realizing selflessness

[whoknows]

After starting a couple of times and letting myself get interrupted by text messages, I did about 15 minutes of ButtChair. Mind restless. Tried to relax attention "down" into butt-on-chair sensations. Tried sporadically to see that there is just the experiencing, no experiencer.

[Anastacia42]

Remember, this is just the conditioning. You're likely to feel the shift when you're not looking.

just the experiencing, no experiencer.

Excellent.

Maybe a little about my experience will help.

I had many brief glimpses over many many years. Then 2 major episodes of awakening that gave me honeymoon periods of complete bliss.

For some people it's slow and gentle and for others it lands like a ton of bricks. Mine were like a ton of bricks.

The one that happened with LU happened while I was sitting in the car at a stoplight. I looked out the window and everything was glowing and beautiful. I felt high.

That lasted a long time. Weeks, I think. And then as I believed things that were not true, it faded. Specifically, there was someone I wanted to be in a relationship with and they did not want a relationship with me. So believing that we should be dating was stressful and brought me down.

But I have never lost the awareness that I am connected to everything and there is no self.

Loving,

[whoknows]

Thanks for sharing a bit about your experience.

Vince said that out of maybe a hundred or two people he guided at LU, only three or four had sudden, dramatic shifts and that it’s more likely to sneak up on you slowly.

[Anastacia42]

And about half give up. But the only way to fail is to quit.

Loving,

[whoknows]

Last night in bed, when I couldn't sleep, I was playing around with the self-inquiry question "Where am I?" So just now, I took your suggestion to try the "Where is I" exercise in your Dropbox files.

Some of the preliminary questions about the qualities of various sorts of thoughts and what happens when you change their "locations" didn't work very well for me, and I can see why I didn't get very far in this recording when I sampled it before. So I was glad when we got to "the big question" and were asked about the location of the "I" thought. And I appreciated the follow-up question about the location of the "I" that found that location. I paused the recording for a bit to look at that. That "I" seemed larger and perhaps more diffuse, like it took up more of my head and possibly extended a bit beyond my head, especially in front of my face, which is approximately how I have imagined the space where thoughts appear. I found that difference odd and interesting.

Likewise, I appreciated the series of questions about where the "I" was, and what the experience was of the "I" that perceived that, and who perceived the answer to that question, and where that "I" was, etc. So during the five minutes of silence, I tried to keep asking such meta-questions, going further and further "back" into the "I" sense. (But naturally, I spent a good bit of that time caught up in thoughts.)

I'm now curious about continuing to notice where my sense of self is located and how large it is and whether that has changed recently or whether it varies or whether it just depends on how the question is asked.

[Anastacia42]

didn't work very well for me,

That actually means you didn't work well for the pointer. It's not hard.

Reach out and point. It's that simple.

Remember, "I" is made up. It doesn't exist. There's no such thing at all.

It's "where IS "I"? (not "where am I?" which is a totally different question. )

Give those all another try, please.

"I" is a lie thought plus the contraction Sensation of a lie. Nothing more.

Loving,

[whoknows]

didn't work very well for me,

That actually means you didn't work well for the pointer. It's not hard.

Reach out and point. It's that simple.

I'm sorry to say that I'm feeling again like I'm being insulted. ("It's not hard"; thus, I "didn't work well" — implying what? That I was being too lazy or dense or resistant or something?) But to respond to the explicit content of your message . . .

As I said, some of the preliminary questions didn't work well for me. The very first questions "worked." The past and future thoughts were both located slightly in front of, above, and to the right of my usual sense of self (which is in my head, mainly behind my eyes), with the past thought a little further to the right than the future thought. The stuff about swapping the locations of thoughts — and maybe some other things (I don't recall) — yielded basically nothing. But maybe that "nothing" is somehow noteworthy and doesn't mean it "didn't work" for me?

Remember, "I" is made up. It doesn't exist. There's no such thing at all.

Yep. That's what I'm here at LU to see.

It's "where IS "I"? (not "where am I?" which is a totally different question. )

Give those all another try, please.

"Where is 'I'?" is indeed the question I was exploring in doing this exercise. As I said, I was looking for the location of the "I" thought, or the "I" sense, or the sense of "self." Maybe I didn't say that clearly enough? Or maybe I'm missing something?

[Anastacia42]

Last night in bed, when I couldn't sleep, I was playing around with the self-inquiry question "Where am I?" So just now, I took your suggestion to try the "Where is I" exercise in your Dropbox files.

You used "am."

stuff about swapping the locations of thoughts — and maybe some other things (I don't recall) — yielded basically nothing. But maybe that "nothing" is somehow noteworthy and doesn't mean it "didn't work" for me?

Usually. there's a difference after the swap, not nothing is not important here. You got the gist of the pointer.

Sorry, "didn't work for me" triggered me. I've never understood that. Nothing is a fine response.

Thanks,

[whoknows]

You used "am."

Ah, I see. “Where am I?” is the question I was using last night during a bout of insomnia. But then this morning, I was doing the “Where is I” exercise, which is clearly about the sense of the “I” or the “I” thought, and that’s how I was using it.

(As it happens, I interpret “Where am I?” as also being about the sense of the “I” or the “I” thought, but I realize that that might be a quirk I picked up from folks like Adyashanti and Angelo DiLullo, who have backgrounds in Zen and no-self, while teachers who are fully grounded in Advaita Vedanta might understand “Where am I?” somewhat differently.)

Sorry, "didn't work for me" triggered me. I've never understood that. Nothing is a fine response.

OK. Thanks.

So anyhow, I’m curious about whether my sense of my fictional self is changing — whether it’s morphing from usually being concentrated behind my eyes to being larger and more diffuse, in and perhaps also around my head — or whether it varies or whether it depends on how the question is asked.

[Anastacia42]

We've don't care how your experience of the illusion of "I" changes. It's still an illusion, a hallucination,, effectively a lie.

Stick to Direct Experience.

Loving

[whoknows]

We've don't care how your experience of the illusion of "I" changes. It's still an illusion, a hallucination,, effectively a lie.

I was just reporting something I noticed when I did the “Where is I” exercise. And I guess it seemed like my “I” sense might be dissolving or becoming unstable or something, which seemed like it could be a good sign, but I can see that it could be irrelevant.

I’m realizing I’m not quite sure what the point was of my doing that exercise. Mainly to see in another way that the supposed “self” is just a bunch of thoughts (in addition to some physical sensations)?

[Anastacia42]

Which one? Where is "I?"

All of these exercises have the same point. To realize that there's no such thing.

The only thing that "dissolves" is your thinking.

[whoknows]

All of these exercises have the same point. To realize that there's no such thing.

Yeah. OK.

Did 15 minutes of trying to relax attention into butt-on-bed sensations and see that there are only sensations with no senser. Rather chatter-brained this evening, so that didn't get much sustained attention.

[Anastacia42]

Okay

[whoknows]

Last night, I used a saved Angelo video ("When will it finally end??") to have a good cry about still feeling stuck in dukkha (suffering/dissatisfaction).

This morning, used a 15-minute chunk of a saved video as a guided meditation to help me be aware of thoughts as they arise, which generally leads to having fewer thoughts arise. Restarted it a couple of times as I settled in.

Then did about 15 minutes of ButtChair, with a brief break in the middle to take phone call from spouse. Trying to let attention relax "down" into butt-on-chair sensations, and occasionally trying to see that there's no experiencer of the experiences. Main reminders to myself about thoughts: "Don't take thoughts personally" (i.e., don't take them as pertaining to "me" or being generated by "me"; they're just random mental stuff) and "Don't take notes." Also, as I've been doing sometimes during meditation in the past couple weeks, I reminded myself a few times, "Take heed. Do not squander your life" — the closing lines of the Evening Gatha chanted at the end of the day at Zen monasteries. Didn't manage to have much sustained attention on the sensations until near the end of the 15 minutes.

I don't know whether you'll consider this relevant, but this morning, before the meditations I just mentioned, I had to take the car to the mechanic to deal with what I hoped and expected was a minor problem. Six months ago, before I got back into regular meditation practice, this would've probably seemed like an oppressive and stressful chore. This morning, it just felt like, "Darn, need to take the car in. At least it's a nice day for sitting outside." (The problem was indeed so minor that they didn't even charge me for fixing it.) And afterward, taking a little walk, I cried some tears of relief that my life is starting to feel less like day after day of torture.