When you say "all yours", do you mean that your offering the illusory self ?
i can't wait.
ha ha...
lots of resistance arising-- from the business to the tiredness to the deep need to do anything but this. a day's rest later, i still feel like i will have nothing to offer you.
but i will go through your questions one by one:
1) Is there a 'me', at all, anywhere, in any way, shape or form? Was there ever? how about self, is there anything that is separate from everything else?
rather than giving the logical answer to this question which i've given before, i will instead offer the rant: YES THERE IS A ME. THERE IS THE ME THAT AT ONE POINT TWO DAYS AGO WAS SITTING ON A PARK BENCH IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE AND WAS FREAKING OUT BECAUSE OF ASSORTED CIRCUMSTANCES AND WENT INTO SURVIVAL MODE AND "FIGURED OUT" A SOLUTION AND THEN ENGAGED IN A PHYSICALLY CHALLENGING AND RATTLING "EFFORT" AND PULLED IT OFF. and meanwhile i was asking myself, what would "surrender" here look like? is it surrendering to all this as it's happening (the freaking out, the figuring out, the efforting through) or is it simply not freaking out at all, not figuring out, not efforting through. staying or going, whichever. allowing, without having an answer. without knowing.
of course this whole "story" is just story and the surrendering transcends the circumstances, yes? BUT i so feel like the latter way is more lovely. when i'm in that mode, the "i" story seems easy to see through. all the thoughts are just overlay to the experience. just notice what arises next. smile. enjoy. be amazed. but when push comes to shove, which is to say the i feels threatened at all (or feels it has something it must "do") then all this overlay becomes front and center. total identification. total sense of "controlling" what's next, or attempting to anyway.
2) Explain in detail what the illusion of separate self is, when it starts and how it works.
at some point in early childhood years the brain develops neural networks that distinguish self from other and these networks get reinforced inside and out as this distinction is seen as vital to the body/mind's survival... AND PROBABLY IS to a certain extent. these networks are conditioned by DNA/experience to label what the mind perceives through the body, to apply adjectives like good and bad and phrases like i want more and i want less and WHOLE STORIES about the world and the body/mind's place within it.
3) How does it feel to see this? describe in detail.
it feels lovely when i see something of it, but this seems to only happen when conditions allow-- when things are quiet and still and no one else is around. if there's movement or noise or relationship, it evaporates into something that feels dreamy and unreal and inaccessible.
4) How would you describe it to somebody who has never heard about this illusion but is curious about it.
i guess i would just say that there's experience and there's a story about experience. one is real and one is imagined. that which is imagined uses lots of self-referencing language, but if you X out all that language, there is just experience, there is just what's happening. there is awareness of what's happening, but there is no "I" for anything to happen "to" because "I" requires the story.
5) What was the last bit that pushed you over, made you look? was there a specific moment when seeing happened or was it gradual? what exactly happened?
of course, there is a strong story that "seeing" has NOT happened, BUT there has been a sputtery process of little glimpses here and there that come and go at their whim, mostly when its quiet and still and the "I"s incessant job of protecting/ controlling relaxes a bit.
6) When you say "I", what are you referring to?
thoughts about this conglomeration of mind/body/awareness. "I" can reference thoughts about thoughts, thoughts about body, thoughts about awareness (of thoughts and body).
7) Is there an experiencer experiencing, or is there only experience?
DOH. this one is a tough one. as noted above, without the story, there's no "I" and thus there's no experiencer. there does appear to be awareness of experience, but i'm not sure if this qualifies as "only experience."
Actually look. Does experience belong to the body, or does the body belong to experience? (Thanks, James)
the experience of the body arises as part of experience. not so clear on this one though. if i look at my fingers typing, it does seem that the fingers belong to the typing more than the typing belongs to the fingers, but just very subtly. maybe i'm not looking at this right.
8) What did you experience at the moment you awoke?
let's just assume that one can awaken and go back to sleep a thousand times (which goes against the general notion of "once seen, can't be unseen" but so be it). in that case, there is a relaxing, a smiling, a trusting, a sense of amusement, a sense of magic, a sense of wonder. but this just seems to be particular conditions (which i like).
9) Describe your experience in the hours and days following awakening
some ebb and flow followed by major RESISTANCE and disorientation and confusion and exasperation followed by "OK, keep trudging away...and maybe you'll get it"
