realizing selflessness

[whoknows]

There may be no clean boundary where the “first arrow” ends and the personal problem begins

Yeah, OK.

The hidden definition of freedom seems to be: “I am free only if I can say yes or no without an unpleasant consequence.”

Yep. It feels a little embarrassing to see that, but I appreciate your pointing it out.

A boundary sometimes means allowing another person to be disappointed without making their disappointment your wrongdoing or your responsibility to remove.

I need to let that sink in.

Is K trapped by the request—or by the demand that there must be a response that leaves everyone comfortable?

The latter, clearly.
Thanks for your help on this.

Something I’ve noticed a couple of times recently during meditation (can’t recall whether I’ve mentioned it before):
Along with the now-familiar thought that it’s weird that something as insubstantial as thoughts could give rise to so much suffering, there’s a sense that it should be no big deal to not take thoughts seriously and also a feeling that maybe I’m on the brink of being able to mostly not take them seriously. Then that seems fanciful and unrealistic, and then it seems possible, and it flickers back and forth.

[whoknows]

Life threw a small demand at me this morning. I noticed the negative reactions associated with having some unanticipated and annoying little additions to my to-do list. I noticed the stories forming. They didn’t get very far. And a couple of the envisioned tasks turned out not to be necessary after all.

In the process, I played with something I’d come up with recently, which is to attach a make-believe story to bodily sensations to replace the troublesome story I’d attached to them, which I guess was also make-believe but seemed more plausible. Since many (most? all?) of my negative emotions involve a feeling of tightness in the throat, I made up a story that I’d recently had throat surgery, which had gone well, and there was no more pain but just a bit of discomfort, which was slowly fading. So the throat sensations got disconnected from the original story about being put-upon. And the original story was made to seem less real or important or something.

Back in July, in the context of your idea of establishing new synaptic connections, you said, “You’re on the slippery slide now,” and I replied, “Oh, dear God, I hope so.” I would now say: It does seem that way.

Was finishing writing this when I had a negative reaction to an interpersonal thing. Simply noticing that I was having a negative reaction and noticing the associated bodily sensations seemed to aerate it a bit.

[whoknows]

Used Angelo’s video of the day, “Ambient Sound and Non-Duality,” as the lead-in for my afternoon sit. The quiet, steady, high-pitched whine (electricity? tinnitus?) felt like a super-thin, diamond-tipped drill that could easily pierce through the encrusted layers of thought that obscure the simplicity of physical sensations. Found it fairly easy to stay with the sound.

[whoknows]

Misc. things:

(1) Second sit yesterday:
Continued to attend to ambient sound and was also playing with “letting go,” meaning letting go of thoughts but also a more general sense of letting go that I can’t quite pin down. I realized that the types of thoughts I was getting caught up in, all of which were about the near or far future, would be much less sticky if I were to let go of any notion that I could or should control anything at all (y’know, from more of a no-self/absolute perspective than a conventional/relative perspective) and, thus, if I really felt like it doesn't even make sense to attend to anything other than the here and now.

(2) Got a demand thrown at me right before bed last night, which is a time when I feel especially touchy and vulnerable. Felt absolutely horrible but quickly started examining what was going on, and it loosened up a bit, and then I forgot about it. Now—the next morning—I can still feel the wounds where the second and third arrows had to be extracted, but it’s not so bad.

(3) I missed my daily dose of vince yesterday. But my upcoming, high-dose Zoom infusion should keep me from get some weird deficiency disease like beriberi or pellagra.

[vinceschubert]

I was also playing with “letting go,” meaning letting go of thoughts but also a more general sense of letting go that I can’t quite pin down.

Look closely at “letting go.” A thought appears, followed by another thought saying it should be released. Is there an actual K performing the letting go—or are arising, noticing, fading and attention-shifting all happening by themselves?

The types of thoughts I was getting caught up in, all of which were about the near or far future, would be much less sticky if I were to let go of any notion that I could or should control anything at all.

Yes, imagining that K must control the future makes future-thought sticky. But does seeing through control require future-thought to stop? Planning, anticipating and remembering can all happen without a controller.

It doesn’t even make sense to attend to anything other than the here and now.

Where does a thought about tomorrow occur—tomorrow, or here and now? Is ambient sound more present than a future-thought appearing now? Does THIS exclude thoughts whose content refers elsewhere?

The sound felt like a super-thin, diamond-tipped drill that could easily pierce through the encrusted layers of thought that obscure the simplicity of physical sensations.

What says thought is an encrustation obscuring reality? Is thought outside THIS, while sound and bodily sensation are inside it? Or are sound, thought, preference for sound and the wish to escape thought all equally present happenings?

Perhaps what needs to be seen through is not future-thinking, but the subtle K who has taken responsibility for curating experience—keeping attention present, discarding the wrong thoughts and producing the right kind of letting go.

When a future-thought appears without invitation, who is there to let it go—and what would happen if that thought, too, were allowed to be THIS?

Item 3 requires no Inquiry. It is a serious case of Australian-guidance deficiency and should respond well to the prescribed Zoom infusion. :-)

v

[whoknows]

OK, I see the themes here:
- Is there actually a K doing anything?
- Isn’t it all part of THIS?

Look closely at “letting go.” A thought appears, followed by another thought saying it should be released. Is there an actual K performing the letting go—or are arising, noticing, fading and attention-shifting all happening by themselves?

Of course they’re all happening by themselves.
But it still feels or seems like “K” is “deciding” to “let them go.”
Decided (ha!) to sit here for a moment and watch thoughts arise and be “let go.”
And of course what happens is that a thought arises, and then (for no discernable reason) there’s awareness of having been caught up in that thought, which means the attention is no longer caught up in that thought, so it has already been let go.
But “deciding” to be more deliberate or conscientious about letting go seems like it adds something else.
I suppose it might mean that there was an “intention” ahead of time that when a thought is noticed (and, thus, let go), there will be additional thoughts of not immediately allowing the mind to relax into its old thinking habits and more deliberately directing the attention to physical sensations.
But, yeah, of course there doesn’t need to be an actual K doing any of that. It’s just a slightly different sequence of happenings, where now the initial “intention” to be deliberate about letting go is doing the best job of seeming to have been “done” by K, but it wasn’t K’s doing either — but it’s harder to feel that.

But does seeing through control require future-thought to stop?

No. (But future-thought will probably lose some steam.)

Planning, anticipating and remembering can all happen without a controller.

Yep.

Where does a thought about tomorrow occur—tomorrow, or here and now? Is ambient sound more present than a future-thought appearing now? Does THIS exclude thoughts whose content refers elsewhere?

Yeah, OK, I figured you might go there.
Of course thoughts about the future happen now.
And of course all of it, including all thoughts, is part of THIS.
But . . . something.
But . . . a lot of selfing happens in thoughts. And selfing creates, or is, suffering.

Future-thoughts are fine when planning is appropriate.
And future-thoughts that simply arise randomly are not a problem per se.
But future-thoughts that are bought into as if there’s a self who needs to always be trying to arrange things to its liking — those seem like a problem. Right?

That doesn’t mean they’re not THIS, and the same goes for selfing and any problems created.

But . . . well . . . Less selfing and less suffering would be preferable!
OK, I admit it — I initially wrote the previous sentence as “I’d prefer less selfing and less suffering!” But then I revised it to get rid of the “I” and make the self more stealthy.
I’m getting confused.
Is preferring less selfing and less suffering just an example of selfing?
Preferences aren't necessarily selfing, right? But maybe preferences that end with exclamation points are?
Have I gotten stuck in paradox-land again, or Catch-22-land, or is there a way out of this? Or should I just drop it?

The sound felt like a super-thin, diamond-tipped drill that could easily pierce through the encrusted layers of thought that obscure the simplicity of physical sensations.

What says thought is an encrustation obscuring reality? Is thought outside THIS, while sound and bodily sensation are inside it? Or are sound, thought, preference for sound and the wish to escape thought all equally present happenings?

I didn’t say thought obscured reality!
(I was quite intentional about that.)
I said thought obscured “the simplicity of physical sensations.”
That seems undeniable, yeah?
At least that’s how it works in my own experience.
And, yes, of course, thoughts are also THIS (whatever that means!), including thoughts of preferring to attend to sound rather than thoughts.

Perhaps what needs to be seen through is not future-thinking, but the subtle K who has taken responsibility for curating experience—keeping attention present, discarding the wrong thoughts and producing the right kind of letting go.

Yeah, probably.

When a future-thought appears without invitation, who is there to let it go

There’s no one to let the thought go. It just happens that it is noticed and, thus, is let go. That part seems clear and obvious with just a moment’s reflection or observation.
And even subsequent thoughts about being very deliberate about returning the attention to sense perceptions or being vigilant about not grabbing onto thoughts — those thoughts also just arise, due to prior conditions. But that part doesn’t seem so clear and obvious. I feel like I’m saying that more out of cognition.

—and what would happen if that thought, too, were allowed to be THIS?

Of course, a future-thought is THIS.
So I suppose the question really is: What would happen if a future-thought were recognized or accepted as THIS?
Well, despite my intellectual conviction that the future-thought is THIS, if I treat it like it isn’t, then I would probably have a negative reaction to it, thinking of it as somehow bad or a problem or at least not ideal.
However, if the future-thought is truly recognized and accepted as THIS, then it’s simply what’s here. It’s just part of what IS.
And there still might be a preference for it not to be here, but that’s not a big deal?

Much of what I said in this post felt rather cognitive and abstract.
The stuff about no-self and THIS didn’t feel like it was hitting home.

****************************************

At the “Monday” meeting (Sunday evening for me), it was nice to feel like I didn’t have any great need to be in the spotlight.

[vinceschubert]

Is preferring less selfing and less suffering just an example of selfing?

Not necessarily. Preferring less suffering can be a natural organismic leaning, like withdrawing a hand from heat. No separate self is required.

It becomes selfing when an owner-manager is implied:
“I must eliminate selfing.”
“I should be further along.”
“Its presence means something about my awakening.”
“I cannot be okay until this stops.”

And even that selfing is simply another conditioned happening—not evidence of an actual self.
So don’t try to become preference-free. Ask:
Is this merely a preference for less suffering, or a demand that present experiencing must change before K can be okay? And apart from the preference itself, can a preferer be found?

Of course thoughts about the future happen now.
And of course all of it, including all thoughts, is part of THIS.
But . . . something.
But . . . a lot of selfing happens in thoughts. And selfing creates, or is, suffering.

Of course thoughts about the future happen now. And of course all of it, including all thoughts, is part of THIS. But . . . something. But . . . a lot of selfing happens in thoughts. And selfing creates, or is, suffering.

Yes. That is the “something.”

Saying that every thought is part of THIS doesn’t mean every thought has the same effect or deserves continued attention. A thought can be fully included in experiencing while also activating contraction, fear and a self-reinforcing storyline.
But be careful not to turn selfing creates suffering into a new rule that makes selfing the enemy:
“Selfing is happening. It shouldn’t be. I must return to the present.”
That would be selfing about selfing—K appointed to protect K from K.

Your recent examples already suggest a subtler distinction. The demand appeared, negative reactions arose, and stories began forming—but they didn’t get far. The interpersonal reaction arose but became “aerated.” Some selfing occurred, yet it didn’t necessarily develop into sustained suffering.
So look directly rather than defining it:
When “selfing” is noticed, what exactly is present? A thought containing “I” or “me”? A bodily contraction? A mental image of K? Urgency? Belief in the story? Resistance to what is happening?

Does the thought alone create suffering—or does suffering grow when the thought is believed, owned, resisted or elaborated?

There is no need to keep attending to every thought. Attention may naturally return to sound. The investigation is whether an imagined K is dismissing thought because it threatens her spiritual progress—or whether the thought simply loses relevance once it is recognised as thought.
Can selfing be allowed to arise without either following it or making its appearance into another problem for K?

The sound felt like a super-thin, diamond-tipped drill that could easily pierce through the encrusted layers of thought that obscure the simplicity of physical sensations.

What says thought is an encrustation obscuring reality? Is thought outside THIS, while sound and bodily sensation are inside it? Or are sound, thought, preference for sound and the wish to escape thought all equally present happenings?

Perhaps what needs to be seen through is not future-thinking, but the subtle K who has taken responsibility for curating experience—keeping attention present, discarding the wrong thoughts and producing the right kind of letting go.

v

[whoknows]

I’m usually eager to spend time considering and responding to your posts, but that’s not how I’m feeling right now. Mainly, I just don’t know what else to do with myself at the moment.

Yesterday, when I didn’t feel any particular need to be the center of attention at the meeting, that felt like a good thing, like I’m doing noticeably better than when I began attending the meetings (in late May) and I’m feeling somewhat less desperate about this whole awakening thing. It was nice to feel inclined to give my attention to someone other than “me.”

This morning, my lack of energy around this feels more like depression or aimlessness.

There’s a quieter desperation now about my suffering and longing. OK, there we go. Here come the tears.

I’m noticing something like the feeling I got when I first read Joko Beck’s Everyday Zen back in 1989 — the feeling I often still get when reading it. Her teaching style is wonderfully clear and straightforward, but she can make Zen practice sound like a long, slow, tedious slog involving very gradual change of a sort that sounds basically psychological, when what I urgently wanted (and want) is a major change in my whole view of reality.

(I think it’s a great book in many ways. I wrote about it in my dissertation, and I assign it in my class on Zen. My husband was Joko’s telephone student for a few years and is sympathetic to the way I feel about her teaching but doesn’t really feel that way himself.)

I’ve noticed that I sometimes get a similar feeling reading your stories — like, oh god, will I be endlessly bringing my issues to Elias, drinking tea, watching Bracken sleep, ignoring Naomi’s sassy comments, and having teeny tiny little insights? This makes me want to scream!!!

(Let me be clear that I love your style, in person and in writing — how you’re straightforward, down-to-earth, empirical, and pragmatic, and you notice when you’ve said something that might sound a little too woo-woo. This all works well for me.)

OK, so there’s still desperation, but it’s generally more low-key than before, I suppose because I’m spending less time feeling like getting through each day is torture and because my selfing is gradually getting more aerated.

In the middle of writing this, I relocated from my bed to the public library, and now we get a reprise of a familiar scene: I’m gonna go hide in the restroom to cry . . .

Cried, took a brisk walk outside, cried some more.

I think I need to be careful not to ignore or repress the desperation that’s still here and not to ignore or repress urges to seek because of my understanding that one can’t (in one sense) DO anything about awakening.

Even though I’m confident that no essential, separate “self” that’s the perceiver, thinker, and controller can be found in direct experience,
and even though it’s hard to know what it would even mean to say that this ever-changing pattern of perceptions and thoughts is “awake” or “not awake,”
and even though I understand and like the idea that awakeness has always been here,
and even though I understand that absolutely everything here and now is THIS (though I don’t know exactly what I mean when I say that),
it is still true that I WANT TO WAKE UP!
I want to wake up NOW!
(Yeah yeah, I know, now is the only time you can wake up. Shut up.)
I want to know what to DO to wake up!
I want to know how to DO it as quickly as possible!

OK, there it is.

Feeling less depressed now, with all that energy unblocked.
But still feeling aimless, which I guess means I hate that I apparently can’t be given directions for how to work efficiently toward the future goal of awakening. (Imagine most of the words in that last sentence in scare quotes because, yeah, I know! Or I think I do.)

Ask:
Is this merely a preference for less suffering, or a demand that present experiencing must change before K can be okay?

Maybe at times it’s merely a preference, but I think I need to be careful not to kid myself into thinking there’s never a demand there. Probably more often than not, it feels like present experience needs to change before K can be okay.
Right now, K does not feel okay!

[whoknows]

P.S. Many hours later, still feeling crappy, ran across an Angelo video ("When You Are Feeling Despair...") that encouraged dropping from thoughts into bodily sensations and reminded me of my musing about how weird it is that so much suffering arises from something as insubstantial as thoughts combined with bodily sensations that are rarely more than moderately uncomfortable.

[whoknows]

P.P.S. Noticed that I didn't actually say this in my previous post, though it was implied: It was helpful to realize that I could put my attention on bodily sensations, rather than thoughts. I hardly even had to do it; maybe just realizing how stuck I was in the thoughts, and how unnecessary that was, did the trick.

[vinceschubert]

I hear you. You’re afraid that all of this will amount to endless management of conditioning—small improvements, slightly less suffering, occasional pleasant moments—and that the fundamental change you have sought for decades will never happen.
If that is accurate,
That is not a minor concern to be soothed with another story about ordinary life. There is grief and rage in it. Let them speak.

I think I need to be careful not to ignore or repress the desperation that’s still here and not to ignore or repress urges to seek because of my understanding that one can’t (in one sense) DO anything about awakening.

Agreed. Seeing that there is no controller does not mean suppressing longing, sitting passively or pretending not to care. That would merely appoint a spiritual K to police the seeker-K.

The cry “I WANT TO WAKE UP NOW!” arose. It was expressed rather than tidied away, tears came, energy moved, and some depression lifted. None of that was wrong.
But now that the desperation is alive and visible, don’t immediately calm it, satisfy it or argue with it. Investigate the mechanism while it is operating.
Say slowly:
“I want to wake up now.”

Notice what the sentence produces. Is there an image of a future K finally seeing correctly? An image of present K as deficient or trapped? A bodily reaching, pressure, grief or forward movement?
Then temporarily remove the word awakening. Without the promised object, what is the wanting made of? Sensations, thoughts, images, tears, urgency?

Is there a K who possesses this longing—or does the longing itself construct the impression of a present K who is missing something and a future K who will finally have it?
This is not another tiny psychological adjustment. It goes directly to the seeker.

Right now, K does not feel okay!

Then K does not feel okay. There is no requirement to rename that okayness, acceptance or THIS. But look closely at what “K does not feel okay” refers to. There are bodily sensations, thoughts, tears and perhaps heaviness or agitation. Then thought gathers them together and announces that they belong to an unawakened K whose life must change.

Is the not-okayness a problem because it is painful—or because it is being used as evidence that K still hasn’t awakened?

Your later observation is important:

I hardly even had to do it; maybe just realizing how stuck I was in the thoughts, and how unnecessary that was, did the trick.

Yes. Attention shifted, the thoughts lost some authority and the state changed. You didn’t have to wrestle attention into the body. Conditions changed and shifting happened.
Don’t turn that into a compulsory method for escaping every difficult thought. Instead, notice what it reveals: intense suffering had been assembled from thoughts, images and bodily sensations that, examined separately, were mostly bearable. The suffering was real, but no separate sufferer was found manufacturing or owning it.

I cannot promise a dramatic event on a timetable, and I don’t want to reduce awakening to decades of polishing psychological reactions either. So for now, leave both promised futures alone—the sudden rescue and the endless tedious slog.

Stay with this living question:
When “I desperately need to awaken” is happening, can an actual seeker be found apart from the desperation, bodily energy and images of a different future? Or does seeking create the seeker it claims will eventually be liberated?


v

[whoknows]

This is really helpful. Thank you, vince. (This is why you get the big bucks? Oh well.)

Was reading your message on my phone while sitting in the car, parked outside the library, figuring there might be tears so I’d rather be alone. Now in the library, on my computer, writing it up.

Investigate the mechanism while it is operating.
Say slowly:
“I want to wake up now.”

Notice what the sentence produces.

First, convulsive sobbing.

Is there an image of a future K finally seeing correctly?

Maybe. But more like just a big mess of emotion, i.e., a bunch of sensations and inarticulate thought-fragments.

An image of present K as deficient or trapped?

Trapped, yes. Deficient might be implied, but trapped is felt more.

A bodily reaching, pressure, grief or forward movement?

Wondered if the sobbing was grief, but that didn’t seem quite right. More like ongoing suffering and frustration?
Maybe pressure, like a whole-body expression of suffering and frustration wanting to explode.

Then temporarily remove the word awakening. Without the promised object, what is the wanting made of? Sensations, thoughts, images, tears, urgency?

All of that.
I suppose the thoughts are largely about awakening, though. So if we temporarily remove “awakening,” maybe the thoughts are mostly expressions of suffering and frustration? I don’t know.

Is there a K who possesses this longing—or does the longing itself construct the impression of a present K who is missing something and a future K who will finally have it?

Can’t find a K who possesses the longing.
(At this point, we’re fading from what I experienced while sitting in the car into my current reflections.)
The conglomeration of stuff that the longing is made of — maybe the thoughts especially? — creates an illusion of a possessor of the longing, maybe especially when it’s all spinning around really fast. (I’m picturing how the blades of a fan that’s moving very slowly can still be seen as separate blades, but if the fan spins fast enough, the blades look like a disk.)

This is not another tiny psychological adjustment. It goes directly to the seeker.

Yes. I see and appreciate that.

look closely at what “K does not feel okay” refers to. There are bodily sensations, thoughts, tears and perhaps heaviness or agitation. Then thought gathers them together and announces that they belong to an unawakened K whose life must change.

While sitting in the car, maybe when I considered this bit or maybe when considering the boldfaced question above, I noticed that the sense of K was made in part of the visual perspective of these eyes, and I noticed the house across the street, the fence around the above-ground pool in the backyard, the crepe myrtles on the edge of the property, the abandoned-looking house next door with an overgrown yard, the trees, the sky, and the water tower a few blocks away.
There were also sounds of birds and traffic.
By this point, it felt like a lot of the emotion had been sobbed out, and the unhappy thoughts had calmed down.
The sense of self had been aerated a bit.
Sense perceptions could be noticed and even appreciated.
(About “aeration”: There are lots of artificial ponds in the area where we now live and a few natural ones too. If you infuse a muddy, algae-choked, green-brown, mosquito-breeding pond with oxygen, it can become clear, blue, and a happier home for fish.)

Is the not-okayness a problem because it is painful—or because it is being used as evidence that K still hasn’t awakened?

Both, I think?
Well, no, maybe the pain is the main problem?
I think I generally imagine “awakening” as reducing suffering. So when I’m feeling not-okay, the problem is not so much that this seems like evidence that I don’t yet have my “awakening” diploma to frame and hang on the wall (and that I'm not yet done taking classes and paying tuition) but that I’m longing for the reduction in suffering that I imagine awakening would bring.

intense suffering had been assembled from thoughts, images and bodily sensations that, examined separately, were mostly bearable. The suffering was real, but no separate sufferer was found manufacturing or owning it.

Hmm. I’m not sure the thoughts are bearable even by themselves when “I” am submerged in them, identified with them. I think the key thing is disidentifying from the thoughts. And “dropping” from thoughts into bodily sensations — actually doing that or (it seems) simply remembering that it’s possible — is a way of having a little distance from the thoughts.
Ah, but you said “examined separately,” so, yeah, any sort of “examining” could be a form of disidentification.

I cannot promise a dramatic event on a timetable,

Fair.

and I don’t want to reduce awakening to decades of polishing psychological reactions either.

Thank you!!!

So for now, leave both promised futures alone—the sudden rescue and the endless tedious slog.

OK. I can do that at least some of the time.

Stay with this living question:
When “I desperately need to awaken” is happening, can an actual seeker be found apart from the desperation, bodily energy and images of a different future? Or does seeking create the seeker it claims will eventually be liberated?

Yep, it’s helpful to remember to take a look at the supposed “I” who is suffering and longing.

[whoknows]

P.S. But my lesson for the day is to not jump straight to examining the supposed self who feels desperate to awaken, in the misguided hope that this inquiry will make the feelings go away, but first to acknowledge and feel those feelings.

**********************************

Also this morning: Remembered the chore, still not dealt with, that spouse had mentioned right before bed a couple nights ago. Once again, this gave rise to distress. Mentioned this to spouse, who came to the rescue by ordering me not to think about it at all until Saturday, when we’d sort it out and he’d see if there was any part of it that he could do. I was very grateful.

I thought about the positive synergy that seems to be going on with our spiritual practice these days, and I thought about how I'm not just a distinct “me,” but there’s a bigger K-and-spouse (-and-everything-else) system, and I don’t have to sort everything out just within this little “me.”

Then when I was sitting in the car in the library parking lot, spouse called and said he’d realized that when he’d mentioned the chore before bed, he'd probably said it with some anger or impatience, and he suggested that I should take that into account when considering how I reacted — which is quite right, given how poorly I generally deal with anger. Grateful once again.

[vinceschubert]

After the emotion has been fully felt,(or even just with reference to it) sit somewhere with your eyes open. Don’t leave thought for sensation. Let thoughts, bodily sensations, sounds and the visual scene all be present together.

You said K sometimes seems submerged in thought and can then gain distance from it. Look now:

What exactly is submerged—and what stands back?

The visual field has a perspective corresponding to these eyes. But does perspective contain an observer? Can the place from which seeing supposedly happens actually be found?

Are thoughts “inside” and the landscape “outside” in experiencing itself—or does thought add those locations?

Don’t answer from what you already understand. Search for the boundary where the viewer ends and the viewed begins.

Without moving away from thought or towards sensation, is there anything standing apart from this entire field that could be identified or disidentified?

If vividness, strangeness, softening or excitement appears, Don’t describe it yet. Remain with the looking.

What experience would immediately reconstruct the observer?

v

ps. Thank you for the donation to keep the Zoom group meetings & the Substack stories, investigations & songs going, but please desist if any hardship arises from doing it. ❤️

[vinceschubert]

Give me a critique of Amy's response to the final questions. https://liberationunleashed.com/nation/ ... 15#p425333 Do you think that she has passed through the gateless gate? If so - why? If more investigation indicated (to you) - where?

v