conceptual understanding into experience

[valentine]

does 'willing' really need to be any different in how it arises and passes from 'feeling', 'thinking', 'seeing' and so on? Compare your ideas about 'willing' with your experience of it - do your ideas measure up?

Intention is just another type of thought isn't it?
I don't how it happens, how it arises, I don't know where the momentum between two connect thoughts lies.
I don't know where fantasies or memories are held and I don't know what it means to decide so I don't know what it means to be good - or bad... and right now I don't really mind.

I just cannot find a self

OK. What next?!

[perrym]

Hi Valentine,

I just cannot find a self

OK. What next?!

:-)

OK, jolly good!

Well, we could take a 'grand tour' of some standard questions - these are a pretty good way of checking whether there is anything we've missed...

How would you answer this question, for example?

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

[valentine]

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

Good Morning
In direct experience, sitting with eyes closed, no there is nothing separate from the sensations, thoughts, environment, feelings and watching.
I don't imagine there ever could have been. How could there have been?
I don't 'understand' it but there seems to be a gigantic spontaneity, a vast intricate interaction of factors and history.

Strangely, that feels quite ordinary. Not like some big revelation.

That is causing me to wonder still if it has gone in deep?
Your metaphor of the train, still rolling along with momentum, even when the engine has stopped, really helped.
When I am going about my daily business, am I still acting as if there is a self? Sill waking with anxieties about money, the future, Brexit.. Spinning neurotic stories. When I examine those stories - they still seem to have a 'me' in them: 'what will happen to 'me' etc.?'

Sorry, I know we covered this - but I still seem to be wondering

thanks!

[perrym]

Hi Valentine,

Lovely answer, thanks!

... wonder still if it has gone in deep?

'depth' is a metaphor - it might not be the most useful one in this case. I would say that you have seen as deeply as you need to for now ... the next step is to see the same truth in more and more places, in other words, more 'breadth' rather than 'depth'.

The fact is: while 'vision' can happen in a flash, 'transformation' always takes time.

The tension you are pointing to, between a new way of seeing, and the habits of a lifetime, is exactly what drives the transformation from here onward. Your sense that there is more to do, that many habits have not been touched, is neither irrelevant nor a problem, but the very stuff of a new kind of spiritual practice.

You give a perfect example of the ongoing process of transformation in the light of vision when you say that

When I examine those stories - they still seem to have a 'me' in them

Excellent! So you are continuing to examine your experience, and you now notice that some habitual stories don't quite make sense in the light of what you have recently discovered. Perhaps, although they are very familiar, are no longer entirely believable? Perhaps like a story about Santa Clause - the plot might be interesting, but since the central character is fictional, it is not something to take too seriously!

This is an extremely potent observation, even though it might seem quite quiet and ordinary. And having made the observation, really nothing more needs to be done - that particular story has been dealt a blow, and next time, it will return with a little less force and conviction. And so your new vision gradually brings about a transformation, just by patiently looking at the ordinary experience in this new light.

Does this resonate at all?

If you are ready for another question, you could tackle the one below, but I am happy to dwell on the above if you prefer....

"Can you 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."

Perry

[valentine]

Hi Valentine,

"Can you 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."

Perry

Hi!

I am going to dive straight in with this, and the first thing to say is that I now find it rather difficult to answer!

This feels a bit like an academic description:

It begins in the morning with waking and physical consciousness. After a few moments of fuzzy fairly blank awareness, a feeling begins - usually a slight feeling of what I label anxiety - what I have to do today, how things, general fears about the future, what has happened recently. These fantasies / projections / memories have a 'me' as their subject. Around are familiar things of my life: the house clothes, family. There is an sense of things to be done. In the background (is that right?) is a conglomeration of recent and far memories, personal history, identity with this body, a sense of continuity back to childhood.

Throughout the day, there is the recognition of others, routines, habits, interactions, things liked and disliked, more fears anticipation, physical sensations, plans.

Somehow, along with my physical identity and particular history in the world these conspire to convince to form the idea of a self - something that is directing things, that needs to be protected, that is always potentially under threat, that can be built up further, that has some very beautiful things about it.

This has been going on a long time - and is reinforced in the company of others

I feel I am not really answering your question here- but it now seems not so easy to!

The fact is: while 'vision' can happen in a flash, 'transformation' always takes time.

I was SO ready to hear that

Thanks a lot!

[perrym]

Hi Valentine,

Thanks for that - it didn't sound too academic to me, but I think I know what you mean ... with this question, you're having to describe your recollections rather than what is going on this very moment.

See what you make of this one:

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

best wishes

Perry

[valentine]

Hi Valentine,

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

Hi Perry.

One of the main things is that I notice is how much the image of an 'i' or 'me' has been at the centre of my thinking, how I react or respond to people. For example, it is there in the desire for approval. It underpins my anger - so for example when I have a situation with a problematic neighbour, I can see how quickly my mind spins out scenarios with 'me' as victim, 'me' as victor, 'me' justified. And I see that it has always been there in the choices I have made - not perhaps as the only factor but always shading choices in some way. And as I have said, it is there is in anxiety. ambitious or aggrandising fantasies. It is very much there in relationships. It has been the filter through which I hear conversations.

So, has all that stopped? No but it seems to have slowed. There is a gap when I can see the mechanism starting operate and often catch it when it has. Of course, I have caught myself in reactivity before - as a result of mediation practice and being a relatively aware person - but I notice that whereas previously catching myself in some angry self- referential mental scenario would bring with it a kind of 'moral' judgemental thought that this was a 'wrong' or unskilful thing to so, it has started to be more like just seeing a delusion going on.

I have had moments (sitting with eyes closed) when there is just experience - just sensations thoughts, environment with no sense of separation or a desire for there to be one. No separate watcher. For sure I have had similar experiences previously but there was always a sense it was happening to me, or that I was doing it. I don't think I have seen the spontaneity of things in this way. These moments do not extend through the day, through my whole experience - I get very caught up in thinking and doing.

And I am still working with 'intention' and will - to experience fully that they also arise just as a thought.
That is a sticky thing. It isn't that I can see an intendor but more that at some gut level, I can feel some resistance to let go of that belief - it so dramatic to do so.

thanks!

[perrym]

Hi Valentine,

Thanks for that, it gives a good picture of where you're at.

I wonder if we should spend more time around 'intention? The next-but-one question in the standard list addresses this area directly, so let's take the questions out of order .... see what you make of this one!

"Describe decision, intention, free will, choice and control. What makes things happen? How does it work? What are you responsible for? Give examples from experience."

best wishes,

Perry

[valentine]

Hi Valentine,

Hello Perry

As strange thing happened. Since the weekend a sort of cloud of thinking descended upon me - making it quite hard to focus on the process. The clarity of the last few weeks was replaced by a sort of fog obscuring my looking. Maybe that is some resistance

"Describe decision, intention, free will, choice and control. What makes things happen? How does it work? What are you responsible for? Give examples from experience."

Right, to these questions:

I can see Choice - as I experienced through your bookshelf excercise - arising spontaneously, conditioned by a myriad of past experiences and factors. That seems relatively straightforward.
Not so Intention or Decision - not yet.
These seem to go on inside conscious thinking
For instance, I just felt a sensation I labelled as 'I'm hungry', I half rose to go get some food, noticed, then thought 'i will finish writing first'. This felt like a willed decision - a deliberation implementation of thought and action after that first spontaneous 'i am hungry'.

If I reflect on the process, as before with labelling , it all seems to have happened too quickly for a 'me' to have come up with any it - I can sort of 'see' that but here is still a feeling that I am willing it. Argh!
Where is that feeling?
It's not a feeling, it's a belief
What is that?
I have no idea
Where is it?
I have no idea
What is it like?
There is just a sense of holding on - a physical tensions partly?

Free will is the principle that we can choose our actions, beliefs, values. That we direct our own lives
In experience, at least partly I can see things just arising without choice
This process undermines that principle
But how is it different than fatalism?
Is that a belief that I am unwilling to give up?
That is all just happening with watching going on? That i cannot intervene?

I know I am supposed be answering questions, not asking them - but this is my response today - inside it and wriggling around!

thanks!

[perrym]

Hi Valentine,

The clarity of the last few weeks was replaced by a sort of fog obscuring my looking. Maybe that is some resistance

Sorry to hear that!

True, this might be some kind of reaction to what we are doing, but fortunately we don't need to know or find out the cause - just notice what is going on, even when 'what is going on' is primarily invasive (or evasive!) thoughts.

I can see Choice - as I experienced through your bookshelf excercise - arising spontaneously, conditioned by a myriad of past experiences and factors. That seems relatively straightforward.

OK, great

Not so Intention or Decision - not yet.
These seem to go on inside conscious thinking
For instance, I just felt a sensation I labelled as 'I'm hungry', I half rose to go get some food, noticed, then thought 'i will finish writing first'. This felt like a willed decision - a deliberation implementation of thought and action after that first spontaneous 'i am hungry'.

"a deliberate implementation of thought and action" - you have a lovely turn of phrase!

this is where you need to turn your attention, as indeed you have done:

If I reflect on the process, as before with labelling , it all seems to have happened too quickly for a 'me' to have come up with any it - I can sort of 'see' that but here is still a feeling that I am willing it. Argh!

Yes, so the nub is this "feeling that I am willing it" ... and as you discover:

It's not a feeling, it's a belief

Great, this really is very good - you've burrowed down into the experience really well. Any you can go further: what is this belief, exactly?

Again, you've done really well guiding yourself:

a sense of holding on - a physical tensions partly?

... yes, this is part of the experience of belief - and a bit more too? An element of thinking / ideas, surely? So these, too, you discover, though perhaps here you are voicing ideas you identify with, rather than ideas that you've noticed to be part of the direct experience of belief:

Free will is the principle that we can choose our actions, beliefs, values. That we direct our own lives
In experience, at least partly I can see things just arising without choice
This process undermines that principle
But how is it different than fatalism?
Is that a belief that I am unwilling to give up?
That is all just happening with watching going on? That i cannot intervene?

so this is the 'thought/idea' component of the belief .... essentially, that "there must be free will, because the alternative is fatalism". An here, I think, we have reached the nub of it all.

Where to from here? This is the most direct approach: investigate intention and willing some more in direct experience, and notice, as you have already done, how it is made up - how it is in part belief, the belief that "I am willing this", how this is made up of physical sensations of tension, along with thoughts/ideas about free will and fatalism. Ask : is "I" to be found in any of these elements? And most particularly: do these thoughts about free will and fatalism arise from or require "I"?

This is another way of asking: is a thought just a thought? Are thoughts about free will and fatalism any more special, hallowed or 'real' than any other thought arising and passing in experience? Do these questions need to be definitively answered, or can they be witnessed as thoughts, and released as thoughts?

Or are these thoughts concerning free will and fatalism burning hot, feeling so urgent and real that they simply have to be answered on their own terms?

best wishes,

Perry

[valentine]

Hi!

This was very useful

so this is the 'thought/idea' component of the belief .... essentially, that "there must be free will, because the alternative is fatalism". An here, I think, we have reached the nub of it all.

Yes you nailed it, this, it seems, is the nub of it for me.

Are thoughts about free will and fatalism any more special, hallowed or 'real' than any other thought arising and passing in experience? Do these questions need to be definitively answered, or can they be witnessed as thoughts, and released as thoughts?

On the way to try to answer your question, I had the experience, not the thought, but the actual experience of an equality between my thoughts and the sound of an airplane overhead or the noise of a dog's claws on the pavement outside and the realisation that all my ideas about myself, all of them, are just thoughts, as you describe, arising and passing in experience. Trying to make them into a self is like watching a child trying to herd a bunch of balloons.

Or are these thoughts concerning free will and fatalism burning hot, feeling so urgent and real that they simply have to be answered on their own terms?

The possibility that it is all just thoughts has entered - but I am hanging on.
I can see there is a difference between everything arising in a vast, organic, dynamic inter-related matrix and fatalistic system where everything is determined in advance, but strong thoughts still arise 'but how do we do good in the world'?, how do we make a difference?'
Conceptually I see that these are just more thoughts but there is resistance. I need to stay with this.

I have a question - when you say above: "can they be witnessed as thoughts, and released as thoughts?" does 'released' not imply intention, deliberation?

Thanks a lot!

[perrym]

Hi Valentine,

I had the experience, not the thought, but the actual experience of an equality between my thoughts and the sound of an airplane overhead or the noise of a dog's claws on the pavement outside

great stuff!

Conceptually I see that these are just more thoughts but there is resistance. I need to stay with this.

Invite the resistance in to have its say - what is it exactly that is resisted?

It is worth reminding you of the obvious: we are only trying to find out what is the case.... we are not trying to change the world from one in which there is free will to one in which there is not. Neither are we trying to replace one fixed belief (free will) with some other fixed belief.

Conventional ideas around free will, fatalism and so on are really very crude - the reality is far subtler, and cannot be captured using these ideas. It is not a question of "A self with free will" vs "A self without free will", but a complex interplay between awareness, thought, expectation, sensation, memory, will, intention and so on, all going on without any central core of "self" running the show.

When questioning the reality of 'free will', it is so easy to imagine that if there is not a "self" freely directing operations, then there must just be awareness passively observing it all, like a ping-pong ball floating down a series of rapids. This is still dualistic, and effectively just treats 'awareness' as a separate, but impotent, 'self'. Giving up the delusion of self does not render one a passive observer, rather it opens the door to wholehearted spontaneity.

What ideas are wrapped up in this resistance? How well do these ideas capture your observed experience? Is it possible that the entire set of ideas around free will, morality, responsibility etc need to be not so much contradicted on their own level, but replaced with more realistic ideas in the light of new experience? If so, can you find the courage to live with the uncertainty of unformed ideas for as long as takes for a new level of clarity to emerge?

when you say above: "can they be witnessed as thoughts, and released as thoughts?" does 'released' not imply intention, deliberation?

Thoughts are on their way out as soon as they arise - though sometimes clinging arises, which spawns a new set of thoughts.
When I wrote 'released', I really just meant 'allowed to pass without creating a new proliferation of clinging thoughts'.

You're right - 'released' does imply something more more deliberate, and this was not really what I had in mind - ideally, there is no grasping, and so no releasing either. There is also a kind of paradox - by the time the thought arises "I should drop that other thought!", the other thought has already passed....

That said, there is nothing taboo about intention or deliberation, we are not trying to get rid of them or prove that they don't really exist... just to question, when there is intention or deliberation, whether there is really any "self" there driving them.

Best wishes,

Perry

[valentine]

Hi, thanks a lot for your detailed and thought provoking response.

When questioning the reality of 'free will', it is so easy to imagine that if there is not a "self" freely directing operations, then there must just be awareness passively observing it all, like a ping-pong ball floating down a series of rapids. This is still dualistic, and effectively just treats 'awareness' as a separate, but impotent, 'self'. Giving up the delusion of self does not render one a passive observer, rather it opens the door to wholehearted spontaneity.

This was really useful. That kind of nails where I have got to
It is a bit of a mind bender but it has opened up a new possibility.
When you say 'wholehearted spontaneity', are you suggesting a sort of participatory creative third way?

What ideas are wrapped up in this resistance? How well do these ideas capture your observed experience? Is it possible that the entire set of ideas around free will, morality, responsibility etc need to be not so much contradicted on their own level, but replaced with more realistic ideas in the light of new experience? If so, can you find the courage to live with the uncertainty of unformed ideas for as long as takes for a new level of clarity to emerge?

I am digging into this resistance right now. I feel am currently in the sort of positively odd position of not being being able to make any claim that there is a 'self' (and virtually convinced from my looking there isn't) but apart from the echo of long held *and generally un examined) beliefs there is a gut (literally) feeling of holding on.

Are you suggesting a kind of hovering without settling on either side of these free will / fatalism beliefs until some other way of understanding emerges?

That said, there is nothing taboo about intention or deliberation, we are not trying to get rid of them or prove that they don't really exist... just to question, when there is intention or deliberation, whether there is really any "self" there driving them.

I really haven't been able to find anything driving them

thanks!

Valentine

[perrym]

Hi Valentine,

When you say 'wholehearted spontaneity', are you suggesting a sort of participatory creative third way?

The point is simply this: don't assume that dropping the false idea of 'free will' commits you to the false idea of 'fatalism'.

A little theorising and philosophy can be helpful, but I don't think there is much more mileage here for now - I just wanted to reassure you that seeing through the illusion of self does not entail becoming a fatalistic observer.

Of course, this is something to discover in experience - look at what is actually going on in experience, and in time you will be able to settle any questions like this (as far as they can be settled) based on actual observation.

Are you suggesting a kind of hovering without settling on either side of these free will / fatalism beliefs until some other way of understanding emerges?

In a way, yes .... The main thing is that, while you are still 'buying into' stories about free will and fatalism, it is going to be really difficult to come to a deeper, experience-based understanding of what is going on.

You know how, when you go to the cinema, you have to suspend disbelief for the story to really capture your interest and attention? I am suggesting that you do the opposite of that - suspend belief in these free will / fatalism stories for a while. This will allow you to examine them as stories, and to ask - are these realistic? Can they be verified in experience? How do they square up to experience? Out of this will come deeper seeing, and a deeper understanding based on that seeing.

I feel am currently in the sort of positively odd position of not being being able to make any claim that there is a 'self' (and virtually convinced from my looking there isn't) but apart from the echo of long held *and generally un examined) beliefs there is a gut (literally) feeling of holding on.

This is a great place to be.

Do investigate this 'holding on' (as I am sure you have already started to do) ... The physical sensations involved, feelings, and associated thoughts and stories. Are there any thoughts that provoke a stronger 'holding on' response? Or which tend to relax it? If more beliefs come to light through this - can you relate the beliefs to direct experience? Are they justified?

Really, I could just say - keep going, you're doing great!

Perry

[valentine]

Hey

The point is simply this: don't assume that dropping the false idea of 'free will' commits you to the false idea of 'fatalism'.

That's really useful

I am suggesting that you suspend belief in these free will / fatalism stories for a while.

How, practically?
I mean what is a method to do that?

Do investigate this 'holding on' (as I am sure you have already started to do) ... The physical sensations involved, feelings, and associated thoughts and stories. Are there any thoughts that provoke a stronger 'holding on' response? Or which tend to relax it? If more beliefs come to light through this - can you relate the beliefs to direct experience? Are they justified?

I am sort of digging away, I noticed that my anxiety / fear is experienced a strong physical sensation, which actually seems to be prior to the thoughts - the opposite way round to what you might imagine - as if the sensation generates the thought. This fear sensation seems to be a main umbilical root of the holding on.

thanks a lot