Request for guide Moondog

[Andy Blackford]

Sorry Pete - I meant to add this. I noticed that there's a real qualitative difference between an action while you're doing it and the memory of having done it, even if it's only nano-seconds in the past. They're chalk and cheese: One's a movie, the other's a snapshot. One's fluid, the other's fixed (at least for a while until we start to Photoshop it, when it becomes less and less like the original event, even nominally.

[Andy Blackford]

Morning, Pete

I also meant to say that, from looking, there seems to be a crucial qualitative difference between an action as it happens and the recollection of it.

The action is a movie, but then it instantly becomes a snapshot. One is fluid and the other fixed – although we immediately commence a Photoshop process and then, well, who knows how authentic it is? However ‘true to life’ we think the snapshot is, it’s actually a universe away: it can’t begin to capture the purity of the real, momentary experience.

Andy x

[Andy Blackford]

Sorry! I don't fully understand the Posting behaviour of the site. When I looked this morning, it seemed that I hadn't posted the afterthought last night - but now it seems that I had. So you've got the same observation twice!

[moondog]

Hi Andy,

I can’t find a Self behind my everyday actions. This seems more obviously absent than in the ‘thoughts and feelings’ exercise. Perhaps about the same as in the 'sense perceptions' one.
‘No self’ is most evident of all when driving and walking. 'Driving on auto-pilot’, of course, is often used as a metaphor for the way we sleepwalk through life.

That's good to hear. I think the work you've done so far in this thread has really helped with your seeing this so clearly.

Automatic’ sounds like ‘robotic’ or ‘like an automaton’ – it’s not quite as machine-like as that seems to imply: more fluid and subtle. More intelligent, perhaps. But nevertheless, not captained by a Self.

I know what you mean; the word 'automatic' makes it all sound cold, metallic and, as you say, robotic, whereas the freedom that the realisation that there's no little-man-in-your-head running things is in complete contrast to that. I just haven't come up with a better descriptive so far. Working on it...

There is never a thought: ‘I did that’. Is that because the thing I did wasn’t very remarkable? Or because there isn’t time, I’m already on to the next thing? Instead I think it’s because there’s no instinctive attribution of the action to a Self. (This question makes a particularly good Self Test, I think). My response applies to quite complex tasks, too: for instance, when I write a poem I’m completely engaged in every moment of the process – but as soon as it’s ‘finished’, I no longer feel a sense of personal engagement with it. It’s as if someone else wrote it – even to the point where I feel like a bit of an imposter when I enter it into a competition, or when someone praises it. (I notice I’m not quite so detached when someone slags it off, however…).

That's interesting Andy. You're 'lucky' that's how that is for you. These and your subsequent observations (I don't know why this site forum behaves so weirdly at times either) show me that you've seen through this doing/acting very clearly, which is great. So, let's move on to looking at whether there's any self entity in deciding and choosing, which heavily overlaps with looking at doing and controlling. Have a go at the following exercise Andy:

Raise your right arm (or don’t). In that process of raising the right arm (or not), a decision is made, or at least something happens (or doesn’t). But can you pinpoint the actual moment of choice and find the actual entity that appears to be making that choice? In direct experience, can that moment of choice, that apparent chooser, actually be found? Or does the idea 'I just chose to (not) raise my right arm' come after the event itself?

Also, can I ask you to have a look at the following short video clip from BBC Horizon - The Secret You on Neuroscience and Freewill: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i3AiOS4nCE . It demonstrates scientifically that our decisions and choices are made a full 6 seconds before we think we make them, i.e. before a thought arises saying, "I decided to do this." There is no substitute for looking in direct experience, but this is excellent scientific corroboration for what is to be found, or rather not found, in direct experience.

Pete x

[Andy Blackford]

Hello Pete,

[quote]Raise your right arm (or don’t). In that process of raising the right arm (or not), a decision is made, or at least something happens (or doesn’t). But can you pinpoint the actual moment of choice and find the actual entity that appears to be making that choice? In direct experience, can that moment of choice, that apparent chooser, actually be found? Or does the idea 'I just chose to (not) raise my right arm' come after the event itself?

I can't identify 'who' is choosing to raise the arm, no.

As for pin-pointing the moment of choice: I can go through a rather artificial process, saying to 'myself', "In three seconds, I will raise my arm," then saying - "Now!" - and raising it. Is that identifying the moment of choice, or just a kind of pseudo-explanatory schema that post-rationalises the event?

No - wait! I've tried it again, this time not just deciding WHETHER to raise the arm, but giving myself an equal choice - raise it or hold it down. I know it's a subtle difference, but it proved to be an important one. Now I REALLY can't identify the moment of choice [see next paragraph, last sentence].

The video is fascinating. I was amazed that the lag between unconscious and conscious should be so long. Maybe that's why it's hard to identify the moment of choice - because it's already happened at a deeper level?

By the way, what happens in a boxing match? You couldn't afford to wait six seconds (so to speak) between deciding how to avoid an incoming punch and acting upon your decision?

Quite hard, this section.

A x

[moondog]

Hi Andy,

I can't identify 'who' is choosing to raise the arm, no. As for pin-pointing the moment of choice: I can go through a rather artificial process, saying to 'myself', "In three seconds, I will raise my arm," then saying - "Now!" - and raising it. Is that identifying the moment of choice, or just a kind of pseudo-explanatory schema that post-rationalises the event?
No - wait! I've tried it again, this time not just deciding WHETHER to raise the arm, but giving myself an equal choice - raise it or hold it down. I know it's a subtle difference, but it proved to be an important one. Now I REALLY can't identify the moment of choice.

Good stuff Andy. Deciding is a crucial area where many of us tend to base our identity and self and it's good that you can see that there's no separate entity of agency 'doing' any deciding or choosing.

I really don't know, but I guess boxers and others who need to react quickly in sport etc.rely on a combination of reflex and learned skill. But I can't see how this could possibly involve any self operating either, particularly as actions and reactions at lower speed don't.

So, you've now looked at seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and touching, thinking, acting/doing, controlling, choosing and deciding and you've found not a trace of a separate self.

One area where we haven't yet looked yet is the body, and whether the self is the body, or is in the body. From direct experience:

Does the body experience sensations and thoughts?

Is the "body" just another thought label for sensations (namely tactile & kinaesthetic)?

Pete x

[Andy Blackford]

Does the body experience sensations and thoughts?

Is the "body" just another thought label for sensations (namely tactile & kinaesthetic)?

Morning Pete,

Sorry it’s taken me a while – I struggled a bit yesterday. It suddenly occurred to me that this was SERIOUS – not just a diverting exercise, like interpreting a Magic Eye picture (although it is like that, in a way) but the door to a radical change in the way I look at the world and ‘my’ relationship with it. My English teacher at school once called me a debonair dilettante: he was right. I’ve always preferred to play with ideas as the cheap alternative to thoroughly engaging with them.

I’m also aware that though profoundly important, the gate is also the way to a new lightness and spaciousness that is almost playfulness. But a real, deep playfulness as opposed to a facile way of skating over difficult issues.

I also realised that the reason I keep veering away from engaging with your questions is a sort of discomfort bordering on fear. So this morning I tried confronting the fear instead of doing what I always do in meditation – that is, edge past it while looking the other way.

After an uncomfortable few minutes – I’d thought it would just turn tail and run if I face up to it, like a playground bully – I saw that the fear is really a defence mechanism that has grown too big for its boots and become the master rather than the servant. (This is true, not just in regard to this specific project, but in many areas of my life).

Anyway, back to your questions:

The body doesn’t contain or represent a Self. It doesn’t feel like a ‘me’.

It certainly doesn’t experience thoughts.

However, it DOES seem to register sensations: i.e. it reports on which bit of it is feeling physical pressure, pain, etc. But only like a simple sensor, a mechanical device. The interpretation of the report – an assessment of the seriousness of the pain, its implications - is carried out "elsewhere". So the body is not the seat of anything as (apparently) sophisticated as a Self.

Is it just a thought label? (This is hurting my brain – so to speak!) Ah! I may inadvertently have hit on something here. It really DOES feel as if my brain is hurting as it wrestles with this stuff - so perhaps the body’s pain is of the same category, ie mental, in the mind, but attributed to a particular location in the body in the same way as an automotive diagnostic system pinpoints a broken component on a schematic diagram. I don’t know – I’m wading in porridge here.

Could you help me out, please?

Andy

[moondog]

Hi Andy,

Sorry it’s taken me a while – I struggled a bit yesterday. It suddenly occurred to me that this was SERIOUS – not just a diverting exercise, like interpreting a Magic Eye picture (although it is like that, in a way) but the door to a radical change in the way I look at the world and ‘my’ relationship with it. My English teacher at school once called me a debonair dilettante: he was right. I’ve always preferred to play with ideas as the cheap alternative to thoroughly engaging with them.

I think it's a lot like the Magic Eye pictures really. You look and look and look to see what's 'hidden' there, really trying to see it. Then, perhaps you drop the effort for a bit and suddenly, 'magically' you see it. With our process of course, it's kind of the other way round, and you see or realise that the 'it' you thought was there, was never there. Also, this might happen suddenly or more gradually.

I’m also aware that though profoundly important, the gate is also the way to a new lightness and spaciousness that is almost playfulness. But a real, deep playfulness as opposed to a facile way of skating over difficult issues.

It's playful and light, and peaceful, and loving.

After an uncomfortable few minutes – I’d thought it would just turn tail and run if I face up to it, like a playground bully – I saw that the fear is really a defence mechanism that has grown too big for its boots and become the master rather than the servant. (This is true, not just in regard to this specific project, but in many areas of my life).

It's so good to see that. It brings much more ease to this looking process; and to just living life.

The body doesn’t contain or represent a Self. It doesn’t feel like a ‘me’. It certainly doesn’t experience thoughts.

Splendid.

However, it DOES seem to register sensations: i.e. it reports on which bit of it is feeling physical pressure, pain, etc. But only like a simple sensor, a mechanical device. The interpretation of the report – an assessment of the seriousness of the pain, its implications - is carried out "elsewhere". So the body is not the seat of anything as (apparently) sophisticated as a Self.

Ok, I can see that you've got that in direct experience there are various sensations that arise in awareness.

However, in direct experience can you find the 'it' that you refer to actually doing the registering of sensations? Also, is there an 'it' that reports and has various 'bits' of itself that this 'it' reports on? If you can find it, please describe this entity and explain what it is and how it functions

Is it just a thought label? (This is hurting my brain – so to speak!) Ah! I may inadvertently have hit on something here. It really DOES feel as if my brain is hurting as it wrestles with this stuff - so perhaps the body’s pain is of the same category, ie mental, in the mind, but attributed to a particular location in the body in the same way as an automotive diagnostic system pinpoints a broken component on a schematic diagram. I don’t know – I’m wading in porridge here.

The question Is the "body" just another thought label for sensations (namely tactile & kinaesthetic)? refers to the same thing as my questions above namely, aside from tactile and kinaesthetic sensations, is there anything experienced in any moment that is 'body', or is that just a label that we then attach to what has been felt, thereby bolstering up and perpetuating the self (and therefore other) illusion, and the resultant belief in, and impression of, separation?

This is good, useful stuff for this stage in the proceedings Andy.

Pete x

[Andy Blackford]

is there anything experienced in any moment that is 'body', or is that just a label that we then attach to what has been felt, thereby bolstering up and perpetuating the self (and therefore other) illusion, and the resultant belief in, and impression of, separation?

Hi Pete

I still seem to be in a state of crisis over all this. Yesterday morning I sat in a field, almost unable to move through feelings of bewilderment, disbelief, tension - it was a little unpleasant, almost like nausea induced by incipient panic.

The looking is hard - I can't seem to make myself look - 'something' keeps wrenching my attention away.

Anyway, in answer to your questions: No, I can't find the 'it' that reports, and it's clear that the body only seems to exist when there is a sensation or pain or movement involved - except to my sight sense. It is clearly 'real' in the sense that a table is real.

That's why this one has been so hard, perhaps? It's easier to think of thoughts as 'unreal' and therefore 'not me ' because they don't have physical form, or exist in time.

I'm quite tired. I definitely want this to be over (if that is a realistic expectation) and to achieve some kind of peace.

I can't concentrate on anything else until this is resolved.

Best wishes,
Andy

PS If I didn't make it quite clear in my last post (2 mins ago) I definitely don't find a 'me' in the body, which is a useful mechanical device. There is even less identification with the brain because I can't see it or feel it at all.
A

[moondog]

Hi Andy,

However, in direct experience can you find the 'it' that you refer to actually doing the registering of sensations? Also, is there an 'it' that reports and has various 'bits' of itself that this 'it' reports on? If you can find it, please describe this entity and explain what it is and how it functions

No, I can't find the 'it' that reports, and it's clear that the body only seems to exist when there is a sensation or pain or movement involved - except to my sight sense. It is clearly 'real' in the sense that a table is real.
I definitely don't find a 'me' in the body, which is a useful mechanical device. There is even less identification with the brain because I can't see it or feel it at all.

I'm happy that you cannot find a separate self in or as the body and, in turn you can see that 'body' is no more than a label attached to the panoply of arising sensations.

I still seem to be in a state of crisis over all this. Yesterday morning I sat in a field, almost unable to move through feelings of bewilderment, disbelief, tension - it was a little unpleasant, almost like nausea induced by incipient panic.

I'm sorry this is happening. Please don't think that I'm trying to belittle your experience, I remember all too well what it can be like, but these 'negative emotions' do often come up at this stage for people who are seeing that there's no self-entity. It's the ego's last stand, if you like. You told me how you successfully faced up to fear's attempted bullying, and so you already know that all of these feelings and emotions must simply be accepted, even 'welcomed', but never resisted, just allowed to abide as long as they will, and to then just fade away. Easier said than done I know, but remember there's no 'you' to make any of these feelings happen, or for them to happen to, just impersonal arisings.

The looking is hard - I can't seem to make myself look - 'something' keeps wrenching my attention away.

How can 'you' make yourself look? Who is there to do the making? Who is there to look? Thoughts may be telling you stories about not being able to look, not being able to keep 'your' attention focused etc., but the irony is that all this only seems to be true because 'your' attention is on those very thoughts! As I said before, looking/seeing (in regard to each sense arising) is effortless, like gazing out of a window, or hearing traffic go by, only thought can tell you different.

We've now been through all areas of experience and, despite what you've just been saying, you've also told me that you've found no trace of a separate self anywhere. So, now seems like a good time to go over all you've done so that we can pinpoint and look deeper at any areas that you'd like look at again for any evidence of a separate self lurking there.

As always, in direct experience:

Have you been able to find, a ‘self’ that is the ‘experiencer’?

Or a self that is the doer, or can control what happens?

Or a self that ‘makes’ decisions?

Or a self who ‘does the thinking’?

Is the "body" just another thought label for sensations (namely tactile & kinesthetic)?

Are the five body senses made to arise or experienced by this ‘self’?

Is there a self ‘in here’ which is separate from the world and others ‘out there’?

Is there doubt or unclarity that in all these cases the ‘self’ is nothing other than a mental fabrication?

And finally:

Are there any doubts about seeing through the illusion of separate self?

This might seem like a bit if a long list of questions but the answers can be brief, unless of course there's something you want to examine some more. As I've said, basically, we just need to tidy up and identify any areas that may need to be looked into a bit more deeply, or clarified.

Believe me Andy, this has gone really well.

Pete x

[Andy Blackford]

Thank you for that, Pete - quite heartening. I just want to add how grateful I am to you for all this. You must have the patience of a bodhisattva to put up with all this confusion and blathering. It is hugely appreciated. x

[Andy Blackford]

Dear Pete
Sorry I haven’t managed to get in touch before – I did try last night – but up here we’re rather dependent on the goodwill of others for an Internet connection.
I think this exchange will be a highly-significant one, as I’ve tried to summarise my current place in the process and to articulate my final doubts. I’ve also asked some (to me) important questions the answers to which, I hope, will really clear the decks for me to fully embrace this new awareness.

Q1 Have you been able to find…’experiencer’?
No. There is just experience. The ‘experiencer’ seems to be purely notional, and vanishes if interrogated or scrutinised.

Q2 Or a self that is the doer?
This is subtler – or rather more intuitively embedded. But no, on examination, there is a strange impersonality about the way ‘my’ actions occur.

Q3 Or a self that makes decisions?
Thing is, the word ‘decision’ rather implies a decider: it supports the idea of personal action, so skews the odds for a Self in its favour. This is true of all language, because it’s structurally dualistic (subject/object).

Q4 Or a self that does the thinking?
Thoughts just arise, but not at random – presumably through the complex interactions of Conditionality? Otherwise, how do some people think more skilfully and ethically than others? (eg Pete H vs some of my murderous prisoner students?)

Q5 + 6 Is the body another thought label… etc Are the five body senses…by this self?
‘I’ can’t ‘make’ sense information arise – and when it does, it’s not appropriated or controlled by a Self.

Q7 Is there a self ‘in here’ (etc)?
By a process of elimination, it doesn’t seem so. And even if there were, it isn’t obvious what role it could perform.

Q8 Is there doubt or unclarity… (etc)?
The Self does seem to be a mental fabrication – a phantom, a linguistic shorthand for collected memories and habits.

Q9 Are there any doubts about seeing through the illusion of separate self?
OK, so I haven’t found a ‘self’ in any of the locations we’ve covered. This has had a positive effect – I’m often flooded with an exhilarating feeling of freedom. I’m not troubled by my customary dull background anxiety, I don’t constantly feel as if I’ve ‘transgressed against an unwritten law’. If I do catch myself feeling this, I just contemplate the new revelation (awareness) of no-selfness and it disappears. I realise that fear is frightened of its own shadow.
So on the bright side, something is changing. Have you ever seen an albatross trying to get airborne? It’s the most ungainly sight. It lumbers along, swerving, skidding and bouncing. And then at last it’s flying and in its element, graceful, powerful and instinctive. That’s how I feel – the clumsy bit, that is, not the soaring bit. Still not airborne but nearly there, with glimpses of how it could be.
So what’s troubling me? I know you say that this Liberation is not something that can be intellectually apprehended. And I understand this, in a way – that the language of words and concepts is unfitted for this sort of work: wooden, clunky, stuck in a dualistic model of the world.
But… But I still need to resolve the apparent paradox – that some agency is writing this to you – that something is ‘looking’ for a Self because Pete instructed it to – that something wanted to do this exercise in the first place, because it already had an intuition of the truth.
Take the Fear thing: I’ve confronted this old, chronic ailment and reduced its power over me. But what was the agency that deliberately brought awareness to bear upon the fear, and diminished it by seeing it for what it was?
‘I’ sat on my cushion this morning and ‘I’ seemed to make a conscious decision to spend the next half-hour making quite sure there was no Self to be found. When other thoughts tried to interrupt this Mind Operation with irrelevant fantasies, plans, etc, I was able to make a conscious effort to steer my mind back to the work in hand – the looking for a self.
So tell me, what was happening here? I wasn’t just blowing helplessly about like a cork on the ocean – I was using the time to engage in a specific task.
This is a very particular example but my confusion extends to the bigger picture. I teach meditation to prisoners. Believe me, I could quite easily have turned out to be one of them. But at some point, after what seemed like some important moral and practical decisions (I could give you dates) I decided to try to follow the Dharma instead.
The LU model doesn’t seem to leave any room for this kind of effort, for moral improvement (or the opposite). Ilona (in Gatecrashers) actually tells Matt: ‘There is no free will’. I just don’t buy that. I don’t recognise a world in which everything is rigid, set in stone, predestined, the ‘will of Allah’, que sera sera.
What’s happening when a brilliant mathematician sits down quietly and ‘thinks through a problem’? What’s the difference between a wild guess and the result of careful ratiocination which traditionally improves the odds of a more correct conclusion?

Maybe it’s all Conditionality at work – pratītya samutpāda? Maybe, in a sense, the resolution of all of the countless factors affecting the moment could be nothing other than it is. Maybe the notion that we ‘change’ anything, make a skilful or unskilful choice, is just the distortion cause by our narrow, subjective viewpoint. That once you recognise that there is no Self, then you see the vast expanse of Life from a great height, as it were, and recognise that everything is as it must be, and could not have been any other way.
If that is so, then I can just let go of the handlebars, as in my poem, and not fret about it – because I don’t need a Self for the right thing to happen. This is highly counter-intuitive, of course – like the handlebars - and maybe that’s the reason I’m struggling so much.

Is that it?

I feel that I must be satisfied on this point, otherwise the world doesn’t make sense and the no-Self ‘hypothesis’ must be wrong somehow - e.g. perhaps the reason I can’t see the Self is because I can’t look at my own eye. Or some such.
Anyway, I shall await your reply with baited breath. I do feel as if I’m on the way to a big, liberating change.

Love,
Andy
PS We’re travelling home tomorrow afternoon, so at the very least I’ll be able to pick up messages in the evening.

[moondog]

Hi Andy,

Are there any doubts about seeing through the illusion of separate self?

OK, so I haven’t found a ‘self’ in any of the locations we’ve covered. This has had a positive effect – I’m often flooded with an exhilarating feeling of freedom. I’m not troubled by my customary dull background anxiety, I don’t constantly feel as if I’ve ‘transgressed against an unwritten law’. If I do catch myself feeling this, I just contemplate the new revelation (awareness) of no-selfness and it disappears. I realise that fear is frightened of its own shadow.

That's brilliant! Great to know that.

My job as guide is very simple. It's to encourage you at every opportunity to look into 'your' actual experience, i.e. direct experience, to see whether there's a separate self anywhere, in any way at all. I'm really glad that you've looked so thoroughly and found no such entity. There's no self-entity present doing anything and never was. That being so, only thoughts, the concepts therein, their messages, can convince you otherwise, despite and in complete contradiction to 'the evidence of your own eyes'. Your questions, confusions and doubts all come from thoughts. Thoughts, that in certain limited, specific contexts can be really useful, crucial even, in planning, practical analysis etc. But when it comes to trying to figure out reality - useless, or we'd all have done that. It can't be figured out and so I've no answers to your questions that could possibly help. Even if I could come up with crisp answers about how each of us as body-minds respond to instructions, learn, do anything, it would still be more conceptual garbage in the context of whether there's a separate self. There are no conceptual answers.

Throughout this process of looking, all that can get in the way is belief in what thoughts are telling you, preferring what they might be saying to the truth that's always there in front of your nose. A lifetime's habit of this belief in a self gives rise to a significant amount of resistance in the form of thoughts throwing up all kinds of fear, doubt and confusion. The arising of these thoughts can continue for quite some time after the illusion of self is clearly seen to be just another thought although, deprived of a self-nucleus, their potency fades. But, so long as thought is recognised for what it is - not reality - then the truth shown in direct experience is seen to be just that. However, if the doubts and queries that thought continually throws up are preferred and believed, the truth that there is no separate self will continue to be hidden under a veil of stories and excuses.

By the way, clearly without a self free will makes no sense, but I wonder why you think that connotes fate, rigidity, predestination etc. My experience is quite the opposite. Without the illusion of a self-entity, life unfolds freely, as it always had done. I just didn't realise that before I saw the truth.

Anyway, it's notable that, having posed your questions and expressed your doubts, you address and seem to pretty much reconcile them in your final main paragraph.

Having said all that, I think it would be good to look at all this from a slightly different angle Andy:

With 'you' revealed as a thought story, what remains?

What experiences?

What thinks?

What does?

What is aware?

We're getting 'there' :)

Pete x

[Andy Blackford]

Hi Pete,

Here at last. A day of contemplation, walking, sitting. So here goes:

With 'you' revealed as a thought story, what remains?

An undeniable physical entity that can be seen, described, touched. And a sense of being.

What experiences?

Nothing. Certainly not a me’. Experiences just happen. Not randomly, but they just occur.

What thinks?

Nothing ‘thinks’. (All of these words are active verbs, and so carry an expectation of agency or authorship – they’re already prejudiced, as it were, towards a subject-object view of being).
Thoughts just arise, independently and impersonally. Not randomly – sometimes the structure of the conditionality beneath them is visible, like bones beneath flesh – sometimes the conditions are too obscure and subtle to be visible (as some dreams can be attributed to specific events and others not).
Perhaps they're generated by the mind, but the mind comes with its own problems (see below).

What does?

Not ‘the body’ which certainly isn’t the seat of a Self. The body is a sort of convenient collective, but I don’t have sense of it as an entity. (It's like the LU example of the University, which doesn’t really exist in itself but is an agglomeration of qualities and aspects). On a practical level, these limbs and organs do act and move, but automatically like a wonderfully sophisticated robot.

What is aware?

Again, not a ‘me’. Awareness is just there – a sense of being that is impersonal, unattributable to anything private and internal.
I’m tempted to say that the mind is aware. But ‘mind’ feels like a convenient catch-all.
In fact, I don’t feel as if ‘I’ have a mind – there’s just a sense of being present – consciousness? But the presence is huge, immeasurable and impersonal: it isn’t specific to the entity that I am. The entity that is writing this is only a part of it, or one manifestation of it.

This is the best I can do: things seem clearer than they were. I'm still somewhat muddled about awareness/mind/consciousness - whether they're the same, and if not, what their relationship is, one to another. And does it matter, since they're words and concepts?

A x

[moondog]

Hi Andy,

I'm still somewhat muddled about awareness/mind/consciousness - whether they're the same.

In the way I use these words, I see no difference between 'awareness' and 'consciousness'. 'Mind' is often used in the same way in Buddhist texts, as I'm sure you know. However, confusingly sometimes, in a modern context 'mind' is often used really as just another word for thoughts and thinking.

With 'you' revealed as a thought story, what remains?

An undeniable physical entity that can be seen, described, touched. And a sense of being.

I don't think that such a thing as a 'physical entity' (or indeed any 'thing') can be found in direct experience. Indeed, later in your post you say, the body is a sort of convenient collective, but I don’t have sense of it as an entity. Anyway, we're really only concerned here to establish conclusively whether 'you' can find a separate self in or as the body (as well as everywhere else) and you've been very clear that you have not been able to do so, either in the body or anywhere, so there's no point in pursuing the body/label aspect further just for the sake of it.

Along with my comments, the most recent questions look like they've helped you to clarify stuff. Your answers to all of the other questions are spot on and show the clarity of your seeing. So, unless you've any further points you want to raise, please answer the following 'final questions'.

When answering question 5, please give specific and very recent examples from direct experience. Once I get your answers, and have clarified anything I might need to, I'll put them forward for other guides for any comments. Then I'll arrange for you to get access to various aftercare and other groups on Facebook and the LU site. Please either let me know here or, if you prefer, PM it to me.

Always from direct experience.

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

2) Explain in detail what the illusion of separate self is, when it starts and how it works from your own experience. Describe it fully as you see it now.

3) How does it feel to see this? What is the difference from before you started this dialogue? Please report from the past few days.

4) What was the last bit that pushed you over, made you look?

5) Describe decision, intention, free will, choice and control. What makes things happen? How does it work? What are you responsible for?

Please give examples from recent experience.

6) Anything to add?

I'd just like to say how pleased I am, and how happy I am for 'you' in the way that this has gone Andy.

Pete x