Sandy is requesting a guide

[Sandy]

My name is Sandy. I’d like to request a guide.

In 2005, an inner voice told me that there was only one consciousness. I believed it, and I googled it, and that began my interest in nondualism. However, I never had any direct experiences of oneness or no-self or anything of the sort, and my interest at the time only lasted for a year or so.

Recently, I stumbled across the works of an author (Joey Lott) that rekindled my interest. I still have not had any direct experience of the type that others sometimes speak of, so for me it is all still strictly in the realm of belief.


- Sandy

[Bezuda]

I will guide you Sandy. Interesting story btw.

So tell me, what is self, I , me ?

[Sandy]

Thank you, Bezuda.


Self is the interior, responsible part. If an action is to be taken, self is the part that says, “do this, do that.”

“I” is my body, rendered without accuracy in the mind - a sketch of a face from twenty years ago, a stick for a torso, hands and limbs as necessary when they are transmitting sensation or when they are moving with a particularly deliberate motion. When I ask my heart “what am I?” I find no answer at all - the resulting silence feels as flat and opaque as thick mud.

“Me” is a similarly non-accurate image of a body with a small roundish torso that contains the heart and the emotions.

[Bezuda]

What part of you says that you are your body?

[Sandy]

My conditioning says that I am my body.

[Bezuda]

What is your conditioning? Isn't it just thought?
So what tells you that you are your body? just another thought!

Are you your body? NO! THERE IS NO SELF, so there is no one to have a body!

Do this experiment:

go around your home and move your arms and legs, and look for the one who is moving the arms and legs..

also, who's breathing?

can you find anyone?

hug.

[Sandy]

If I momentarily disregard the thought that I am moving the body, that I am the body, then of course I do not find anyone who is moving the body, who is breathing.

The exercise doesn’t last. In the next moment, once again it is I that is doing this, I that is doing that.

[Bezuda]

"In the next moment...." where did you get that information?

[Sandy]

From thought.

[Bezuda]

What is thought? Are you thought?

[Sandy]

Thought is a communication that only I can apprehend (my own thoughts, anyway). It is wrong at least as often as it is right. New thoughts can be introduced from the environment, but I can’t deliberately get rid of whatever thoughts are present. Some are forgotten sooner or later and some are not. I would gladly drop the thought that I am the body if I could.

I am not thought. Thought is like a soundtrack within my universe.

[Bezuda]

what are you then?

[Sandy]

I don’t know.

Maybe I am This - this which I see and hear right now.

But this answer does not stay with me, so can it be right?

Besides This and the thought of being the body, I have no answer.

[Bezuda]

are you really the body? where did you get that information?

[Sandy]

I really seem to be the body. If I look at my hand, and say that I will move my hand, then my hand will move and it appears that I have done it. My hand has moved in synchrony with my own wishes for forty-one years now. So in these years I have learned that I am my body. It is a story, and a story is composed of thought. Thought, referencing those years of conditioning, is where I got the information that I am the body.