Desperately seeking no-one

[Elad]

Oh and I am glad you are oriented to move with kindness and tenderness. Compassion and loving kindness are key in all of this.

[Jikai]

Dear Elad

What is actually there. Pay close attention to the sensations and wholeheartedly inteonate "my gurling/buzzing/whatever" versus wholeheartedly intonating "gurlging/buzzing/whatever" while paying attention to the direct nonverbal experience. Which description is more direct? Why? Don't settle for intellectual convictions. Keep with it to find what truly feels right.

This is a hard one. I am very identfied with the sensations of the body, which is something I guess you could say that I have fostered through decades of bodywork - being a 'bodyworker'/massage therapist - and also strongly utilising being present 'in' and being aware of my body sensations as a way of managing anxiety.

I had several sessions of doing this exercise of intonating 'my ear is buzzing' vs 'buzzing' etc. The very persistent tone is particularly challenging because when the tinnitus first started several years ago I thought I was going to lose my mind, but I trained myself not to pay attention to it and now it only bothers me when I'm very tired or ill or very stressed. Paying attention to it in this way resulted in it becoming very loud and persistent to the extent that it felt like the whole right side of my face was buzzing/vibrating. My mind became very argumentative over it. I felt like my mind was trying to arm wrestle my mind into submission! And then ask 'what is aware of the mind arguing with the mind, yet is not the mind'. My mind apparently thinks that it resides somewhere in between my ears and behind my eyes so the loud tone was 'right in its' ear' which is pretty funny. This whole thing is quite a mind **** really, haha. And my body got very stressed over it. I got so frustrated I felt like my body was about to explode. I had to step away and go for a walk.

Using other parts of the body was not so challenging. I came to experience that sensations in the body eg 'tingling' (in the foot) are simply part of the field of experience but a field of experience that feels far more intimate than anything 'outside' (of the body). In a way that kind of made sense to me. The field of experience extending out from the perceiver and 'closer' being more vivid than 'further'. Is consciousness localised in that way?

My mind is seething recently and yesterday it was full on. Not about anything in particular often, just on and on, and I am exhausted with it. I'm staying gentle with myself but I repeatedly find myself wanting to push and push and getting frustrated. The only way I can stop it is by distracting myself.

Lots of loving kindness practice and walks. My Zen teacher used to say that sometimes sitting on that cushion is like sitting on a bucking bronco and it certainly seemed like that this morning! Waking at 3:15 (no dozing or going back to sleep) does not help. Unfortunately this has been the case for me for several decades. I recently saw a sleep coach because I just couldn't deal with it any more and I stopped monitoring my sleep as a result and try not to make anything of it which sometimes works and I can just get on with my day and sometimes doesn't. This is getting mixed up with the spiritual seeking. Desperately wanting some peace and wanting to get somewhere. And there's nowhere to get and nothing to do, right?

In general, when i'm not 'trying' to get to some state or other, staying in 'beingness', this moment, feels increasingly where I choose to be. It feels safe and enough.

I am glad you are oriented to move with kindness and tenderness. Compassion and loving kindness are key in all of this.

Thank you. This is definitely 'home' to me, and one that I've applied myself to wholeheartedly over the past several years and now feels to be second nature. It's good to be reminded though. I have been using this daily metta practice for a long while and it has served me so well:
May I stay close to my own heart
May I trust the ground beneath me
May I hold my experience with kindness
May I befriend life as it is.

In some way it feels like this has led me to feeling ready and wanting (so much!) to step even deeper into 'myself', into the absolute and allow the relative to drop away, but apparently my mind - known and unknown - doesn't agree and it's fighting back!

With love
Helen

[Elad]

Dear Helen,

Lot's of intense experiences! Moving forward, if an exercise I suggest intensifies symptoms (like the tinitius) I suggest stopping with it. Just return to whatever works for you: Resting in being, loving kindness, whatever for you is the door to more ease and relaxation and kindness.

Not because I claim that is universally the way - but I guess it is more often then not, and if the moment comes for some "intense final push" it will happen by itself, by some inner necessity, like a force of nature. And sometimes, even maybe many times, it happens more gently.

Your thoughts about how your past training in body awareness might complicate the process... I don't have clear sense about true they might be in some relative sense. But I think it might be helpful in the process we do here, to not give much attention to ideas about how you are in this, or why you are as you are. They might well just reinforce the identification and taking attention away from direct looking. Okay, here is the next exercise for you:

Practice periods of "just sitting" (say 20 min or more) and while sitting, watch like a hawk: What makes anything happen?

Small movements, thoughts, sensations, emotional shifts, attention shifts etc - what makes everything happen? And this includes the thoughts that seem more "in control" or "mine" like "I will stop indulging this thing", "I will return to the instruction". Look closer. Look super close. How does all that happen???

Can a self be found anywhere that controls any of it, or is it just an old belief, that is so habitual, that it is habitually taken for evidence (I believe it is so, so it "feels" like it is so). Is everything actually in reality happening by itself?

What is imagined right now to be self at center choosing or doing? And what is actually there, what makes things happen?

[Jikai]

Dear Elad

Lot's of intense experiences!

Well, yes, welcome to my world. Often dipping into intensity for a period, then out of it just as easily. This process is intense.

But I think it might be helpful in the process we do here, to not give much attention to ideas about how you are in this, or why you are as you are. They might well just reinforce the identification and taking attention away from direct looking.

That makes sense. And reading back, I can see that I still am constantly referring to 'why I am as I am'. Wow, that habit has dug a deep trench.

Practice periods of "just sitting" (say 20 min or more) and while sitting, watch like a hawk: What makes anything happen?

I already do 'just sitting' for 30 minutes twice a day; sometimes more.

Small movements, thoughts, sensations, emotional shifts, attention shifts etc - what makes everything happen? And this includes the thoughts that seem more "in control" or "mine" like "I will stop indulging this thing", "I will return to the instruction". Look closer. Look super close. How does all that happen???

The resistence that I'm feeling to this instruction is really something, just now as I'm considering how to describe my experience I feel my body tensing, my shoulders getting tight. So weird!

Oh, but reading this back over, that's not exactly it. The resistence to the instruction isn't it - it's the resistence to describing my experience.

So I can say that I can't find any answer to 'how does it all happen'. I can't find anything I can identify as causing movements or thoughts while I've been sitting; they're just arising. Insofar as I've been able to notice that, it doesn't 'feel' like anything, there's no 'ah!' arising, even a tiny one. I don't mean that I'm expecting a big revelation but there's no heart connection to it, is the best I can say. This process feels....I don't know....cold? Like, I can totally 'get it' and fully embrace it as a concept but there's no sense of 'knowing' it directly. Mind is going..."And??.

I have been reading the book 'Gatecrashers' and I feel the same sense of bafflement when reading those dialogues. I cannot 'get' where these people are at, at all. I can't relate to their process. Then I looked through the book and saw that there are 17 dialogues with men vs 4 with women. Interesting. When I try to laser focus my attention it tends to slide away, like trying to put your finger on a blob of mercury.

I have a strong feeling of 'me-ness' though I can't find the evidence for it, and it feels quite distinct from the mental chatter that goes on all the time.

Helen

[Elad]

Hi Helen!

Oh, but reading this back over, that's not exactly it. The resistence to the instruction isn't it - it's the resistence to describing my experience.

So I can say that I can't find any answer to 'how does it all happen'. I can't find anything I can identify as causing movements or thoughts while I've been sitting; they're just arising. Insofar as I've been able to notice that, it doesn't 'feel' like anything, there's no 'ah!' arising, even a tiny one. I don't mean that I'm expecting a big revelation but there's no heart connection to it, is the best I can say. This process feels....I don't know....cold? Like, I can totally 'get it' and fully embrace it as a concept but there's no sense of 'knowing' it directly. Mind is going..."And??.

The passion comes or doesn't come from inside. If this really matters to you, the passion can come into really wanting to get clear beyond doubt. There is no process separate from the particular way it manifests here now - conventionally speaking "in you" - that is passionate or not. "You" are passionate or not in how you do it.


Judging the process itself as cold might be an effective way for "ego" to not let this in. Certainly if you believe that thought to be a truth, rather then just what "ego"/mind is producing right now, thus avoiding something, it higtens the chance this will continue to feel cold and not be productive.

I have been reading the book 'Gatecrashers' and I feel the same sense of bafflement when reading those dialogues. I cannot 'get' where these people are at, at all. I can't relate to their process. Then I looked through the book and saw that there are 17 dialogues with men vs 4 with women. Interesting.

Lots of women amongst my former clients who "gated" here. Significantly more then men.


Your sharp analytic mind and wide framework of psychological and spiritual "knowhow" and practice can be a distraction in this process, even while I have no doubt there is much there that can be helpful in other contexts. And will continue to be after awakening.

When I try to laser focus my attention it tends to slide away, like trying to put your finger on a blob of mercury.

Yes, it will be this way until suddenly it is not. Nature of the beast :)


This is not something "you" get, the one you think you are. When what you think you are is seen for what it is - mere belief, believed so strong it feels true, and limiting experience - then "it will be seen"... "by mystery/by itself/in the seen only the seen".

I have a strong feeling of 'me-ness' though I can't find the evidence for it, and it feels quite distinct from the mental chatter that goes on all the time.

Continue really exploring: What is seemingly the "I/me-ness" making things happen and experiencing things? How is it imagined NOW in real time ? What sensations/thoughts/images are imagined to be "it" NOW ? Don't try to make the illusion go away. Instead the more it is there the better chance to clearly see what it is made of....



AND as opposed to this imagined experience that feels real because habitually believed and held on to...


What is actually there in direct experience ? Where do thoughts and actions come from in real time direct experience ? What is actually experiencing ? Anything separate at all to be found ?

[Jikai]

Hi Elad

The passion comes or doesn't come from inside. If this really matters to you, the passion can come into really wanting to get clear beyond doubt

I am on fire with it, Elad! I don't have the words to describe what's happeninig within me. It has been growing and growing for some time now. Really, it's been there throughout my life, waxing and waning, but first I believe that I had to learn to love and accept myself, and it took coming close(ish) to death to learn that.

Your sharp analytic mind and wide framework of psychological and spiritual "knowhow" and practice can be a distraction in this process,

It's kind of you to say - I wouldn't go that far - but it is entirely true that I have 'managed' my often extreme distress by being hyper aware and analytical about and managing my internal state, and I do agree that it can get in the way. The mind becomes the tool that's being utilised to look for no-self. Which is a losing proposition. The direction to 'look, look closely' seems to directly activate that mind state.

I am feeling my way along. There are words that are heard that ring like a bell in my heart, that feel like direct experience. There's a very short video of Papaji that I love. A woman asks 'Show me me'. He has her sit in directly in front of him and looks into her eyes. 'Where is me?' he asks. 'Here' she says. 'And how can you get to here? By plane, by car, by boat?'. 'No' she says, shaking her head. 'Why?' he asks. ''There's no distance'. 'That's right, no distance' he says. 'Stay here', emphatically', and again, 'Stay here'. She begins to laugh and laugh.

That 'no distance', I feel it reverberate through my being. This morning, when I was sitting, looking closely at mind being clever, mind being spiritual, mind arm wrestling mind to see. Only the 'no distance' interrupts the flow. No distance, no distance, attention narrows down to a pin head, my heart opens and overflows.

What is seemingly the "I/me-ness" making things happen and experiencing things? How is it imagined NOW in real time ? What sensations/thoughts/images are imagined to be "it" NOW ? Don't try to make the illusion go away. Instead the more it is there the better chance to clearly see what it is made of....

It's made of thoughts, thoughts building a self, grasping and holding on and reinforcing a self. I kind of 'know' that but I don't know it.
I'll keep looking.

Helen

[Elad]

Okay, beautiful. Stay with no distance. Feel no distance. Stay with what makes the heart overflow. And write me soon how things are.