Hi Rali
Everything is good. Just needed some more time with these ones.
Before I answer the questions below, I want to tell you about an experience.
I found out about a non-duality guide named Terrence Stephens just the other day and watched a video of his.
In this video he was guiding someone and he asked a question that I have either not heard before or perhaps I have and just wasn't ready to explore it.
"Can thoughts be aware/conscious"?
Are thoughts an alive entity?
Can thoughts think?
And the answer is no.
Thoughts are not aware.
There is only awareness of thoughts happening.
And if all "Allyn" is, is just gazillions of thoughts turned into a story of "me", then "Allyn" cannot possibly be aware of anything and never has been!
And this means that what is aware here in this experience cannot possibly be "Allyn" and never has been!!!!!
And what has been labeled as identification with "Allyn" has never happened because identification is only a thought about thoughts.
Belief in the thoughts has never happened because belief is only a thought about thoughts.
There has only ever just been awareness of the thoughts.
So I have literally ALWAYS been awake/aware/conscious/everything/nothing/THIS.
I can't have ever been anything else because nothing else is aware of anything, nothing else has consciousness/awareness.
How is the movement controlled?
Does a thought control it?
Can a ‘controller’ or and entity that is choosing be located?
How is the decision made to turn the hand over?
A thought does not control this movement. A thought can appear, "move the hand" and the hand does not move so it can't be the thought that controls the movement. Otherwise the hand would move every time that thought appears.
No controller or entity can be located that is either choosing to move the hand or is moving the hand.
A single moment of decision to move the hand can also not be found.
Thoughts can appear before the hand moves , even thoughts that say "okay, now the hand is going to move", but when the hand actually does move, it just moves.
I can say that a thought appeared at the same time or a split second before the hand moved that said, "this is the decision to move the hand", but the hand also moves when that doesn't happen. So if the movement and the thought can ever be independent of each other, then it can't be said that they are ever dependent on each other.
Not only that, but "decision" is only a thought. It isn't an actual thing. There's no such thing as a decision, only the thought of it.
Thoughts came up as I was doing this, that said "okay but the hand isn't just randomly moving, there's some intention here? I mean the hand doesn't just randomly move on its own without there being a thought or intention for it to move right?"
But there's a realization that that's absolutely not true! Movements in this body happen all the time in what could be said to be a random, unintended way. In fact, when I really pay attention to what's happening, the body moves in various different ways with no thought or intention to do so MUCH more often than it does when there seems to be a thought or intention to do so! 🤯
In step 1 when thinking about their respective qualities, did you ‘choose’ the qualities? Or did they kind of appear by themselves? If some preferences manifested, did you ‘choose’ these preferences? Or did they just pop up by themselves?
I like to play with tarot cards so I drew 2 cards.
"I" absolutely did not choose the qualities of either card.
Stories (thoughts) immediately popped up about what each card means, what they mean to me, blah, blah, blah.
And the preference also popped up and there's a whole story about that too.
However I did experience a super interesting detachment from those stories as they came up, just a watching of them.
Example: One of the cards is the Death card. In Tarot, The death card is related to the zodiac sign of Scorpio. I was born under the sign of Scorpio, so I have always had a very special affinity for this particular card. As I was looking at the card during this exercise and all of these stories were coming up, I realized how much identification I have placed on the card and the traits of my zodiac sign as who I am as a person what my strengths and weaknesses are, what my challenges are, etc. And I was able to just watch it without feeling an identification with any of it and I just kind of chuckled at how much I have invested my experience in these stories of "me".
In step 2 when you counted to 5, if the preferences took the back seat while the numbers took the front seat, did you ‘choose’ this sequence of event? Did you ‘choose’ to shut down the preferences to give way to the counting? Did you directly experience an entity doing the ‘choosing’?
The only thing that was directly experienced was, a thought appeared, "Now count to 5", the body's eyes closed, and thoughts appeared "saying" 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
There was no "chooser" to be identified. Only thoughts. But thoughts are not conscious or aware or capable of "choosing".
In step 3 where you made a choice, did anything arise that announced, ‘I am the chooser’? If so, what does it look like?
The only thing that arose were thoughts about making a choice and watching how quickly those thoughts turned into a whole mini-story about making the choice.
There is no "entity" that can be identified as the one ultimately "choosing" the card.
It's also recognized that there is actually not even such a thing as a "choice" outside of the thoughts of it. Only thoughts label the body picking up a card off the table as a "choice".
Otherwise all that's happening is a body picking a card up off the table. The fact that there's another card on the table that could have been picked up instead doesn't make it a "choice" that the body picked up the card that it picked up.
That was only ever a thought.
How did it come to be?
Well it's seen that there's been a strong investment in believing in thoughts about choices and choosing and that "I" am choosing things.
The "chooser" has only come to be because the thoughts about being that were believed to be true.
But there was never a "believer" of thoughts. Only thoughts, sensations, thoughts, sensations, over and over and over again.
Consider all of the conditions that were necessary for it to happen. If any one of those conditions were different, would the outcome have been the same?
I can't possibly know that. There can be thoughts about it but I can't know if the outcome would change.
How many of these conditions were outside of your influence?
Well it can be seen that all the conditions are outside my influence. This not only implies that there is an "I" that can influence anything or choose anything, but it's also seen that despite my best attempts to "control" the outcome of situations, that control or influence never actually determines the outcome.
What was in your control (according to thought)?
According to thought, there was an "I" here that made choices that caused things to happen.
But that was never true.
And right now there are thoughts and sensations that have been labeled as "terrified" because this means that there is no control over anything and no "choosing" of the "right" or "wrong" thing to do.
There's only experiencing what happens but not participating in it.
But what is aware of "terrified" is not "terrified" at all.
And now the body is laughing 😁
