NowHere

[oboundless]

Thank you Sunil,

My therapy practice has been dwindling for a while now and one of the crucial-seeming contexts in which there's an inner debate about action/inaction/things unfolding as they should/thoughts about things being different is to do with that: the only aspect of therapy I feel passionate about is this expansion of awareness towards recognizing true nature. And, I'm not sure that's even appropriately called 'therapy,' although much of the suffering people bring to the journey of awakening asks for a kindly therapeutic approach, not so much spiritual teaching. Would it be okay to offer a therapy, awakening psychotherapy, oriented in just that way? (By the way, you've been explicitly encouraging of this, with humorous consideration of monkeys exchanging values in the mix – still, doubt writhes and twists.) Perhaps just after that question comes a shadowy screed of fear that no one will be remotely interested in this possibility.

You're letting me muse here: I hope I have your permission! For instance, recognizing deeply that this moment of now is alright, quite profoundly alright seems to me to involve a long period of more and more deeply discerning feelings. I can feel the truth that nowness is my home, or om...... but earlier in my life I couldn't. Similarly, the first time I was invited to "look over thought's shoulder" I considered it a splendid idea, but had no idea how that might actually happen. As for it being my home, after about 100,000 repetitions of looking I can start to see that there's simply seeing, and not at all the putative looker+looking+seeing I've always believed in, as if it's reality. But it takes a hell of a lot of dogged trying-to-see-what's-real (and a great deal of help from another long-journey man....) for the self-evident reality of now to become obvious.

I've written you in all kinds of mood states Sunil, from depressed to valedictory. Sometimes I'm feeling shame and despair, while on another day I sound chipper-verging-on-arrogant. I don't think there's anything wrong in all of this, although the effortless ease I feel when I'm fully landed in now suggests that indeed, suffering is optional, despite the fact that pain is a fact of life.

Striking to me as I'm writing this now is how often the word "I" shows up. My practice. I feel passionate. I feel unsure. I hope. And so on. I don't think I'm kidding myself when I say (!) that the perception of nobody here in the moment is clearer and clearer — even while the thinking process goes on wheeling out a very interesting me!

Here's something I wrote this morning: I thought of you a bunch of times as I wrote it.

A flurry of activity this morning, and in the rush to get to work hardly a moment of noticing now, so great the momentum of moving forward, and thought. Then discovering that I made a timing mistake and I'm actually early — and then there's leisurely space to step out of my car.

Standing on the sidewalk, the insistent waves of habitual me-thinking continued until I realized that all that was indeed just a flurry of mental activity, with all the body sensations that go with it – and that I was here-now — and there's nobody separate in here-now. In other words, "I was here-now" means simply "here-now is the unceasing reality," and whenever here-now is looked into, nobody separate can be found in it.

This nobody-separate-but-all-is is not something esoteric, but simply what almost all of us miss, almost all of the time. Thinking can't go here. Consequently, because almost all of us are busily preoccupied with thinking, almost all the time, we miss this.

One of life's extraordinary paradoxes is that all of our thinking is dedicated to making us happy — yet the activity of thinking hides here-now from us, and here-now is inherently happy. This happiness is not the whooping and cheering of winning a game or the lottery. This happiness is quiet and easeful. This happiness is relaxed. Perhaps some part of the intrinsic happiness of this is that, precisely, thought cannot go here, and so it's safe from the misery of chasing.

Another paradox: when we live convinced of the reality of us being somebody, a separate somebody, then from within the system of that belief the possibility of our disappearing seems almost horrifying. But the moment we drop in and go nowhere, the moment we relax all of that activity and let ourselves be exactly now-here, with the easeful recognition that there's nobody separate here, the absence of a separate self is recognized to be the greatest benediction. It's a miracle, and a miracle full of ease and relaxation.

So this sinks in, gradually. There isn't actually a separate self. What we ordinarily take to be our separate-seeming self is a flurry of activity. All this activity, especially the activity of thinking, tends to camouflage the unending facticity of now-here: here-now is real, unending, unstoppable, the only certainty, and the great ground of being for all of us without exception.

The world revealed as the fog of the separate self gradually evaporates is extraordinary. There is in actuality no center to it and it is self-awake. Time is an appearance in it, but the core essence is timeless. Space is an appearance in it, but the originating ground of being that we can recognize within ourselves by turning attention backwards is timelessly and eternally now, and utterly devoid of any dimensions of distance. This tends to be very hard to recognize because it is so contrary to the world spun by thought and maintained by us all in our endless restless thinking. Mystics go to the mountains and into the deserts for the quietude where something different can be recognized. There, the possibility of gradually stepping apart from the din of separateness starts shyly to emerge.

But let us make no mistake: each of us is very carefully taught to adopt the system of the separate self. The fearsome whip of shame, which is the most painful and impactful of all emotional experiences, drives home our infant learning of this, to the point where we believe in our separation as if it is reality and could be nothing else. This is not, repeat, not, some matter of mental belief, nor is it choiceful in any way. If it were choiceful there would have to be somebody who can make choices, and that is not accurate or realistic.

Recovery from the illness of separation comes about through the suffering accompanying the disease. Some of those suffering the malaise start to examine their experience very, very closely. At some point, this examination begins to be of the present moment, in which it will be noticed there's nobody separate. Recognizing this, and feeling the ease that exists inherently with this, there is a gradual spreading out into the rest of life – because the simple truth is that every moment is now.


Thanks again.
Glenn

[oboundless]

...always when I post this kind of stuff there's mental blow-back about being arrogant, boastful, obnoxious, etc.....I write the kinds of things (I posted in green earlier) seemingly for my own pleasure, and for laying-out the thread of insights....

[oboundless]

Hi Sunil,

I hope all is well with you. You usually post responsively and your absence brings up a screed of familiar self-attacking thoughts, mostly versions of my post-script post about 'arrogant,' 'boastful,' etc: echoes, I suspect, of trauma that happened in the narcissistic phases of childhood. But I hope you are ok.

And, I read what I posted in green, and it's re-evocative for me of what is here, so lucidly and yet so evanescent to the big stomping boots of thought. You helped me so greatly with all this Sunil; filtering, nudging, pointing, rebutting, and being kind and spacious, as well as humorous and realistic. And, I've begun in the last 2 weeks to make headway with a website for awakening psychotherapy, which action also has a great deal to do with your encouragement (and comments about monkeys exchanging value....)

So today's post is essentially, Thank you....

Best,
Glenn

[kvotski]

Sorry Glenn. One of the old brain fart. I thought about what to say to you and then with stuff going on I thought I had already sent you the message.

All psychotherapy must find it's foundation in awakening psychotherapy. My meditation classes and satsangs are nothing but. Sometimes I also do one on one and it is incredibly rewarding and quite effective. I urge you to pursue this.

This week I'm preoccupied with love. Don't you wonder why most songs are about love? This is beyond separate self. Something, call it consciousness, fsm or awareness or God pushes the body from birth on to seek love. Without wisdom this search ends up looking for it in all the wrong objects like material or other separate self impostors. Of course we can't find it and end up singing longing songs.

And I am well. Thank you.

[oboundless]

Thank you Sunil, I'm familiar with brain farts, as you can imagine. I'm glad you're okay — better than okay; preoccupied with love. "Love heals," said Ferenczi, and told Freud about hugging his patients. Hmmm, said Freud, how does that go, a little hug, a little kiss....which may be why therapy is so uptight about love!

I'm staggered today. That piece of writing in green I posted was originally entitled No Me, Sinking In. I just can't seem to get over it today (and don't want to,) how extraordinary now is. No me and now are two sides of the same coin: no me is now, and now — real now, existential, ungraspable-by-any-kind-of-me, always-here now — is inherently ecstatic.

Thanks for your encouragement about awakening psychotherapy/AP. A friend read something I proposed to put on my AP website and said that it's too pedantic, scholarly, abstract: what problem are you solving?, he asked: Can you talk more from the heart? And I know my writing style is a bit like that — my girlfriend, in a kind but direct way, tells me she can't feel my heart in much of my writing. Perhaps I am in the early stages of recognizing true nature, and all I can see is that ALL problems are solved — dissolved! — by this realization of no-one being here — but that would not have been very helpful to me 20 years ago. Come to think of it, 20 years ago I did hear this, but it's taken a long time (and recently, your affirming and pointing help) for it to come to fruit.
I'm just musing.

With care,
Glenn

[kvotski]

Here is a question to ponder. What would have been different if you realised there is no self 20 yrs ago? Nothing in life changes by the realisation other than the toll on your body from unnecessary baggage. You travel lighter. Causes happen and effects follow.

Sometimes I speculate what would be the copy of humanity if everyone suddenly awoke? We would still brush our teeth, produce cereals and drive cars. May be we would make solar cells instead of tanks. But we will still feel with the fine senses as we always have. Direct Experience is all there is.

[oboundless]

Thanks Sunil, and it has to be said by me: there are days like yesterday when the ecstasy of no self is blatant... And then days like today when it remains utterly apparent in the moment -- but is so hemmed around by anxious thinking...

[oboundless]

It can be very hard when there is intense distress--which consists of thoughts feelings sensations and images--to be able to recognize with any enduring sense that there remains nobody at the center of it. I can manage a moment of recognition, but often no more than that.

[kvotski]

Try following anxious thought from it's Nexus to full blown anxiety. Look at how the body feels during the while process.

Take the anxiety you silly extremes all the way to the death of the body.

See what you find.

Repeat and recycle.

[oboundless]

Thank you Sunil, I appreciate the suggestion and when I have a bit more space to explore, will check that out. I'm fairly sure that if I could slow down the currently minuscule-seeming gap between thought and body reaction, I would be amazed at how potent is the future-thought-of....
I think this is the first time I haven't posted the same day: it's been Halloween weekend here, and a party or two, and a birthday. Sometimes in the last few days the only time I get to explore all this has been the wee small hours, awake in bed. Today, sitting down to notice how the truth lies beyond thought; never-not-here, never graspable.
This posting was supposed to go out yesterday, which was late in relation to the day before!

[oboundless]

...and this much is evident, in this moment: anxiety is the normal accompaniment of the one who lives in time - because the real one, herenow, the one-that-is-not-a-number, is unconcerned -- yet invisible!

[kvotski]

No one lives here in time.

There are no two of you.

For ALL your thoughts there is no Glenn.

Playing Macbeth on stage will never make you Macbeth.

Who knows all this is a mystery and has none of the symptoms you experience or not.

[oboundless]

Thanks Sunil,

I'm tempted to describe myself to you as a backsliding recidivist, meaning, this thing opened up wide in our dialog....and then seemed to close back down. I know this isn't actually possible, always-newness being the reality, but it sure seems so at times.

If I'd written you earlier I'd have said that I feel miserably depressed — meaning, as fully immersed as ever in self-thoughts, seemingly unable to notice anything else. Sat to meditate, and after a few minutes, emergence of an awareness of seeing. Or seeing, seeing seeing.

As I said in earlier posts, I've always taken this to be 'my' seeing — but each time there is the discovery/ noticing possibility/ dawning insight of this being simply seeing itself — which I think is the mystery you refer to — then the absence of anyone owning it is plain.

Does someone own this seeing? Asking this in any more than rote fashion seems to involve shaking myself awake for a moment, nudging myself into experience — I suppose that would be direct experience — to see freshly if someone does, or could, own this seeing. Absolutely not. And then there's a tremor in the center of my chest, and some spatial-disorientation, which has been here from time to time the last few days.

The same sequence — nudge into direct experience, ask question — can be asked of touching, tasting, hearing, smelling — and thinking. Each subsequent experience involves a similar wave of difficult-to-describe disorientation, and sensation in my chest. Which may have nothing to do with the price of fish, but is striking to me nonetheless.

But the big deal you mention: 'for ALL your thoughts there is no Glenn' I wish I could say the jury has returned a unanimous verdict on that one, but they are hung........Sorry to be so limp, some metaphors are poorer than others.

[kvotski]

Hi Glenn,

So let's start afresh.

There is no unanimous consent.

Let's hear the arguments for why there is Glenn?

Sorry, no conjectures but solid arguments that prove beyond doubt, there is Glenn.

Don't limp out. Fight, damnit.

[kvotski]

And oh, what does a tremor in chest mean?

Under what feelings would that happen? Fear, anger, love, heartburn?