Thread for Harvey

[Nettie]

Dear Harvey,
Examine what do you know, for sure? Honestly? In any part less moment, What can you Really say for sure?
What is known and what are stories?
Nettie

[Nettie]

Dear Harvey,
This isn't something you can get with the thinking mind. If it were, we'd all have it!
Just relax and allow clear seeing to happen.
Nettie

[Nettie]

OK
Tomorrow is Monday, you can put this off for another week.
However this takes no time.
This is something that takes no time!
Remember the baby experiment you loved?
Why is that, should that, be anything other than the way it is?
Simply simply. Simply,
Nothing other than right here, right now!
You know this, have always known this.
Nothing special, no fireworks!
Nettie

[Nettie]

Dear Harvey,

Nope. You can't get there (to seeing through the illusion of self) from here (logical understanding). If you could, you would be there already.

There are no words to adequately describe how to see, no maps of how to get there; all I can do is Point to where you should look.
This is not a mental exercise; all the thinking you can ever do will never get you there.
I am asking you to Look, mot think.
What is Looking? It is focusing on your Direct Experience. Seeing with the eyes, hearing with the ears, feeling with the skin, smelling with the nose, tasting with the tongue. Sensation, before it is judged and labeled, is direct experience.

to get to Direct Experience of it, you will have to step away from Thinking About everything and begin to use your senses.

Those of us who live in a mental world have much the hardest time letting go of the idea that there is something more to be understood. There isn't. You understand it all; now you just need to shift focus from thinking to directly experiencing.

You may ask what makes direct experience more effective than intellectualization? Two things, at least: first it takes us out of our Story about what is happening and gets us in touch with what is actually happening; and second it is a peaceful quiet "place" which is always available merely by shifting focus away from thinking and to sensation. It really is a peace which passeth understanding, understanding being stuck in thought.

There is no goal here. I just point to the fact that there is no actual entity self/I/me, and if you genuinely search for one everywhere in your direct experience, you will SEE that it is an illusion created by language and supported by nearly everyone around you.
I cannot give this experience to you; you will have to SEE it for yourself.

If you wanted to SEE the Eiffel Tower with the eyes in your head, I would direct you to Paris, not to a picture-postcard stand. Same here. If you want to SEE through the illusion that you are or have a separate self that has some control over an individual slice of Life, you must go to direct experience, for that is where this can be SEEN.

Try not to Think this all through so much. It only makes thought tangles that prevent you from experiencing directly the fact of the matter: "I" is a label. There is no "I" outside of thought/language.
No hypothetical I can ever assist you in directly experiencing the fact of the non-existence of an actual entity "I".

Nettie

[bdhtgcr]

Hi Nettie,

I have not been on here or facebook during the last few days as i have been away. Even during the weekend, I was questioning almost relentlessly no matter what I was doing. I have read all of your messages very carefully.

In one of the messages from Friday, you had mentioned about better or worse / cause and effect. When I look at that, I know that in both cases these are mental constructs. There is nothing inherently better or worse and causality is just an overlaid intepretation.

One of the things you say is to relax and allow clear seeing to happen. You are so right about the thought tangles beause one of the things that I noticed through the weekend is that there is a tendency (in thoughts) to effort my way through many of the questions that you ask. So I end up feeling resistant to the efforting since that entangles even more thoughts. I know that all of the analysis and reasoning is just intellectual and just produces more thoughts and that cycle can be endless. I realize that one you are pointing to is a SEEing not logic or reasoning.

I read what you said about direct experiencing and shifting the focus from thinking. I am going to work with just looking and focusing on direct experiences of the senses. When I wrote the word focus, I did think who or what is doing the focus. Also, is this different from mindfulness?

I will continue to report back and spend more time with some of your previous messages.

Harvey

[Nettie]

Dear Harvey,
This is not mindfulness, skip that.
Look at a chair, describe with seeing, texture, taste(?), sound temperature, etc. all that comes up.
As you write down all direct observations of the chair, do they add up to a chair?
How do you know it's a chair?
Pick out another object and describe using five senses.
Does the description create a separate thing?
What creates a separate thing?
This is direct experience, and it is going on all the time,
We are just used to ignoring it, and relying thought to describe our world.
It is a slight shift in perspective, and doesn't need to be maintained,
But it can help you discover what is real.
Nettie

[bdhtgcr]

Hi Nettie,

So I have taken a couple of chairs, a table, a wall and I have been just noticing what shows up in direct experience with my senses. (I remembered that I use to do this many years as an informal meditation). Anyway, as I have been doing this and noticing the observations, it is clearer that the descriptions are just the thoughts that come up about the osbservation but they are not the experience.

The separation of things are arbitrary and occur becuase I know that they are just descriptive. The noticing of the chairs and table, etc are actually enjoyable and have a senuous quality. When I was looking at the grains on a wooden table, there is a stillness quality that permeates it and other things as well. While that sounds as a description, it is more than that.

I will keep up with the direct experiencing. Its actually easy to do as i go back to it at various times during the day.

[Nettie]

Dear Harvey,
Yes, seeing a wall that we previously believed was one color (maybe we even painted it ourselves), there are infinite colors, reflected light and shadows and even these words cannot capture the experience. Certainly, 'wall' doesn't even come close!
Direct experience is continuous, unstoppable, yet we've been taught to only pay attention to the overlay of thought/memory that labels.
So, the perceptions are continuous, and you cannot find where they come from or where they go. Are there separate 'things' in reality? Look!
In direct experience is there any separation between a 'you' and the wall? Or are there simply perceptions?
Beginning or end?
Better or worse?
Cause and effect?
This and that?

Stillness vs. agitation happen? Yes, only description of energy felt. What one person calls stillness another might call boring. Whatever appears, appears, totally unpredictable. There is no special state to achieve cause there is nothing static. Can you pin down reality? What does it feel like when you try to catch the air with a butterfly net?

Nettie

[Nettie]

Dear Harvey,
You have to write every day, got to keep up the momentum.
Or stop and come back later.
Nettie

[Nettie]

You either want this or you don't.

[bdhtgcr]

On a conventional level, this is the end of the semester and I have about 150 students at my college with term papers and finals to give starting tomorrow. Then the task of calculating final grades begins.

But within all of that outward activity, there has been an ongoing looking at everything: thoughts, experience, awareness, causality, the "I". This process has taken on a non-stop quality. Having said that, something has clearly changed. No matter what practice I am doing, there was an underlying agenda within to try to discover or change or untangle some type of problem. There IS nothing to untangle - that was just a thought. Everything is just moving together. Boundaries are now arbitrary. It's like stepping back and seeing with soft eyes. Things just unfold - seamlessly interconnected - and the expectations and the judgments are thoughts. The self is just a thought or a ripple in stillness. There really is no controller. The thought may be there but everything is just playing itself out in the only that it can. There was nothing to untangle.

[Nettie]

Dear Harvey,
Thank you for your beautiful letter!
So, if you feel you have seen through the illusion of separation and would like the final answers,
Let me know and I'll send them.
Nettie

[Nettie]

Ah hem, I meant questions!

[bdhtgcr]

You may send the questions !!! (Maybe the questions and the answers are the same :)

[Nettie]

Dear Harvey,
Here are the questions:
1) Is there a 'me', at all, anywhere, in any way, shape or form? Was there ever?

2) Explain in detail what the illusion of separate self is, when it starts and how it works.

3) How does it feel to see this?

4) How would you describe it to somebody who is very interested, but has never heard about this illusion.

5) What was the last bit that pushed you over, made you look?

Anything to add?
Nettie