fear hide anything? What is behind the fear?
I don’t try to fight with this feeling. I just look at it. Something is gradually changing. Why did I decide this is fear? It is only body feelings. May be I used to qualify this feelings as a fear? Isn’t it only old habit? Of course they are strong and sudden, but only feelings in the body. I tried to see through these senses. What can they hide? I couldn’t find anything behind the senses.
I need your comments and your help. What can I do more in this direction?
Namaste, Alexander

[Elizabeth]

Once more, hello, Elizabeth :)
At the same moment I sent my letter to begin conversation with you, my state have changed abruptly. Several minutes later I found that there is a fear. The fear is now in my body. I didn’t expect this reaction, because I supposed that years of work with emotional reactions …., etc. And OOOOPS 
Another one new and interesting thing – in the same moment I am very quiet, there is no any agitation. I watch this reaction in the bottom of my belly and a little bit in the throat like I watch a scene outside the window. Surprise…
OK… It seems that we didn’t begin yet, but the process had started already.
Also I recognize in these senses in the body the taste of resistance. Of course, it is a resistance. And it is just more predictable.
And also doubts…Just after the letter was gone, I tried to find a button to return the letter and to correct something. Thoughts began. May be I made wrong decision… May be I need to prepare myself one day more, to read more material, to examine the experience of other people…etc.
Ok. It is only analysis. I need something to do. It is old habit to react with doing (who is doer?).
Joking apart, Elizabeth, is it right to do something with all this stuff? Or I need only to watch how it’s going?
The fear – it’s just feeling in my body. I only recognize the fear. Who recognizes?
It is strong feeling. Unexpectedly strong. Does this feeling of fear hide anything? What is behind the fear?
I don’t try to fight with this feeling. I just look at it. Something is gradually changing. Why did I decide this is fear? It is only body feelings. May be I used to qualify this feelings as a fear? Isn’t it only old habit? Of course they are strong and sudden, but only feelings in the body. I tried to see through these senses. What can they hide? I couldn’t find anything behind the senses.
I need your comments and your help. What can I do more in this direction?
Namaste, Alexander

Hi Alexander in India, welcome.
I spent some time travelling and living in that country also, I hope you are having a good time, many good things to attend.
We don't need to fight anything in this process, it is inquiry, and we use what comes up. Honesty and focus and about a post a day are what we ask you to bring to this.
This is very direct and simple approach. We look at how the illusion of a separate self puts itself together.
So that we can see through that persistent illusion. It's not enlightenment, it is coming awake and unfolding.
From here, a seeker for 35 years, it was more than I ever hoped for, but some find it unexciting :-)

So, we start.
Simple pointer to truth:
1/ Is a cup of tea in front of you A CUP, or a MY CUP?
Which is more true?
2/ And how does a MY CUP become attached to a self?
How does possession happen, and what possesses?

Much love, stay healthy there, Elizabeth

[alexnas]

Hello, Elizabeth :)
I saw at two cups honestly – I now distinguish the difference: one of them is MY CUP, another one is simply A CUP. I find it difficult to answer about what is more true. I can’t stay at the position of an arbiter. I only see the different attitude to these two cups.
Where is the source of the difference? May be during some time I gave more attention to MY CUP? I think it is a habit to see it closer to ME, than something else. And to bring the CUP nearer first of all I’ve separated MY CUP from another world. Of course both nearer and separated are only imagined qualities.
Another question – who or what possesses? Or who or what make the difference between cups? There is now any line or border between the cups. They are like two marks on the list of paper. May be the mind put some special mark to the one of them and then use this mark to catch attention and tie the attention to the marked thing or drawing. In exactly the same way I can point to the photo and say ‘this is MY CUP at the left corner’. It’s like an anchor.
Thoughts. Only thoughts. I don’t feel the truth now - only reasoning. I feel it is much more simple. May be you point out me my mistake?
Appreciate your help,
Alexander

[Elizabeth]

Well, Alexander, you see very clear, no problem.
The only thing making it a MY cup is that focus. As soon as it is a MY anything, it seems attached with that thought.
You did indeed separate it from all the other cups in the world, with a thought.
In reality, no boundary. Cup has no nature or quality that makes it yours :-) None.
We create a whole world with that kind of thought.
This is MY cup, MY car, My wife, MY country, MY spiritual search. That is NOT MINE, that is YOURS.
MINE and NOT MINE. Duality.

As you go about your day, could you please look at the thoughts.
1/ when you look, where do they arise? are they self-generated?
2/ how many thoughts either directly or indirectly serve to attach something to a self?

You can see this in others also, in their conversation.
Much love, Elizabeth

[alexnas]

Hello, Elizabeth :-)
You touched upon the very sophisticated task… Many times when somebody suggested me to follow my thoughts I felt me like idiot. I had the impression that only I can’t to fix my thoughts. The same is now. At the very nonce I try to catch my thought, I don’t see any thought…
OK I’ll try once more.
My results after several hours:
I can’t control my thoughts. May be at all. The difference with several years before is that after special thoughts I have no special and strong emotional reactions. I can’t fix the source of thoughts, they simply appears. But I’ve found some concomitant factor. When I fix my attention on some object or some feeling or something else, the thoughts appeared are related to the direction of the sight (so to say, thought followed by the energy). It is almost any time (may be any time?).
1/In any case, I would say that thoughts are self-generated (subject to I can’t find anyone source right now).

Another result of this day concerns the ME-MY. I saw that my mind ranges all object and events by to scale of nearness. First of them is a “distance” from the central point. (Geometrically this point coincides with eyes, but this is right only for material objects, there are also feelings, etc.) I intentionally didn’t name this point as I-ME-MY, because there is possibility that MY-nification of the central point is a secondary event, the final result. Anyhow there are objects etc that stay closer to the central point, and farther from it. Another on factor is “time” (more longer = closer, and also more frequent = closer).
But to be close by distance and time is not sufficient. (For simplicity let we name as “object” all objects, events etc that we can qualify as MY.) In order to feel the object as MY OBJECT we have to have some relations or history (in the past of course). Thus we have other two factors – emotional interconnection (energy), and memory (past - which does not exist in present, and which is only the set of thoughts, connected by labeling system with some special objects with special properties>>which is tied by emotions with special thoughts = circle is closed). MY CUP is closed in the same circle, for example some special person presented me it in some special obstacles and I (who?) remember it. I think “remember” in this case also is emotional memory about emotional event.
Thus the result: no emotional connection – no ME-MY.
2/Now I think that every thought one way or another serves to force the ME-MY sense.

Namaste,
Alexander

[Elizabeth]

Hello, Elizabeth :-)
You touched upon the very sophisticated task… Many times when somebody suggested me to follow my thoughts I felt me like idiot. I had the impression that only I can’t to fix my thoughts. The same is now. At the very nonce I try to catch my thought, I don’t see any thought…
OK I’ll try once more.
My results after several hours:
I can’t control my thoughts. May be at all. The difference with several years before is that after special thoughts I have no special and strong emotional reactions. I can’t fix the source of thoughts, they simply appears. But I’ve found some concomitant factor. When I fix my attention on some object or some feeling or something else, the thoughts appeared are related to the direction of the sight (so to say, thought followed by the energy). It is almost any time (may be any time?).
1/In any case, I would say that thoughts are self-generated (subject to I can’t find anyone source right now).

Another result of this day concerns the ME-MY. I saw that my mind ranges all object and events by to scale of nearness. First of them is a “distance” from the central point. (Geometrically this point coincides with eyes, but this is right only for material objects, there are also feelings, etc.) I intentionally didn’t name this point as I-ME-MY, because there is possibility that MY-nification of the central point is a secondary event, the final result. Anyhow there are objects etc that stay closer to the central point, and farther from it. Another on factor is “time” (more longer = closer, and also more frequent = closer).
But to be close by distance and time is not sufficient. (For simplicity let we name as “object” all objects, events etc that we can qualify as MY.) In order to feel the object as MY OBJECT we have to have some relations or history (in the past of course). Thus we have other two factors – emotional interconnection (energy), and memory (past - which does not exist in present, and which is only the set of thoughts, connected by labeling system with some special objects with special properties>>which is tied by emotions with special thoughts = circle is closed). MY CUP is closed in the same circle, for example some special person presented me it in some special obstacles and I (who?) remember it. I think “remember” in this case also is emotional memory about emotional event.
Thus the result: no emotional connection – no ME-MY.
2/Now I think that every thought one way or another serves to force the ME-MY sense.

Namaste,
Alexander

Hi Alexander,
This is my new favourite word, My-nification :-)
Clearly you are trained in some rational discipline so we will happily use that.
Please note that a (if not THE) property of My-nification is to default to a ME, every time.
So on 1/ you notice that although you cannot find a source of thoughts, you default to self-generation.
Would a truer response be that you cannot see where they arise?
In inquiry, "I don't know" is valuable information.

You noted that a self-construct (past and future clearly constructs) is central.
Not only to sensory perception, where it's usefullness is obvious, but central to an entire world-view.
The world built in your head around a 'you'. Modelling such complex inter-relationships is very useful as the organism calculates (consciously or not) cost-benefits to action.
Wonderful tool.
However, when the running "I' narrative is assumed to be real, we take the stories it spins as real. The body reacts, energy is engaged, and we are off to the mental races.
So this understanding needs to be experiential as well as intellectual.

Today's exercise is again to watch this self-reference, and the self-construction.
Please look where the I comes into play as life unfolds and things happen.
We are looking to see where and how we attribute choice, owner-ship, and doer-ship.

1/ if you reach for the cup, at what point does the I thought come in to possess not only the cup, but the action?

2/ If you walk down a crowded street, at what point does an I take over the walking? Own the many decisions and actions needed to navigate?

3/ Is it true that some separate entity runs the show? Or does life happen and then thought defaults?

It's a lot of work, you can take this slowly. You will find that performing actions a little more slowly than you usually do is helpful. That Zen slow-walking meditation is good for this, but we can do it in life, as well.
Enjoy!
Much love, Elizabeth

[alexnas]

Hello, Elizabeth :-)
Today my research was not so clear. And I decided to write them anyway.

Indivisible world collapses when we agree to compare the real object with content of memory.
Separation between This and That occurs at the point of comparison.
To compare we need to fix fragmented and measurable qualities. Moreover to compare we need to have some measuring system. This system is the product of memorizing and calculation. It is something that does not exist principally. Non-existence as a basic principal.
Comparison – evaluation – judgment – decision (mental) – motivation (emotional - energy) – action
Vision fragmentation, “tunnel” vision, highlighting of separate attributes of the object => flattening, simplifying and “digitization” of “analog” perception of the non-divisible world (it is impossible to separate on wave from another of one river jet from another).


2/ The I begin to awake when I agree to emphasize one object of quality among others. Then I clutch at this quality. The quality grows and I visibility and influence grows. Then I catch attention – and OOOPS – I and MY quality already on the surface. Then evaluation after comparison produce desire to bring estimated result closer to the memory pattern (registered as a good result). Motivation gives the energy, and the action begins. At the same time (you remember that previously I’ve caught attention) it seems to observer that I was the leader in this process.
3/ Now I see that no “separate entity” can’t run the show. But when I am participant of real live situation I’m not frequently can see something more than ME and MY reactions and MY doings.
1/ Thoughts come in to possess the action field after desires manifestation (also it was described above).

A little bit disorderly… but impressions were very vivid 
Namaste 
Alexander

[Elizabeth]

Ah, good work.
You are having no trouble going down the rabbit hole, intellectually. It's fun to follow your reasoning.
Excellent. I'm glad it is vivid. I find this exciting to see, still.
Now let's place ourselves in direct experience. Very simple stuff. Watching this in real time as we go about life is enlightening.
Simply LOOK at the thoughts (you can do this when it's not too hectic, at a meal, walking slowly, reaching for the tea) as they impose a running narrative on life.
You need not stop them nor manipulate them. They just are, and you are just looking.
In reality, is there an entity which can be pointed to, that is owning, and doing life? Please check and see, there are often some thoughts there about a Watcher, or Consciousness, or I AM-ness. Spiritual meta-selves.
Can this sense of self be an artifact of thought and perception? Thoughts about thoughts about thoughts?

Love, Elizabeth

[alexnas]

Hello, Elizabeth :-)
First of all… Looking at the thoughts… It is my sore spot. I reported you formerly. I could see the thoughts only “by peripheral vision”. I only know, that they are, I see them like a shadow. When I try to look at them straight, they disappear before I can distinguish something. Have you any ideas? May be I do something wrong?
But I found now some consequence from mentioned effect. That is I am not the source and the reason of these thoughts.
And also I can’t manipulate them. I can only focus my attention in some direction. (Can I really? Or may be I can only follow the focus, sliding of on the surface of the world?)

Another one thing is more familiar. Last months (may be years) I tried to find that ME who look. Year ago I discovered one interesting thing. I was between dreaming and awakened state, when I remember the dream clearly, and simultaneously begin to feel, perceive and aware (and of course remember – connection with memory) the awakened state. I discovered that the feeling of “I” in this moment is the same in the outgoing dream and in the upcoming awaking. Absolutely the SAME ME. In two absolutely different worlds! Different people, different environment, different “my” bodies! And I was sure (and I am sure now) it isn’t feeling of body nor mind.
From this day I encountered this situation very frequently. Many times every week.
Was it some Watcher as you named it? I don’t know. I have no name for this. I can’t (and I have no any need) to manipulate something. I only look. I can only say that this sense exist.
Later I began to feel (to “tune”) this ME-INGNESS not only in the morning, also during a day, may be in some special calm environment.
I tried to throw off “I” for this feeling. Because in such cases I didn’t feel me really as some entity, and I am nowhere without any attributes. But the same time try to be honest – I feel it like me and I … (I wanted to say I feel this me separated from the other world – but in this feeling there is no anybody else, only this ME-INGNESS and a movie of the dream of a movie of the world when it is in awaken state).
So, what to do with this ME-INGNESS, because I feel it much more real than the world itself, including my body etc.
Surely this sense can’t be “artifact of thought and perception”! But it is! Nothing else has such unchangeable state. I would say it is in some another reality, but ”some another reality” is a mental projection, but the sense of ME-INGNESS is always here and I can fell it whenever I focus my attention it “this direction”.
I understand that any words I write about this feeling is wrong…
What to do?

Namaste 
Alexander

[Elizabeth]

Ah, lovely. Good stuff to work with. We will see if working on the following questions throws any light on this.

1/ Is a belief a thought ABOUT something? Does direct perception of something require a belief? Please take a little time to work out the implications of this.

You found a sense of self, we could call it a consciousness or awareness.
2/Would these also be subject to MY-nification in thought?

3/ Self-consciousness, self-awareness, would these be separate from awareness and consciousness, or part of that?

4/ Is it true, or truer to say, that there is consciousness, not MY consciousness? Especially if it has no attributes, like you say :-)

Since thoughts are hard for you to watch, we will look for the gaps. Please watch to see if thoughts are needed for moving around in life, or if quite a lot of life seems to happen, and is then attributed to self in the narrative. Timing is important!

Much love, Elizabeth

[alexnas]

-19-1000-
Hello, Elizabeth :-)

1/ A belief is a thought. It’s right. And I don’t need to believe to perceive the world. It’s a habit to substitute beliefs (thoughts, ideas from memory) for perception. It’s obvious! I have no to add here. But when I able to perceive, I can’t to describe it. Any thoughts and discussions ruin the process of perception.
2/ No, it wouldn’t. Moreover when I try to think about this or to look it as an object, I loose the focus and my attention jump at some thought concerning it.
3/ I don’t know what to answer. I know these words and know its meaning, but now I have no words about this sense and I can’t qualify it somehow and compare with something. Or may be you mean something else..?
4/ Definitely, yes. It is unusual to say so, but when I catch this sense, there is no any other who really is. Anything else is perceived like an unreal movie (not quite unreal – it is very vivid, but as a movie). You see – nevertheless some duality exist. ME (as a central focus of perception) - and some “movie”. May be my root mistake (delusion) is in separation the sense of being from the movie-world.
I used to name this central point (awareness as you said) as ME, I, MY only because of the habit of MY-nification the central point of perception.
Surely there is a consciousness!

It’s not necessary to think in order to move. For example, to walk, to drive, to play any body games. Moreover, frequently thoughts itself are the main hindrance, which make the moving less effective and optimal. And again the multiyear habit to attribute simple calculator by authorities of the chief, and then believing in this narrative about self leads to the MY-nification of the perception center.

Namaste ;~)
Alexander

[Elizabeth]

Namaste, Alexander.
Good work. As to consciousness:
"Definitely, yes. It is unusual to say so, but when I catch this sense, there is no any other who really is. Anything else is perceived like an unreal movie (not quite unreal – it is very vivid, but as a movie). You see – nevertheless some duality exist. ME (as a central focus of perception) - and some “movie”. May be my root mistake (delusion) is in separation the sense of being from the movie-world.
I used to name this central point (awareness as you said) as ME, I, MY only because of the habit of MY-nification the central point of perception.
Surely there is a consciousness!"

There is consciousness, but as as you say, there is no I there to claim it.
So, I AM consciousness is not really true.
This is a process of subtraction.
If we subtract the tendency to believe the My-nification labels on virtually everything, what is there?
Take away the layers of story and habitual appropriation of experience, and what is there?
Don't even call it MY awareness and MY consciousness, and what is there?
Don't claim the movement of the body, and what moves there?

Is it possible all this is, without an I attached?

Much love.

[alexnas]

Hello, Elizabeth 

This last task suddenly appeared too hard.
At the beginning it was very simple because all you wrote in the message was so clear and close, as voice of a friend who arrived after a long trip.
Than I began to penetrate more deeply in the meaning of the message, trying to feel and to live it in the different situations. And I encountered critical contradiction.
On the one hand I feel and understand that I’ve substituted MY-ness for the center of perception and forgot this initial and natural perception of the world.
On the other hand I can’t describe anything without using I and MY. And the habit of using this words and the further effect of usage of this words and of this way of thinking force me to believe (it seems I’ve agreed to keep up appearance that I believe) that “I turn MY head”, “I pick up a cup”, “I think”.
I can’t catch - where is my mistake?
Or perhaps I’m only in a harry?
I confused…. (But not hopeless, of course.) Help me please…
Namaste 
Alexander