NowHere

[kvotski]

Hi Glenn,

Good work. Lets focus on this

read Neil's article in response to your original invitation, and I just reread it. I'm trying to stay close to direct experience. If I was always in direct experience this whole investigation would be over, wouldn't it? Because there's never anything other than experie

Look very carefully. There is only direct experience.

EVERYTHING else is a story. Thoughts post direct experience come in and claim everything you said.

Is it so?

Find examples when this is not so.

[kvotski]

Hi Glenn,

Hope you are well. Share whatever comes up.

Thoughts confuse the matter a lot.

Im not implying thoughts are not real and have no direct experience.

Indeed we experience thoughts, good ones as expansive, bad ones as constriction.

But always, we experience them in the body, heart, stomach, head. So perhpas we experience them indirectly.

Thoughts and their effect on the body are very real, but the contents can be entirely fictional. Like in a nightmare, the tiger appears real and the body tenses just as if it was tight here. Yet it us entirely untrue.

Now look at your annoying emotions. How many of them are bugging you based on one giant assumption that there is a solid concrete separate Glenn taking it on the chin?

[oboundless]

Thanks Sunil,

Probably a good thing you sent me a further post, since I'm having an agitated and upset day. I will respond to your post of yesterday first: you say 'Find examples when this is not so.' And I would reply that it's always so — because whenever I'm quiet enough to examine it the sequence is invariable: things happen and then thought claims them, usually I, I, I. This also makes complete sense out of the primal perception that somehow, right in the middle of now everything is always okay — because that's the core of 'things happening.'

But today would be a great example of a day when it's almost impossible to discern this sequence, a great example of a day in which, if you said to me, 'There is only direct experience' I would have to say that's not very useful, because the combination of bodily agitation and looping thoughts about catastrophic futures and bitterly regretted history feels like a thick screen over any kind of truthfulness.

I'm about to get to your most recent post, but I want to try and give voice to a difficulty I struggle with in respect of 'Everything is a story.' Then there is no magic and mystery, no soulful romance about life. "Everything is a story," appears to reduce all existence to a dry kind of absolutism. My Buddhist friend would say "That's the absolute - and then, there's the relative."

Your most recent post: Indeed, ALL the annoying emotions bugging me based on the assumption of a solid concrete separate Glenn. Which is to say, rather embarrassingly after a lifetime as 'a seeker,' that when the chips are down I firmly believe in the existence of me, I. When emotions are strong, when there's bodily tension, when thought loops and clusters are particularly compelling, I, I, I is the center of it all and seems like much more than an assumption: "I" seem real.Yes, the assumption of a solid concrete separate Glenn seems like it's a self-evident truth amidst the solidity of distressed experience.

Sunil, right now this feels like one of those Chinese finger tortures: the harder I pull, the more grip all this has on me. On me? There is that assumption again.

[oboundless]

And a briefer and much more essential response: the belief in a separate solid I is completely and absolutely at the core of all this distress. And in some weird circular paradox I believe that affirms the truth of I!

[kvotski]

Hi Glenn

This is why we talked about expectations.

You have answered all your questions but somehow you want the answers to be different, more pleasant, a cure for ennui. They are but not the way you assume.

As you say there is the absolute and relative. They are not the same.

Yes, other than de, everything is a thought story. The mind makes some of them happy and some sad.you imagine a separate self which seems to have these feelings.

This is why we want to know if there is a separate self. We find there is none. No you, no problem.

I am an old guy and read a lot of stuff but not until I arrived here, there was always this confusion and the identity seems so real. The operative word was and is SEEMS.

We want to know the truth, whether it hurts or not.

So, what will it be?

[oboundless]

Thanks Sunil,

I much appreciate your post.

However, there do seem to be more peaceful times when the truth is apparent (thought always comes after mind, and there is no other 'me' than that) and also bad days, when no such apparency is present. I don't think you are saying something like "On bad days, stay with the truth, even if it kicks up all these objections, like life seeming dryly absolute, and in prospect, filled with ennui," -- but maybe you are?

You say "We want to know the truth, whether it hurts or not." I said I am an 11 on a 1-10 scale of willingness to question currently held beliefs about self, but I feel there's some bravado about that number: DO I want to know the truth, whether it hurts or not? Perhaps I'm not as sure as that '11' suggested. And, behind that newly-discerned uncertainty, there's fear, when I pause.

"So, what will it be?" Do you mean "Will it be the truth, or something else masquerading as it, that SEEMS like the truth"?

[oboundless]

The answer/s: there is no 'I' other than thought-coming-after, a sleight of hand.
The de substance of this is that there is no 'I' here in the moment - this is seen. Prior even to 'seen,' this is relaxation (seeing, itself.)
Yes, your observation is accurate: I want the answers to somehow be different.
But what if they are not different?
That means, there is no I, ever.
And the one who wants the answers to be different....?

[oboundless]

What-is-as-is doesn't come and go. I - claiming comes and goes.

[kvotski]

Hi Glenn,

You can't stay with the truth, it is as it is. On bad days you can decide to be in illusion, see a movie, have a beer. Why not? Truth never changes.

Of course you can't be 11. The one who ranked it 11 didn't realize it is just an idea.

No, I don't want you to suffer at the expense of rubbing your nose into the truth. I'm a bohemian and love movies. This is an awesome play. I don't go around telling people who is shooting and who is dying. Only if you see that the truth takes the sting out, and it does.

Fear is the most popular reaction when the balloon sees a needle. I'm afraid often about what may happen. The ONLY thing that diffuses the fear is meditation on what I am and am not. I am then able to plan a better strategy to reduce the uncertainty which is often at the core of fear.

A Buddhist named culadassa wrote, " insanity is not accepting what is tight now". Plan a course of action based on what is. When the future arrives, good or bad, repeat the process.

Deep looking here, Glenn.

[oboundless]

Sunil, I so much appreciate your reflections, particularly because it humanizes you in my eyes (you remain thoroughly human in all other respects! Various projections of impeccability are easy to make in a forum like this and that you are an older guy and a bit of a bohemian takes some of the tension out of the field here for me.)

The sense of your first words "You can't stay with the truth, it is as it is," have ricocheted around inside me all day. "Getting anything" would be a story, wouldn't it? There's nothing to be done about the truth, too late already. Having it, getting it, grasping it, staying with it, all are figments of the imagination. Seems like I have almost instantaneous - and then vanishing - flashes of the complete ease of this. There's absolutely nothing to do about it. Any kind of doing about it is a phantasm.

I don't know that I decide to be in illusion (or suffer) on bad days — hope I'm not picking a metaphysical or philosophical quarrel, but if there's foundationally nobody here then nobody's deciding, are they?

Some of what you say in the most recent posting I have to reach toward to estimate what you mean. Those instantaneous moments, there is no sting. Is that the kind of thing you mean?

When you are afraid about what may happen do you then meditate on what you are and are not? I think I've been saying that when there's looping mind tapes and strong feelings, getting to where the truth is in any kind of conscious way is very difficult.... But probably, there I go again, pretending the truth is something that isn't here all the time no matter what. And if I was any good at 'better strategies to reduce uncertainty' I would have spent my life putting together the biggest possible nest egg! But that's never seemed a good way to live, for me. That may just be the bravado, too, of 'I'm an 11!'

Plan a course of action based on what is? What if the what is fear? I'm not quibbling with you Sunil, just not sure of your meaning. And very appreciative of our dialogue and of your offerings and invitations.

I feel a little bit, oddly, like there's nothing, absolutely nothing I can do about all this.

[kvotski]

Hi Glenn,

The only truth that i refer to here, is the complete absence of a separate self. No sunil, no Glenn, no 7.5 billion individuals.

How does that make you feel?

If you do see this, what does it do to everything you imagine, think or conceptualise?

Is there any truth to them?

So when i said i meditate on the truth when i am afraid, only truth to consider is that there is no me.

Some of what you say in the most recent posting I have to reach toward to estimate what you mean. Those instantaneous moments, there is no sting. Is that the kind of thing you mean?

Yes.

Now look at decisions.

I don't know that I decide to be in illusion (or suffer) on bad days — hope I'm not picking a metaphysical or philosophical quarrel, but if there's foundationally nobody here then nobody's deciding, are they?

Indeed. Who would be deciding.

Take a careful look at how a decision is made in your life.

You can do a simple experiement. Set aside some quiet time, lay out a couple of fruits like apple and ornage. Spend some time thinking about which one you would like to eat. Then pick one.

What processes are involved here?

Why did you pick one over the other?

Another experiment may be to be mindful of your movements on a walk.

Are you deciding to take each step?

Let me know what you find.

lan a course of action based on what is? What if the what is fear? I'm not quibbling with you Sunil, just not sure of your meaning. And very appreciative of our dialogue and of your offerings and invitations.

I feel a little bit, oddly, like there's nothing, absolutely nothing I can do about all this.

That is not what i meant. There is always something to do. But the action you take NOW is based on accepting what is not what could have been. Acceptance reduces emotions like fear.

Let's assume a meteor is heading towards earth. Accept it and lay aside fear, send a rocket to blow it up.

Lets say your action failed, the rocket missed the mark. You accept that and plan another strategy.

Easier to do this hypothtically i know becuase when its personal it feels so threatening.

Think deeply, is it really any different from my example?

[oboundless]

Hi Sunil,
Thanks.
How does that make me feel? A little relieved. Somewhat unstung. Aware that the guiding intuition from 20 or so years ago, that 'what I seek is now' just unfolded a new corner of itself, in this moment of writing to you - I always assumed it meant 'now' as in 'the moment of now' but it means simply, this, is, it. There's total relaxation here - and absurdity that there could be anything or any'one' separate in this inexplicable reality that all live, all the time, no matter what. Of course nobody lives it, that's not what it's like. It is, and nothing is outside it, nor could be.
This is what meditation is, and it ain't something you do. I can't do this, all that's possible is to be in the truth of vanishing as my imaginary self and then being this, which is whole and entire and never could be otherwise - and has no separate entities in it whatsoever. "From the very beginning, not a thing is."
I'll write more later. For now, thank you very much.
Glenn

[kvotski]

Hi Glenn

I too had an aha on the NOW. having read Eckhart and being frustrated on what he meant the power of now since the now passes as quickly as you say it. But it is the thought that passes. The direct experience of now as reported by the senses changes but never disappears. My thought about having lunch is gone as I just finished it but the sensation of the chair against the but is always there as is the breath.

If that makes sense to you.

Acceptance of what is has to be a personal experience. I can never feel what your fingers do. Your blue will never be my blue.

We are making progress.

[oboundless]

Yes, substantial progress. There's no one here in now. "Return" to now to find the ease, the relaxation, the completion inherent in now. But no-one finds it - it's the nature of now, which is whole, entire and complete. There are no parts in now - nothing (or rather, no-one) separate; that fantasy, of separateness, belongs entirely to thought.
You said there's nobody. There's nobody - but the appearance of lots of somebody's! It SEEMS so, but it's not, because in now, which is always here, there's quite simply nobody.
Thanks Sunil, I look forward to hearing from you.

[kvotski]

Hi Glenn,

Good words.

I would still like you to do the couple of experiments i recommended earlier on decisions.

And share results.

If they appear too obvious for you, try the following.

Think of a situation in recent past when things looked really bleak because of something you may have done or not done.

Now look at it carefully and tell me how if there was anyway it results could have come oit differently, perhaps more favourably?

I know this was your major suffering.

Tty oon.