Would be grateful for help with focusing my enquiry

[spektrolyte]

2. Please take a moment now to describe the current experience, noting all the sensations with all the available senses.
When we take away all labels and judgments does this experience feel like it's alive or dead?
What should be different from the way it is now? Or, put another way, what is imperfect in this present experience?

whirr of the computer
pressure in head
pressure & tightness in neck, left thigh & calf
dry sensation in the throat
stillness in the room
silence outside noticeable by the absence of the sound of rain heard previously
sight of various objects
feeling of tiredness
glare of 2 screens and various LEDs
touch of the fingers in contact with the computer keyboard

The experience is alive, always changing.
What is imperfect? - the sensations in the body, best described as pain (fibromyalgia). the rest is out of my control so it is what it is.

3. Then, please could you repeat the exercise where you sit for two minutes and note down all that is experienced, so that we can look into this in detail. After you have done it, after each item label it either (T) or (E).

a strange noise occurred in my ears like a hissing (E)
there is a popping sensation at the top of my right leg (E)
the network drive on the other side of the room makes the occasional BRRR (E)
i should put some more wood on the fire (T)
my feet are going numb from sitting still (E)
i should just use the language which comes naturally (T)
i am thirsty (E) and need a drink (T)

So.... can life be allowed to present a FULL spectrum of colours as part of Life's tapestry? Should it be any other way?
or is there an expectation only to have fluffy pink and lemon yelloW?
i.e. to be exempted from the whole all-round experience....

In short there is an expectation that the darker colours i.e. pain could go away. This is all I can seem to focus on, somehow escaping from the endless pain and sense of being a victim of life. I hop I understood the questions better this time.

[ElPortal]

HI Thom

Thanks for that response. I am going to keep my posts short.

In short there is an expectation that the darker colours i.e. pain could go away. This is all I can seem to focus on, somehow escaping from the endless pain and sense of being a victim of life. I hop I understood the questions better this time.

When you read what you wrote above, please describe what sensations come up in the body. Describe them in detail. Notice whether they have a shape, a colour, any movement. Stay with them a while. We are looking at how this expectation actual FEELS. Can these sensations actually be embraced?

What is imperfect? - the sensations in the body, best described as pain (fibromyalgia). the rest is out of my control so it is what it is.

Are THESE sensations embraced, or are they resisted? Are they alive or are they dead (remember our discussion)?

Spend time with each of these, and try to FEEL OUT the sensations that are there.

Cheers

Mark

[spektrolyte]

Hello Mark,

It seems that things have moved on since yesterday.

When you read what you wrote above, please describe what sensations come up in the body. Describe them in detail. Notice whether they have a shape, a colour, any movement. Stay with them a while. We are looking at how this expectation actual FEELS. Can these sensations actually be embraced?

The expectation feels like the moment before a car crash. Like a sense of unavoidable doom and despair. It is in the heart and the stomach and the pelvis. A heaviness, a dead feeling. it is soft, cold, rough. As I write this I realise it is very much alive. There is a sense of terror at trying to embrace this. Like there is something immensely valuable to be lost if I do.

Are THESE sensations embraced, or are they resisted? Are they alive or are they dead (remember our discussion)?

They are alive and I wish they would die. They are resisted. Yesterday the pain in the left leg particularly was very sharp. The more I investigated it the sharper it became. Like a living knife sharpening itself upon observation. The sensation was hard and loud and heavy like something trying to escape which couldn't.

Other feelings have surfaced but articulating them proves difficult.

Thank you,

Thom

[ElPortal]

Hi Thom,

Thanks for verbalising it all as best you can, and for your honesty.

There is a sense of terror at trying to embrace this. Like there is something immensely valuable to be lost if I do.

What if it's the other way around? That something terrifying were being held onto which if released would reveal something immensely valuable? Consider....

Here is a procedure that can be used whenever 'unwelcome' or difficult feelings/emotions come up, or resistance to something. I call it Looking into Resistance:-

1. Notice the resistance, or 'difficult' emotion or 'unwelcome' feeling, along with the story/narrative with it.
2. Now, leaving aside the story and focus on the feeling itself behind the story. Notice all bodily sensations, their location, qualities, apparent shape, even colour, movement etc. Give this time. No need to fight them.
3. Instead of turning away from it (a natural reaction!), can it be turned towards with curiosity and affection, embraced, like little child or a pet, come for attention.
4. Ask if it has come to show you something and then allow any images or other explanations to arise. (For example, is it trying to protect you from something?) If not, that's fine; if so, thank it, and notice any further physical sensations which arise from these (going back to step 2. and working through again).
5. Notice the sensations staying as long as they want to, and subside or leave whenever they are ready.

Maybe you'd like to give it a go with one or other of these reactions, whichever is foremost.

Cheers

Mark

[spektrolyte]

The idea of letting go the feelings about what was done to 'me' feels like death. Feels like it would be the last act of failure in a long list of nothing but failure the whole life.

Right now it feels like I am confronting things so deep they started before I developed language, just a primordial raw emotional energy so prevalent under everything else that I don't see the edge of it or any way in.

It is an utterly invasive sense of ill will to everything and anything which even looks like it might wish to cause 'me' any stress. "How dare you, :I: have suffered enough..." etc.

There is so much invested in my abhoration of what 'happened' to 'me'. There is this blockage in the flow of love, both to myself and everything else. I can feel it in the centre of the back. It's hard, heavy, tight, cold, rough, and cohesive.

When asked if it had come to show me something the immediate answer came "That you are not you". Not even words in the mind, just a knowing that it was the answer.

The feeling in the back changes somehow, the roughness gives way to a more relaxed feeling, and a smooth sticky heaviness appears in the stomach. That again gives way to a constriction at the back of the neck and it goes on and on.

I have spent so long engaging with this stuff inside and all I got was pain. There is a sense of 'don't go there, you know it's just more pain'. Seems like it's just a case of plucking up enough courage...

[ElPortal]

HI Thom,

Thanks for that. Maybe give it another 24 hours... and see what else comes up, entertaining the possibility that all that comes up - even the heavy stuff - is coming as a friend? The Looking into Resistance procedure is there to be used.

Let me know how that goes.

Cheers

Mark

[spektrolyte]

Another idea has just come up, that of "Thom"="PAIN'. When I really look for myself what I always find is this undesirable sensation called pain.

Also I notice a sense of guilt and the thought that I responding too quickly. Your reply feels like a telling-off although I know it isn't.

The previous round of self investigation (2013) scared me somehow and since then I have not wanted to look very deeply. I am starting to realise that I need to go back there. The exercise helps, a new take on a familiar idea, and the course of enquiry seems to be taking a new direction. Will continue...

Thanks ;)

[ElPortal]

Thanks for that, Thom

Also I notice a sense of guilt and the thought that I responding too quickly. Your reply feels like a telling-off although I know it isn't.

Another feeling/reaction that can be looked into, the stories, the sensations, any message... etc

Speak soon.

Warmly

Mark

[ElPortal]

Another idea has just come up, that of "Thom"="PAIN'.

Is that a (T) or (E)?

M

[spektrolyte]

Mark, I have been doing as you suggest with the exercise.

Thom = Pain = (T), but during the experience it was a realisation that the only thing i could find called Thom was also the thing being called pain.

its difficult to describe the experience of staying with those emotions in a message board thread. there is just a raw soup of primal emotions in a place way before words. it feels like i engaged with it to the extent that it has broken me, paralysed me in some way. yesterday there was anger at some of the ideas which arose as part of the investigation,

since returning to this style of investigation with such consistency as i have there is a deep sense of torment, like I am a hamster on a solar powered wheel which never stops. the thing which has the problem IS the problem but all these ideas are just more objects, each one reinforcing the sense of duality. i am starting to become disillusioned with this world of objects, it has somehow lost it’s colour. add to this the prior understanding of dependent origination meaning none of it is my doing anyway and I (the mind) have no option but to give up completely.

So what is keeping me here? How could life possibly be better with me in the middle of it causing such a disturbance?

[ElPortal]

Hi Thom

Thanks for that.

Another idea has just come up, that of "Thom"="PAIN'. When I really look for myself what I always find is this undesirable sensation called pain.

1. (T) or (E)?
2. So, is 'PAIN' relief what is sought here or is it possible that Life is perfect just as it is appearing?
3. LOOK, in this moment. Take a moment to sense all the sensations, their aliveness. Note them (noticing their (E) behind their (T)'s (labels). What is it that is judging them as imperfect? Is there anyone there to do that?

Cheers

Mark

[ElPortal]

Would you like to look further into this sense of 'torment' and the 'feeling paralysed' and 'broken'?

M

[spektrolyte]

1. (T) or (E)?
2. So, is 'PAIN' relief what is sought here or is it possible that Life is perfect just as it is appearing?
3. LOOK, in this moment. Take a moment to sense all the sensations, their aliveness. Note them (noticing their (E) behind their (T)'s (labels). What is it that is judging them as imperfect? Is there anyone there to do that?

1. (T), but it was an 'insight' or understanding which somehow seems more important, but that is nonetheless also a (T)

2. "I have suffered enough already and deserve a way out" seems to be the best way to describe it. Life does not seem perfect just as it is appearing because the pain is too great, but that is again a (T).

3. Whenever I look into this idea of it al just being play, what happens is that the pain seems more real. There is a stubborn something that does not want to budge in it's judgement of the unacceptability of the pain. That something is just another (E) but it has a certain power, one that I feel I am giving in to (T). When considering the (T) that arises here, the (E) is a tightness in the chest, stomach and left leg.

[ElPortal]

Hi Thom,

Ok, thanks for those.

Mark: 2. So, is 'PAIN' relief what is sought here or is it possible that Life is perfect just as it is appearing?
Thom: "I have suffered enough already and deserve a way out" seems to be the best way to describe it. Life does not seem perfect just as it is appearing because the pain is too great, but that is again a (T).

If the main yen is for pain relief, 'improvement of, or escape from, my life' then our investigation here is redundant. A therapist, or life coach would probably be more useful for that.
But if there is an urge to look the situation in the face, look ALL the manifestations of Life in the face, put the 'head into the jaws of the lion' then the investigation is alive.

Please consider really carefully, and let me know of these two which feels more true?

Thanks

Mark

[spektrolyte]

There is no life to coach, let's continue.