The Gate

That's all fine, but it didn't take you to awakening. This does.

We call it Direct Looking.

We don't care about thoughts or thinking. We don't analyze or discuss philosophy.

We Only LOOK at Direct Experience. We report only our Direct Experience. See Colored Socks from before.

If you want to do some other method that's fine, but not here.

For suffering, I recommend The Work of Byron Katie www.thework.org

Loving,

We Only LOOK at Direct Experience. We report only our Direct Experience. See Colored Socks from before.

At Starbucks, doing a bit of seeing/hearing/feeling and also smelling/tasting (of my decaf breve latte).

The latte had only a very subtle aroma (to my surprise).

And it tasted a lot more like half and half than like coffee.

Hearing music, conversations, clattering/thumping/clinking of dishes and containers, whirring of blenders, liquids coming out of faucets/spigots, pumps being pumped, ice being scooped and shaken, doors closing, squeak of sneakers on floor, clink of pull chain for window shades against window frame, child coughing, chairs scraping/squeaking on floor, my own sneeze.

Seeing . . . well, a whole field of shapes and colors, which changes when my head moves.
(Thinking alert: And my mind labels individual objects and adds depth perception. Somehow, I was more inclined to separate and label the “individual” sounds in the soundscape than I am to label "individual" things the visual field. That’s partly because the list of objects seen would be absurdly long, but I don’t think that’s all it is. Maybe it's that I feel like I can grasp the visual field as a whole, and I don't feel like I can do quite the same thing with the other senses.)

Feeling my butt on the chair (extra-aware of that now!); my clothes against my arms; my lips touching; my hands resting on the computer, with my fingers on the computer keys; my knees against my pants; the sides of my sneakered feet pressing into my legs (sitting cross-legged); the cool air against my face, neck, and the backs of hands; my tongue in my mouth; the feel of my cheeks; my glasses resting on my nose and ears; air coming in and out of my nostrils.

A Gordon Lightfoot song on the Starbucks playlist gave me a nostalgic, warm/sad/wistful feeling, and I understand emotions to be thoughts plus physical sensations, but I couldn’t pinpoint the physical sensations. Similar but not identical emotional reaction to a Dire Straits song.

(Don’t worry, I won’t always give you such a detailed report when I do this exercise, but I felt like doing it this time.)

I won’t always give you such a detailed report when I do this exercise, but I felt like doing it this time.)

Good because it's keeping you stuck in thinking and that is not the point of the exercise The point is the one word direct experience.

I don't even read the description. I only look to see if you know which direct experience it is

Loving,

The point is the one word direct experience.

I don't even read the description. I only look to see if you know which direct experience it is

OK, so I did another round of maybe ten minutes of seeing/hearing/feeling, and here's my report:
Seeing . . . , hearing . . . , feeling . . . , each interrupted with some frequency by thinking and occasionally by attention getting drawn to a different sense.

And I followed that with about five minutes of ButtChair, in which I felt the sensations of my butt pressing against the chair, with interruptions of thinking.

Okay. Do give a few words of description. Just a few. Review our first pointers.

Did you notice your butt is one with the chair?

How does it FEEL to see this?

Loving

Did you notice your butt is one with the chair?

No, I didn't notice this. I haven't ever noticed this. (That actually sounds like a thought to me, but I guess it's how people describe some sort of experience?) I just notice the sensations of pressure (and sometimes temperature or texture).

How does it FEEL to see this?

How it feels to NOT see this is . . . frustrating.

Again, sorry you're frustrated. That's a thought.

your butt is one with the chair

Look for this.

When you find it, write how it feels.

Loving,

your butt is one with the chair

Look for this.

When you find it, write how it feels.

Looking for it. Not finding it.

Well, I mean, there’s just the one cluster of sensations of butt-meets-chair. But that doesn’t seem like “my butt is one with the chair.”

Will keep looking . . .

Here is something Ilona wrote:

https://bit.ly/49rTagF

I’m guilty of this:
“For a long time, the approach has been . . . to finally have the right insight. And if that happens sometime in the future, then something will finally shift.”

But it sounds like she’s mostly addressing folks who’ve had an initial shift and are disappointed that they don’t feel constantly clear, peaceful, or happy. I haven’t gotten there. I still need the “Direct Pointing”; I’m not yet at “Deep Looking.”

I’ll save this for when (I hope) I’ll need it.

Yes.

That's why I'm pointing to the lack of separation between you & the chair. Ignore your thinking & just feel & look

Can you see that yet?

Loving

Can you see that yet?

After another five minutes of ButtChair, trying to really immerse myself in the sensations:
Nope. What I directly experience is some sensations.
(And the mind adds that they're the result of the body sitting on a chair. And the mind fabricates a sense of an "I" in the head that "witnesses" the sensations from a "distance.")

That's why I'm pointing to the lack of separation between you & the chair. Ignore your thinking & just feel & look

Can you see that yet?

A few more minutes trying to sense the lack of separation between butt and chair:
All I directly experience is some sensations, mainly of pressure.
(I don't directly experience a butt or a chair or a separation or lack of separation between them.)

Did about six minutes of seeing/hearing/feeling, sitting up in bed:
Saw the bedding right in front of me, then raised my gaze and, with the gaze more or less still, attended to the whole visual field, giving special attention to the edges of the visual field. Heard a few birds outside (mockingbird? cardinal?), the faint mechanical sound of my bedside clock, an occasional whoosh of a car. Felt butt and thighs on the bed, crossed legs, cheeks, breath in nostrils, the presence and position of my arms, some tension and/or sinus pressure in my face.

Wrote out the above, then did about seven minutes of ButtChair:

That's why I'm pointing to the lack of separation between you & the chair. Ignore your thinking & just feel & look

Can you see that yet?

Nope. I felt pressure, a little tingling, a little warmth.
(I don't directly experience a "butt" or a "bed," just a bunch of sensations. "The lack of separation between you & the chair" sounds like a mental construction, not like something I could directly experience. But I'll keep looking to see if there's an experience — or perhaps an absence of a mental construction? — that one might be inclined to describe that way.)

sounds like a mental construction,

No. It's the opposite. Seeing it as 2 is the result of believing your thoughts. That is what you must unlearn.

Keep looking. Review Colored Socks.

Relax into it until it dawns on you that there's no separation.

Have you read Gateless Gatecrashers? That might help.

Have you read Gateless Gatecrashers? That might help.

Yep, I've read some big chunks of it.

sounds like a mental construction,

No. It's the opposite. Seeing it as 2 is the result of believing your thoughts. That is what you must unlearn.

Hmm . . . If you said that seeing "me" and "the computer keyboard" as two is the result of believing thoughts, I would get that intellectually and could look for it experientially. I just this morning did that exact thing, guided by Angelo DiLullo's "Dissolving Duality" video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i34iBJ_zHOA).

If ButtChair were about seeing "me" and "the chair" as not-separate, then I wouldn't be stumped. I would get that I'm trying to directly experience what's actually going on, letting go of the belief in an "I" — the belief that creates the illusion of separation. I might get frustrated at times that I can't seem to let go of the belief in an "I" separate from "objects" (or even sensations), but I wouldn't get frustrated about not understanding the exercise.

Can I translate ButtChair into MeChair — i.e., trying to directly experience the non-separation between "me" and "the chair" or, perhaps better, between "me" and the sensations of butt-meets-chair? (I do appreciate that ButtChair is about touch sensations, rather than vision. It seems more visceral. And I like the specificity of that cluster of sensations, which I can easily tune into many times a day, since I spend so much time seated.)