Hey :)
Hope these replies reveal where more work is needed.
Yes... keep investigating and keep expressing where you are so we can tackle all of it.
The belief is from years of being in the habit of calling these body feelings my foot, head, arm etc
thought clamors to maintain its self-referencing throne, certainly... but keep looking at these tactile-sensations that thought calls "body" and divides in to "food, head, arm" and then adds a "my".
where is this "my" besides thought?
The feelings are alive sensations whereas seeing clouds, trees etc are perceptions. This set of feelings always around with this same body image unlike clouds etc.
What do you mean by "alive sensations" ... that sounds like perception to me, just like clouds, and trees are.
Yes, since Life appears to be witnessed from a first person perspective, that is just a misunderstanding. The fact that those feelings appear more frequently and in apparent similar formation than other phenomena cause thought to claim those as self, and everything else as other in some way.
Look at this division you are making though... you are dividing it in to "alive sensations" (self) and everything else as perception (the world/other/else). Look nakedly here... is there an actual dividing line here besides what thought says? is there an actual difference here apart from thought?
there is perception... but what besides thought divides it?
and look at this first person character again.
try this exercise. look at the floor, or an object.
now.... is the first person looking at the object?
if the answer is yes, then how come you don't conclude that the object is looking at the first person?
why isn't the object called self?
is awareness/consciousness located in Barrie/the first person?
has Barrie ever done anything? has Barrie ever thought anything?
is Barrie aware of anything?
I never have been able to find a self
Right... there is no such thing. But if you look at this latest response from you... there is a belief in some self... that the 'body' is self, etc... let us detangle these thought-webs.
Without thought there is nothing to claim them but even then it is as if there is a hidden subtext that they belong to a someone.
Let's keep bringing that up to the surface and burning it.
It certainly seems as if control happens. There is intention and the intended thing happens. Where the intention comes from is another question. I can’t stare at a supposed I as I do not know where that would be. There is no controller as such in consciousness, the focusing, doing, responding and thinking are being done whether by a subconscious or what I don’t know, but it acts in concert with thoughts. Say I do the raising the hand experiment then the intention to raise the hand is there but it doesn’t necessarily happen immediately, the thought comes up ‘raise the hand’ but it doesn’t have to be acted on. The hand might raise later on an impulse but I have never found where that impulse came from but it is carrying out an action that was planned in thought.
there are these apparently separate events, such as thinking, intention, movement, decision, etc, and thought draws causation from the apparent meaningful correlation between these events, but it all just happens. there is no one doing any of this. all you have to do is look. and by look i mean refer to direct exprience. don't settle for an assumption like a "subconscious"... just really notice.... is there a doer/controller in direct experience?
then ask... is "control" and "automatic" really any different besides the causation/correlation that thought weaves?
( this is VERY important... please spend time with this )
This body having just finished the washing up would say ‘I have just finished the washing up’ now I could say ‘I am cold’ meaning that this body is cold.
The body never does anything... it is just another happening just like everything else. thoughts would argue with this and quite many theories about how it's different, but the body is just a perception just like everything else.
and the body is never cold, there is just a sensation. the "body" is a sensation and sometimes there is a sensation that thought labels "cold" and even says "that the body is cold"... or even worse... "my body is cold"... but what does direct experience reveal about this? does it reveal an actual body, or just sensations?
For me being absorbed in the private world of thought maintains the illusion as thought leads a never ending dance never allowing the space to question where the thoughts are coming from, they are easily just assumed to be ‘my’ thoughts.
there is no one that is absorbed in thoughts... just thoughts about someone that could be absorbed in thoughts.
And "my" is a thought... a thought cannot own thoughts... although there are constant thought references to an owner (which only exists in thought) that owns thoughts!
The word ‘I’ is used to refer to more than just the body though, it is referring to a body with thoughts and concepts of personality, a past and future etc
^--- all of this exists purely in thought. there is just and only Experience. Just this.
When there is belief in this ‘I’ then if this body and thoughts is ‘I’ then everything that is not ‘I’ is other and separate.
Exactly... let us break this entire belief structure down and burn it. It is ONLY a belief structure... that's it.
no self in any of that.
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with Love.
