First, thank you again for being on this journey with me. I truly appreciate you.
I decided to meditate and get still. I could feel that things were to busy and I wasn't calm enough...my mind wasn't calm enough for me to "pin" it down to look at it. Felt like I was trying to chase a 2 year old that didn't want to take a bath. ha ha!
Awareness is just a thought. If there where no thoughts about anything? What remains. Just simply the experience, here now, happening. The mystery. Thoughts in this example are trying to make sense of a world of with symbols (in this case the symbol awareness), and a symbol cannot describe the reality you see. Have a look for yourself.
I saw this. I loved an analogy I heard from Michael Singer once about that we are like a man sitting on the edge of a lake and the lake is our mind/psyche and rocks that create ripples are the world and just life happening. We can't control the rocks. We can't control the ripples those rocks cause in our mind/pysche. And if we try to jump in and stop the ripples...we create more. Instead, we sit on the outside of the lake and notice and just become basically OKAY with the ripples and with the rocks and with the lake...knowing things will move in and out of it and it doesn't change the fact that we are still outside of the lake. So, basically one of my favorite descriptions of mindfulness.
However, as I was being still with my eyes closed, I was thinking of this piece you mentioned on awareness. And I noticed that the man sitting on the side of the lake is as much of the thoughts and as much of an illusion as everything else. I started getting a vision of him melting into the water...all of it melting together to become one big water. Lots of thoughts came up and I kept lovingly swiping them into the water. And then I would have a thought about swiping them into the water as all and I would swipe that thought. I could see clearly that it all was there together. All thoughts, all thoughts about thoughts, all conclusions about those thoughts and even me thinking I am observing the thoughts...even that is a subtle form of an "I". I could feel that. Very cool.
I did notice that I couldn't stop and be still enough to be in the space of no thought. And that to me is the knowing of their is no I. I think? I allowed it though. I felt the frustration come up and I allowed that to be there without trying to change it. Seeing it as a thought. I allowed my need to "get this" to come up once yet again...and allowed it as a thought.
Going further with that. How can you see it and not see it? Arent these just stories? Isnt going in and out of seeing also a story which is happening in the same way you open and close your hand? Than what is there to find, to see, if there is no I?
Then I moved on to this last piece and brought it up. I could see this. I can see this. My story of getting it and not getting it are all just part of the play. And the thought that there is something to find or something to get would have to be constructed within the play of the "I". This was felt. And honestly, I still feel moving in and out of it.
The only thing I could capture....and its odd to try to describe it to you because as soon as I use words, I feel I have dropped back into wanting an outcome. Very confusing to me. But it felt like the whole lake analogy ....just all of it is part of the play. And I am not back behind it watching. I am nothign. There is nothing. And I don't know how to describe NO feeling or NO anything. I can sense it....every so lightly though.