RiverRock

[forgetmenot]

Hello John,

So in a dream, which is oldest, a mountain or a baby?

:) :) :)

Is there a reason this question wasn’t answered?

I was sitting in my garden watching a small bird eating something (insects, worms?) in the grass. For a little while. And then all of a sudden it flew up and into the tree foliage and couldn't be seen. What is left of the bird? The answer is nothing. Now there is thought of a bird. But thought can't bring the bird back, or even ratify that it ever existed.

I love this! :)

Okay…so we have covered all the bases to where a seeming ‘separate self’ can hide. Do you have any questions?

Love, Kay

[forgetmenot]

Hey John....you still with me? If you have no questions...I have 6 more to give you.

Love, Kay

[Drumps]

Hi Kay,

I need a bit of time to reflect and go over a few things again. I am traveling for most of next week and will be out of my normal routine but with plenty of pockets of time to go over some of the issues that I still struggle a bit with. Last time I did this exercise I emerged out the other side seeing thrings a lot clearer.

So what I am saying is give me a couple of weeks and at the end of it I will come back to you with any questions that remain.

Love, John

[forgetmenot]

Hi John....no worries! Look forward to hearing from you.

Love, Kay

[forgetmenot]

Hi John,

I hope your reflections have been fruitful! The following questions will help find if there is still further exploration needed. Can you answer the following questions with some detail please, and answer what's true for you rather than any sort of 'ideal' answer. Also please provide examples where asked.

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

2) 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.

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

4) What was the last bit that pushed you over; made you look?

5) a) Describe decision, intention, free will, choice and control. What makes things happen? How does it work? Give examples from your own recent experiences to how things happen and how things work.

b) What are you responsible for? Give examples from your own recent experiences to how this works.

6) Anything to add?

Love, Kay

[Drumps]

Hi Kay,

Nice to hear from you again :). It seems like more than a couple of weeks, no? I am sure you have been busy guiding other people.

I am not ready to answer those questions yet. I basically need more time. What I have been doing over the last 2 weeks is partly spending a bit of time going back over the thread. But not too much, because the interesting thing is, I find when I don't, it talks to me at the right times, and often. Seems like whatever you have done has planted some seeds. So basically, what I am saying is, when you have gone over as much ground as we have, it can be easy to get lost in reading reading and thinking thinking (much as those are important triggers). And for the recent past I have found it more productive to just live, and see clearly when I can. It comes and goes. It doesn't feel as if there has been a major shift. But the same time the changes that I feel are settling in and there is a strong feeling here that something here has indeed changed for good. Not going back.

I have come on a long way since we started but I think I was becoming a bit nervous about having, or rather not having, a big permanent shifting event. So, I have stepped back from that and am just going on and looking again and again. And by that, I mean seeing thoughts and feelings and emotions are not caused by anything and just happen, exactly like everything else. And there is nothing that gives them meaning or says they are good or bad except thought itself. I find it very useful to focus on bodily sensations and compare what thought tells me about them (fear, anxiety, happiness) and what they really are in AE - which is none of those things, just aliveness happening. They exist like everything else in AE but happen to no-one. And experience is real but there is no separation (at all) between the seeing and the seen. Part of this feels like allowing a process to unfold. In its own way (life? what happens?). Accepting pretty much everything because when you really look at it, what else can you do? And that, by definition, means accepting with open arms the moments when you most resist things. Fuck things up. :) Everything is fine the way it is. There are times when I (or whatever is experience) really don't feel separate from the things in experience (other people, the sky, sounds). And that feels in those times like a connection between me and what I really am, albeit sometimes fleeting. And I think (beware of expectation here!) that something is indeed changing of its own accord but slowly. Which is OK.

There is more I could say but I would rather not at this stage. I've actually already said more than I meant to because I don't really want to engage in a conversation at this point. Although you will feel free to comment as you wish. So basically, what I would ask is that you give me another week or two. And I will then come back to you with a fuller explanation of where I am. And when we see where that is, you can advise me on whether or not we need more work, or I can answer your list of questions or whatever.

That OK?

Love,
John

[forgetmenot]

Hi John,

What a lovely post to read. You know what is best for you, so I leave you where you are and wait until you contact me.

Love, Kay

[Drumps]

Hi Kay,

I'm not really sure where to start and haven't so much planned what I want to write so may as well just go ahead and see how we get on. This one feels like a difficult one. Maybe because I have so gotten out of the habit of writing to you but also because I'm worried about screwing up or letting you down - silly I know.

I have really thrown myself at this whole inquiry, even during the period when I have been silent. It is basically now defines how this character views the world and experience. It has been enormously helpful to me and is a continual source of guidance and comfort to me when things are in any way difficult, and also when they're not. But in that sense I am conscious of 2 things. One is the desire for a road-map or theory (dogma) about how to live, or view life - and I know that's not what this is. And secondly that this should be somehow a helping hand for a thinking me that I know doesn't exist. The thoughts I know are not me. The desire for me to not identify so much with thoughts is just a thought. I know this. I know it. And yet..

The things I talked about on my last post are very real and vital to me. (to me, to me?) I guess I would say I feel so close but that the only thing I feel I still really struggle with is strong identification with thought. Of course I have my moments when I can calmly sit in awareness and truly see through all that, see thoughts for what they are - just experience like everything else and meaningless in and of themselves. As representative of what I am as the colour green on that tree or the sound of a car driving past.

Maybe I'm just expecting too much to change. And maybe what I am trying to do is improve John somehow which deep down, and stupid as i know it is, is probably what I am trying to do. So, thoughts are happening about trying to improve a character who does not exist and is just a thought. And all of this is happening in Experience, which at the end of the day is all there is and that "I" am. So truly, nothing more has to change. It just doesn't feel that way to me. How does it feel to Experience?? Joking.

All there is, is THIS. I know that. It is known. Tapping on keys, rain outside, the wood of the desk. And these are just labels so when we say all there is is THIS, it isn't rain or tables, or birds. It is just THIS. Nothing to be added or taken away. Thought happening in it and weaving it's meaningless stories. And there's nothing wrong with them any more than there is in the feeling of the chair on my back.

I was doing one of those exercises you gave me this morning. The one where you feel the body, then move through the parts feeling the feet, torso, hands face. And then you ask to point to where "I" am. Sort of made me laugh because all of those feelings were so REAL. Unequivocal. Didn't need to be proven or justified, just were. And yet me? A....Thought. That can only exist when I think it. Needs thought to support it. When I sit in silence looking at my tree, isn't there at all. It takes so much fucking work to keep me going. Effort, tension, contraction, holding in. I know what it feels like to experience THIS without a "me" getting in the way. We all do. It does indeed feel like home.

And yet. Like I said. When I feel that I am lost in thought I can, and do, observe that. And that process, as with all things we conventionally think of as challenging or unpleasant (eg including pain), has the ability to free them of their intensity and meaning. So I have that in my toolbox. ;-)

You call it the Gateless Gate. I feel as if I have been hanging around on the threshold for the last couple of months, like a loiterer. I have had times when I felt so close to seeing there was no gate there. And yet the lingering feeling is one of a kind of purgatory which is something I would ultimately like to move out of. Much as I am so happy to have come here and I feel much better about things than I did before we started. It just feels like unfinished business Kay. And when it comes to your questions, or anything else we discuss, I will not lie or finesse the truth.

Now having said that, if the LU site crashed and I was never to hear from you again, my direct engagement with experience would go on, and I do feel that there has not really been a "backward" step and that what knowing there is here does continue to grow, bit by bit. And I am very thankful for that. Who's to say I can't still crash that Gateless Gate myself. Or who's to say my true self isn't laughing it's bollocks off watching little Johnself me type these words.

So this post is not my best one, slightly unfocused and rambling. But it's all I got for now, Kay. I think I need some more help. Sorry.

Love, John

[forgetmenot]

Hello John,

I have one question for you at the moment. Has the seeking ceased?

Love, Kay

[Drumps]

Hi Kay,

Interesting question and one I have been pondering throughout today.

I suppose it would depend what you mean by that. I would say I suppose I don't spend much time in seeking. By which I assume you mean a quest for enlightenment/freedom. Even though I wouldn't turn it down if it walked round a corner and bumped into me.

I have enough going on that I am happy with and regular moments, many moments, throughout the day when I am very content with just the way things are. It's a low level thing brewing along nicely enough without any angels or fireworks, like I said to you on a previous post. And if you said piss off John I'm sick of you and your obsession about being identified with thought and you already know you aren't there, now go off and stop bothering me, I would saunter along and just get on with it, which as I've said is much clearer than where we started, and, much as I don't want to tempt fate, seems to me to be a clarity that slowly grows, almost imperceptibly.

But there's one thing that I keep coming back to. I have read often on the LU site that knowing happens and it can be described as an aha moment and even though it doesn't last long (seconds, minutes), the knowing remains and can never be unknown. I think you have said as such yourself. Hand on heart I cant say that I have had such an unequivocal moment of total and utter certainty. Yes I know there's no me, but the "knowing" that you refer to, seems to me to be on a different level of certainty. Does what I am saying mean the seeking hasn't ceased?

Let me give you another example of where I'm at. I kept to my part of the bargain and haven't been reading any books, non-duality books or any books for that matter since we started together in December. I sometimes miss it but not too much and when I have my free moments I just spend them pondering the things that we have talked about and, of course continually looking (I do). But when I checked on the LU web site I thought I would have a look at some of the other posts. I saw Ilona there and had read her books so dipped into one of her posts which was a very short one and in answer to a point the other guy had said her answer was "There is nothing at the start of looking" - which I thought was pretty cool. When you can see that, clearly, that there are no elements to looking (looker, looked at and looking), that at the "start" of that process, there is nothing at all, it is so liberating. And then you clearly understand without the looker that there is no looker, or looking, there is just what is and it is what in essence you are, no separation. And regularly throughout the day I have these clear insights, very clear, as I have had throughout and during the other exercises we have done. But then of course I forget, and I do not think I have had that transformational moment which infuses me with the certainty that I guess was my expectation when we started. I'm still an occasional, often, doubter. No not doubter, because when I apply my attention to it I don't doubt. I just get lost in thought and whatever sense of clarity I have is not there any more. Which means if what you said about what being truly known can't be undone, then I'm not there, or a charlatan.

I think that's probably enough for now.

Love John

[forgetmenot]

Hello John,

What you are asking and describing is the absolute knowing that there is no separate self. As I have explained to you several times...this knowing won't happen overnight. It takes time for it to really sink in and become that. Comparing your subtle shift experiences to 'aha' moments does no good and only keeps you spinning the idea that you have not had the realisation...but when you look at your life now, to when we started in December...it is different. Just because your realisation is different to someone else's, doesn't make your realisation any less. The only thing that is the 'problem' is your expectation that the realisation should be an ending...when it is only a beginning.

There is no more seeking...that intense seeking that just about drives you around the bend because you are searching for that something. Does that still play out?

I have enough going on that I am happy with and regular moments, many moments, throughout the day when I am very content with just the way things are. It's a low level thing brewing along nicely enough without any angels or fireworks, like I said to you on a previous post. And if you said piss off John I'm sick of you and your obsession about being identified with thought and you already know you aren't there, now go off and stop bothering me, I would saunter along and just get on with it, which as I've said is much clearer than where we started, and, much as I don't want to tempt fate, seems to me to be a clarity that slowly grows, almost imperceptibly.

You might not be expecting angels or fireworks..but you are waiting for a finish line. There is no finish line. You realise there is no separate self...and that awareness simply starts to deepen...that's all. What else is supposed to happen? You are not the only person who has had the realisation, that thinks there is something wrong because they keep re-identifying with a 'me' and then in the next moment clarity appears of there being no 'me'. It happens to everyone. For how long this happens for is anybody's guess.

I have asked you to answer the last questions...not so that I can get rid of you. But so that you can give your answers on how you see life now and then be invited to LU's aftercare groups on FB, where those who are going through what you are going through can ask questions and know they are not alone. I understand the confusion and frustration because everything isn't what you expected...it's all very ordinary.

When you realised that Santa Claus was a fictional character; other than changing your perception of what he is and the story about him and who he is and what he does and what Christmas is really all about, did anything else change? Christmas still comes and goes. Santa and carol singers still appear at Christmas time and depending on where you live, snow still falls at that time of year. Stories about Santa are still told to children, gifts are still exchanged and family arguments on Christmas day still happen! There is simply a knowing that Santa and the story about Santa are fictional, however nothing else changed. The same goes for when the realisation happens of 'no self'. You have clarity of no self and then the clarity gets muddied at the moment. So what? When you look for self can you find one? Drop your expectations and just be with how life unfolds. For you, at this time...the concrete knowing is not there yet...and as I said..who knows when that happens. There are other beliefs that need to fall away. It does not all happen in one fowl swoop and I would be grateful for that.

Kay

[forgetmenot]

Hello John,

Have a look at the following questions and summarise your findings.

So nothing changed, but everything looks different, does that make sense in your experience? 

What has changed since the start of conversation, what hasn’t? 

Is searching still going on?

What changes?

What stays the same?

Love, Kay

[Drumps]

Thanks Kay,

I'll come back to you in the next day or so.

Love, John

[Drumps]

Hi Kay,

Sorry for the delay. I've been somewhat struggling with these questions which has not been helped by the fact that I have been on a serious downer over the last few days (life circumstances, say no more).

So nothing changed, but everything looks different, does that make sense in your experience?

This doesn't mean very much to me. It is a phrase I have heard and read quite a bit but it doesn't resonate with me to be honest. And I don't want to force it.

But in relation to what I would say has changed since we began, I think I could be more forthcoming on that.

In no particular order, and just as they come:

1. Has changed
• I spend more time, much more time, dealing with direct experience, rather than thoughts in the head. You could say more time living in the now – but I know you’ll tell me I can’t be anywhere else. But more of my time is spent in direct experience with what is actually there/reality. And a sense that is enough.
• A general sense of things happening of their own accord and, somehow, everything being right – couldn’t be any other way.
• Much more acceptance.
• A clear understanding that me is just a thought. And when I get lost in thought, which often means lost in “me” an ability to step out of it. (see more below)
• A sense that what appears as AE is what it is, which does not mean what it is “labelled”, and a sense that this understanding is very important. Call it more of a pre-verbal experience.
2. Hasn’t changed.
• Still lots of time lost in thought (meaning a sense that it is me who is thinking) and wishing that wasn’t the case.
• A sense of me looking out from these eyes and moving around in “my” body.
• Me moving along in time.
• Worries, depression, confusion (however I would say less judgement/anger/jealousy/wanting people to be what they’re not)
• Me, as an individual, talking to other individuals (people)
• And yes, I guess, still searching.

I could go on but I think that give you a gist of it.

Love, John

[forgetmenot]

Hello Jonn,

1. Has changed
• I spend more time, much more time, dealing with direct experience, rather than thoughts in the head. You could say more time living in the now – but I know you’ll tell me I can’t be anywhere else. But more of my time is spent in direct experience with what is actually there/reality. And a sense that is enough.
• A general sense of things happening of their own accord and, somehow, everything being right – couldn’t be any other way.
• Much more acceptance.
• A clear understanding that me is just a thought. And when I get lost in thought, which often means lost in “me” an ability to step out of it. (see more below)
• A sense that what appears as AE is what it is, which does not mean what it is “labelled”, and a sense that this understanding is very important. Call it more of a pre-verbal experience.

And so, there is your shift that happens when realisation has happened. You have an expectation that it should be more than that. I have said many times that realising no self is just a beginning...and this is the beginning...these changes you have noticed.

The clear understanding that the 'me' is just a thought. The 'me' you think you are is a thought. What you are is not a thought. Thoughts come and go as does the "I", but what you are is always there. You are aware of everything that is happening/appearing. I DO not exist and the I DOES not exist are very different!

2. Hasn’t changed.
• Still lots of time lost in thought (meaning a sense that it is me who is thinking) and wishing that wasn’t the case.
• A sense of me looking out from these eyes and moving around in “my” body.
• Me moving along in time.
• Worries, depression, confusion (however I would say less judgement/anger/jealousy/wanting people to be what they’re not)
• Me, as an individual, talking to other individuals (people)
• And yes, I guess, still searching.

I could go on but I think that give you a gist of it.

Yep...you are wanting for all of this to disappear as proof there is no 'me'. You are wanting the idea of being a self to disappear. How exactly would that look? Sorry, it doesn't disappear. How can something that never existed in the first place disappear. It may SEEM that there is a separate self in play...but that is the miracle of the dream. The show goes on! The reason I would like you to answer the final questions is so that you can be added to the FB groups where you can discuss this with all the others who have had the realisation and are going through the yo-yoing as well. To you there has to be a definitive end...and there isn't one. The realisation deepens and other beliefs start to fall away. Are you thinking that all your baggage etc should just drop off because you have seen? It doesn't work that way and wishing that it did, isn't going to change it. We all have to work through our baggage before it starts to drop away and become less sticky. You have a fear around answering those questions. Perhaps its time you had a look at the fear and what it is about.

Do you honestly think that the idea of a separate self isn't appearing to me and to everyone else who has seen through it? I had the realisation several years ago and it took a further year for it to click into place. And even then it took time for the stickiness of stories and emotions and thoughts to fall away. Are you somehow special, that you have realised there is no separate self but for you there is still the idea of a separate self appearing and not for anyone else and that you shouldn't have all the "I don't wants' happening? How realistic is that?

I can't help you with your expectations. I asked you to read the FAQ's when we first started this exploration. Please reread them.

https://www.liberationunleashed.com/about/faq/#faq-1041

Love, Kay