If you are seeking to end the seeking, come in here.

[Ilona]

keep looking Walbart, you are doing so good. keep looking deeper...

[Walbart]

I think I've ran out of steam. Lost momentum. What am I doing here? I'm not sure what else to say.

[Walbart]

There's nothing at the receiving end of sensations and perceptions. It's just all direct experience with no thing at the centre of it all. Feelings of a self don't own this body, they are created by it. Everything's upside-down. Life just flows like water poured from a bucket and takes its direction from the lay of the land. This body is a tributary of the river of life. There's no one here, it's just all the parts thrown together making up a concept.

[Ilona]

Are you really seeing this or just saying so? It's been a long time for you and many conversations with people, is it different this time? If so, how? What was the last bit that really made you look?

Sending love.

[Walbart]

I feel like I'm once again only understanding it but not seeing it. I know there isn't a separate me, but nothing has changed. I feel like my looking has lost some of its urgency, since you said I was through and that I was seeing it. I'm not being stupid or blind deliberately, I just seem to get a glimpse and then fall under again. I don't really know where to take this. I've been confused again today because of reading Alan Watts stuff where he says we are one, we are God. Reading Wei Wu Wei who says we are this thing that isn't a thing behind everything else. All these "masters" claiming that we are identified with an elusive something. I really don't know. I should know better because right now, tonight, my seeing seems to be very clear. I'm happy and content and enjoying being here doing normal things about the home. Like, some part of me know this is all there is and I'm seeing it now, but there are layers on top. It's definitely an improvement from 2 weeks ago, there has been a change, but I'm still not completely free mentally. Or something.

Can you point me to look at what I'm missing? I know the self isn't real. I know nothing is looking out of these eyes. What am I then? If I am nothing? I don't feel like nothing. The glimpse I had last week of the beautiful joke of empty robots thinking they are people has gone. This body is confusing itself for a person once again. I can't latch onto the nothingness inside me. I am very confused when I go into this mentally. If I just sit I feel good though. So it's hard to talk about it here, when the words come they make the problem worse. When I'm not talking about how stuck I am I seem to be a bit better.

Sincerely,

W.

[Walbart]

It seems different this time, yes. Because I don't feel so desperate any more. And I know the only thing to be found is that there's no one to find it.

[Ilona]

Hey walbart.
the conditioning that is in the system does not melt away immediately. same as it wasn't put there in one hit. it took years. so unravelling also takes time. nothing changes, because everything already is as it always was. for the mind it is difficult to accept, because of what it expects this to be. cosmic download of clarity or big boom of light..

seeing through illusion of separate entity 'me' is not the end of mental bs. it's the beginning of seeing things as they are. it does not immediately make you a master. you are fresh and new. hihi. If seeking drops, it's clear that you are through. but that does not mean that there is nothing left to do. life does not stop with a drop of one belief. even if it's core belief to which others stick.

so tell me, can you believe again, that there is a separate being 'me' that is getting confused?

[Walbart]

There is confusion. Similar to "nothinker", I've read so much here that I know how to answer every question correctly. There is no certainty here that I am through and all my questions still lay unanswered. I have to go back a few steps to make sure I'm not taking anything for granted because I think I know what the right answer should be. Bear with me.

What if this "no self" shit is actually true? But I'm in the same position I was in 4 months ago.... I'm stuck with the belief that maybe I'm the awareness, or that I can't find myself because I'm the thing that's looking. How do I test these things out and find out for myself once and for all? What am I? What do I really think that I am? What do I believe, and what do I see that is actually true? One idea is that I think I can't really see "no self" because I think I am just this body & brain and all the stuff that goes with that. This body/me has had these experiences and has stored memories. This is "me". It may not be a thing separate from anything, but this body and its accumulated memories and stored experience is "me". It is that which is writing this now. Isn't it? That's as far as I can take this honestly, without bringing in hope or ideas. That's the end of the line, "I" don't disappear. "I" is just seen to be what it's always been, this body/brain organism. That's what I am! This body! These thoughts! Who's to tell me I am not this? This is me! Yeah, so I don't have a soul that will continue and go to heaven or burn in hell. Yeah, so "I" wasn't born, but was created gradually over time after this body was born. But none of this makes me nothing. This makes me exactly what I think I am. I can say this with confidence: I am a human body aware of itself.

What do I really see if I get off my tip-toes, stop trying to look off into the distance, and just look here? Do I ever have any experiences separate from this mind or body? No. Why not? Am I stuck in here? No. I am here. What the fuck. I am just a biological machine that has enough brain power/capacity to store memories and anticipate the future based on current & past experience, and which will be alive and aware for a limited amount of time. Anything else is fiction and hope. But this is what I am.

I am not in control of this machines body/cell functions. Is this true? Well yeah, it's a process. Mechanical. Seems straight-forward. Am I in control of thoughts?I have to pre-suppose I am until I can prove otherwise as this is what I'm used to. And not just take someone else's word for it. Hold on. Stop. Well, I see how there is nothing separate in me that was born into this life, so there's no actual "thinker" in here that can control thoughts. So has a thinker been created/grown over time? Can't this body/mind now think for itself? Make decisions as a unit even if there is no central control? Why does it have to be automatic? Or is it just information/data and conditioned preferences that give the impression of something "choosing"? Is this correct? Or just more philosophical buffoonery? It seems, when I think of something that I could choose to continue thinking about something, or to switch away. Is this true? Do I have free will? As a body brain network, do I have free will? Stop asking others or looking to books, if I can't test this for myself then I'm a vegetable.

I am this body. Am I? Even though I don't operate it? So how can I be this body? I need to look at this without language, after all "I" is only a word, a label, for what? What does it refer to if not the "me" that was assumed to be the thing living this life? Isn't it just the word to describe this human unit, this body here, being self-aware? Pointing to itself? Being aware of itself? If that's all it is, why can't I be that? Not the label, but the organism/process the label refers to. That is me. I am this body here writing. This is my identification.

Let's get rid of all the crap. "I" is just the body "me" referring to itself, and not an assumed inner thing that has a separate existence. "I" is the body's boundary line, its way of separating itself physically from the rest of the world. Me. I can't see this body ever not taking things personally. So "I" is just the process of this body taking things personally? A movement of definition. Brain computing for reasons of survival, what it needs to protect in order to survive, what it needs to protect in order to prolong it's own awareness and consciousness and experience within the world? Before it diminishes and once again returns to nothing.

There is always nothing. There would be nothing now if it weren't for my awareness of objects.
Is this true? My awareness of objects? My awareness of objects?
So, if there were no objects, would there be just my awareness? Left on its own, aware of nothing? Or does it need an object in order to be aware? I don't know.
Well, with no sense organs, but many objects, I have no awareness of the objects.
With sense organs, but no objects, is there awareness?
My awareness is because of the sense organs.
But without something to be aware of, are my sense organs making me aware?
Or does the awareness only come with sense organ and object? Perception and perceived.
Is perception possible without an object to perceive?
Does any of this fucking matter? What exactly am I doing here? What am I? AM I an assumed self? Do I exist?
Am I really asking myself, via a notepad and pen, whither I exist or not? Am I fucking mental?
Who is sitting here staring now? Is it just a body? A machine? How am I going to get to the bottom of this, and is that even possible?


There you go. THIS is confusion. THIS is ME being confused. I do not know anything and I don't have any answers. I don't know what I am. I am not at peace with this situation. Last weeks insight means fuck all today. Is there a me? This body/brain/life is me. Nothing separate inside this body, I am this body. I have grown up, grown aware, as this body has grown, and when this body dies that will be the end of me.

[Walbart]

If this identification with the body is supposed to drop away, I'll tell you, it isn't.

[Walbart]

And there's no "separate being me" outside of this body/brain process.

[Matt]

And there's no "separate being me" outside of this body/brain process.

Dear Walbart, I don't want to interrupt Ilona's work, but I know you already know that "I am the body" is mental b.s. When you look, the body-mind is experienced as an object, not as a subject 'I'. So perhaps it's a 'fake I', but not a real 'I'.
Carry on!
M

[Ilona]

Walbart, your ramblings made me laugh. Hahaha.
Really?
Is this where you are at? You are the body? Which part? What if you loose your arm? And another one, and a leg and another leg? Is it gonna be less of you? Where is that I in the body? And them detached limbs will still be you?
Common man, stop trying to hold on to some imaginary identifications. This is mental bs.

Look again. Are you the body? If so, which part, how does it work?

[Walbart]

And there's no "separate being me" outside of this body/brain process.

Dear Walbart, I don't want to interrupt Ilona's work, but I know you already know that "I am the body" is mental b.s. When you look, the body-mind is experienced as an object, not as a subject 'I'. So perhaps it's a 'fake I', but not a real 'I'.
Carry on!
M

Hi Matt, I don't mind your input, any help is appreciated. I sat down last night confused and just tried to write it all out, forgetting all ideas of no self or Self. All I experience is what is right here at this moment, which includes and is apparently limited by, this body and it's sensations. Yes, it's all experienced as objects, as in I can name them all. But what's doing the naming? The only answer I come up with is that this alive body and brain a.k.a "Me" is aware of itself.

[Walbart]

Walbart, your ramblings made me laugh. Hahaha.
Really?
Is this where you are at? You are the body? Which part? What if you loose your arm? And another one, and a leg and another leg? Is it gonna be less of you? Where is that I in the body? And them detached limbs will still be you?
Common man, stop trying to hold on to some imaginary identifications. This is mental bs.

Look again. Are you the body? If so, which part, how does it work?

Ilona, I'm glad to have amused you ;)

This is where I'm at, yes. Sitting with nothing more than my direct experience and trying to make sense of that. I've been jumping through hoops here I think, carrying around recently acquired "no self" beliefs and then trying to prove them after the fact.

You are the body? Which part?

To answer your question bluntly: The Fucking Head.

Cut this off and my awareness vanishes, forever. This is where perceptions and sensations lead, and without it I am nothing. This is the control room, the processing plant. This is where awareness functions.

I know this looks like a step backwards but to me it looks like solid ground. "I" isn't a thing, but it is created by this body/mind's experience/movement through life. Without this body/mind "my" experience stops. Doesn't yours?

[Walbart]

If I'm not the body then what am I?