RedwoodsAndBerries

[Redwoods0]

LU is focused guiding for seeing there is no real, inherent 'self' - what do you understand by this?
That experience happens but there is no “self” it happens to. When suffering and tension come up, this is because there is a gripping. The gripping is wanting to make things permanent so there can be an unchanging self, but it doesn’t work.

What are you looking for at LU?
I’ve been having glimpses of a different way of relating to experience, that are more easeful and joyful. I want to “break through” or let go of whatever is blocking full comprehension of anatta/non self. The more self that is let go of, the more energy there is for helping others, for forgiving, for sharing, for kindness and fun. Just in the last few days something is very different—much lighter. I connected with a dharma friend a few days ago who has been posting on LU and the conversation was inspiring and moving for me. I can see the changes in her and the ease from a year previous when we last spoke. She suggested I try LU. It’s a little tricky to answer this because when I try to say what “I” am “looking for” the old feeling of ambition and tightening comes up and I am coming to understand that is not the way.

What do you expect from a guided conversation?
I would love to feel encouraged by someone who has crossed this threshold and can help me feel it is a do able thing. And to be supported if I do cross it and if I feel any chaotic or fearful feelings along the way. The old me has had fantasies of stream entry which led to fear or megalomaniacal feelings, neither of which I know has any relation to reality. It would be great to have someone point in the right direction at key moments, offer reassurance around fear, and who I can share the joy and humor of this investigation with—I’ve gotten a lot of laughs from spiritual practice as things have gotten lighter! I teach creative writing for a job and have become a bit worn out on writing as a practice, so I’ll probably try to be truthful, direct, and on the briefer side when I post (or maybe it will go in the opposite direction as I am so used to writing). My mind loves to investigate—sometimes so much I can’t sleep—and regularly investigates in dreams, lucid and non-lucid. So my guide should perhaps be someone who doesn’t mind hearing about relevant dreams (though again, I intend to keep these not too long). I am deeply grateful for the time and energy of the guides and respectful of the forum, and will do my best not to unintentionally stray from the site’s guidelines.

What is your experience in terms of spiritual practices, seeking and inquiry?
Seeking has been lifelong and took the form of writing – nonfiction and fiction – from early life. Also as a kid I tried various spiritual practices I’d read about (like astral projection and chakra meditation) and had some intense moments then got knocked back by fear and thus gave those up. I wanted to meditate as a young person but there was a lot of gunk in the system and I couldn’t. After a lot of suffering, I started Buddhist meditation in 2016 at around age 40 and was exposed to noting practice, then did vipassana in the Goenka tradition. I moved on to Thai forest monastic teachers and, realizing rigidity was not the way, began exploring something that felt less goal oriented for me. For the last 9 years I have done several silent retreats a year, the longest being 13 days. There was a lot of aversive conditioning in my system and a lot of hatefulness to observe, tolerate, and eventually that became easier to accept and less personal. I also visited Luong Phor Ganha’s monastery in Thailand and the focus there on generosity and ethics, plus the good friendship of people there, helped chip away at the Western conditioning I was coming in with of wanting to improve “my” practice in a self focused way.

I now study with a lay teacher who teachers Daoist and Buddhist practices, and who inspired me to shift focus to anatta/nonself, and a Thervada monastic teacher whose words at the deeper level sound non dual to me. It is greatly inspiring to be around awakened people and see how they speak and operate in the world. Both teachers emphasize inquiry and I have tried this a number of ways. My teacher pulls the Buddha’s directives as fortunes out of a hat from New Years Eve and I was thrilled this year to get “you should be wise…you should be an inquirer.” Right now I am asking experiences of suffering the questions the Buddha asked in the Anattalakana sutta: is this permanent? Being impermanent, is it happiness or suffering, reliable or unreliable? Being impermanent or suffering, does it make sense to call it me, mine or myself – to build a self on it? I’m finding everything breaking down under this set of questions. Though this is a bit time consuming, it is pulverizing beliefs and so I’ve been making an attempt to try it on the things I least want to try it on – conditioning that for whatever reason my mind wants to cordons off as outside the scope of inquiry.

Just the night before last as I was awake in the night being assailed by thoughts I was able to see that the thoughts were the offspring of earlier choices, not the products of any fixed self. Right now if I question whatever is happening I can feel into this understanding and feel a brief lightness and effervescence as the tightness dissolves– but the general experience of thoughts and other things is still coming up as tight moment to moment, as gelled up and selfified somehow.

On a scale from 1 to 10, how willing are you to question any currently held beliefs about 'self? 10