The Gate

Dear Elad -

OK, again. You said:

“I didn't read all this. It won't help to defend your own ideas about what is intellectual and what is emotional. Go back to my last post, keep working with it till you can give a clear and simple answer.

Stay only with this and answer only when ready to answer just what you see, short and clear:

Does the sensations or thoughts that are taken habitually to be Joshua or taken to mean "this one has not realized no self", do they in fact directly show any such thing? Or are the sensations only sensations and the thoughts only thoughts, and Joshua/I are just labels and "not there" just a belief without any clear link to here/now reality?

Ps. Everything in this process is pretty normal.”

Well, I have run out of time to put this off any longer tonight, Elad.

and as I sit here, out of energy, I don't feel like I have the ability to run after all of my previous different strands of discussion and make sense of any of them. I'm just here sitting at the table, a little exhausted. None of those ideas I was running around and after is very close to me at the moment. I’m just tired, and tired of running around after them. For better or worse, at the moment, all I can keep track of is that my (or these) fingers are typing, I’m sitting here, occasionally taking a sip of water, these eyes occasionally blink, and this body is tired. The sensations and thoughts you mentioned above are somehow not here at the moment, at least not very clearly. Sensations and perceptions flow in and around, sounds, visuals, physical touch, a drink of water, and I just want to go to bed.

A thought “this isn’t it” happens, and it heads away, sort of melts or disintegrates into ashes, fairly soon after it arises.

I will do more of my work earlier in the day tomorrow Elad - thank you for sticking with me and it here now.

Best wishes from
“Joshua”

Dear Elad -

OK, again. You said:

“I didn't read all this. It won't help to defend your own ideas about what is intellectual and what is emotional. Go back to my last post, keep working with it till you can give a clear and simple answer.

Stay only with this and answer only when ready to answer just what you see, short and clear:

Does the sensations or thoughts that are taken habitually to be Joshua or taken to mean "this one has not realized no self", do they in fact directly show any such thing? Or are the sensations only sensations and the thoughts only thoughts, and Joshua/I are just labels and "not there" just a belief without any clear link to here/now reality?

Ps. Everything in this process is pretty normal.”

Well, I have run out of time to put this off any longer tonight, Elad.

and as I sit here, out of energy, I don't feel like I have the ability to run after all of my previous different strands of discussion and make sense of any of them. I'm just here sitting at the table, a little exhausted. None of those ideas I was running around and after is very close to me at the moment. I’m just tired, and tired of running around after them. For better or worse, at the moment, all I can keep track of is that my (or these) fingers are typing, I’m sitting here, occasionally taking a sip of water, these eyes occasionally blink, and this body is tired. The sensations and thoughts you mentioned above are somehow not here at the moment, at least not very clearly. Sensations and perceptions flow in and around, sounds, visuals, physical touch, a drink of water, and I just want to go to bed.

A thought “this isn’t it” happens, and it heads away, sort of melts or disintegrates into ashes, fairly soon after it arises.

I will do more of my work earlier in the day tomorrow Elad - thank you for sticking with me and it here now.

Best wishes from
“Joshua”

Okay.

Do the sensations experienced now in any direct way say they are "I"?

Is anything in direct experience here-now a separate self or doer?

Kindly,
E

Dear Elad -

I will begin by quoting you, as I have come to like to do first here.

“Okay.
Do the sensations experienced now in any direct way say they are "I"?
Is anything in direct experience here-now a separate self or doer?
Kindly,
E”

At the moment I am sitting at the southern end of Manhattan Island, looking out beautiful, sunny day over expanse of water out across to the Statue of Liberty.

The sensations experienced now do not appear in any way to say they are “I”.

Many impressions are here: the sun… the sound of the helicopter in the sky off to my right… a runner, bounding across my field of division from left to right… the shimmering water… the sound of some kind of power tool or instrument behind me to my left. Lots and lots of impressions all around, sound, visual, temperature — warmth is here, which my brain tells me is associated with the bright sun directly shining down upon me

But to answer your question: No, nothing in any of that direct experience appears to be a separate self or doer. Everything is happening, lots of things are happening, and all of those things are perceived, or sensed, and some of them can be named easily, some of them less easily:

Hot
Bright
Echoey, noisy
Girl passing by
Pair walking by me speaking I think Swedish
Beautiful day
Ellis Island, where my grandfather arrived at the age of five in 1903, off to my right, along with my beloved Statue of Liberty not very far away from there
Tiny sailboat visible on the water
Shimmering water
Beautiful, indescribable cloud formations south and west of me, not blocking the sun in any way but still painting the sky white-streaks-hanging-in-the-blue
Boats, big, medium, and small, traveling at different speeds through the harbor waters.

Thank you again Elad

Best wishes from
Joshua

Great.

Now let's clarify more:

You write "at the moment" nothing in direct experience indicate a separate self. Is there anything else in direct experience than "at the moment". Could anything exist outside this-now, except in thought?

Hello Elad -

You said, in your last note to me:

“Great.
Now let's clarify more:
You write "at the moment" nothing in direct experience indicate a separate self. Is there anything else in direct experience than "at the moment". Could anything exist outside this-now, except in thought?”

Hello again Elad -

I’m back at the spot where I was yesterday at midday, by the water, facing, off in the distance, the Statue of Liberty. The day today is warmer than it was yesterday; it really is almost a summer day here in New York today. I had to move from the bench where I was sitting just a few moments ago to a more shady spot, more protected from the sun, which is so strong and so hot today that I needed a little relief before starting to write to you.

Your inquiry for me today is one that I find easier to address than some previous ones have been - although I do want to be careful to report to you what I am seeing right now, as opposed to what it is that I have come to understand and believe from previous work and contemplation and study.

I have come, over the course of time, to see and understand and believe that the past only exists as a thought, and that the future also exists only as thought. Eckhart Tolle helped me to see that truth already a few years ago. So that understanding exists here in me… as a belief. I don’t mind sharing that belief with you, but I also want to make sure that I am “tasting” that truth now as I report it to you, in my present, lived experience and communicate from that, not from some concept in my collection of concepts.

To do so, I need to look at my experience right now, holding on to no ideas at all (it seems to me), and just look. When I look at life and my experience right now, I notice that life now is vibrantly alive and present. The only way that I can gain access now to anything that is “in the past” is by thinking about it - now. And the only way to have any access to any part of what might be called future is to think about it… now. The present moment in which I am sitting here, and speaking to you, is filled with sounds, and visual impressions, and colors and sunshine and the soft breezes from the water, and is infinitely more alive than any memory of yesterday, or thought of what is not yet here/now.

I’m inspired to share with you little sort-of poem that I recite every morning as part of my self-composed morning ritual; it has some relevance to the question you posed today. It’s called “Salutation to the Dawn.”

Look to this day
For it is Life
The very life of Life
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence :
the bliss of growth
the glory of action
the splendor of beauty.
Yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision .
But today, well lived, makes every yesterday a dream
of happiness
And every tomorrow of vision
of Hope .
Look well, therefore, to this day.
Such is the salutation to the dawn” .

For some silly reason, Elad, my transcription software made it nearly impossible to dictate that poem to you right now, and I have almost completely lost the thread of what I was trying to communicate.

But perhaps I have already responded adequately to your inquiry. Yes, I do see and understand that life, aliveness, is now and never not now. To have access to the past, we have to remember it now. To have any interaction with future, one must have that interaction now. You can never be here five minutes ago. “Today” is another name, one could say, for the totality of everything that is - right now.

Thank you again a lot for everything . I look forward to hearing from you again soon.

With best wishes from
Joshua

Hello Elad -

You said, in your last note to me:

“Great.
Now let's clarify more:
You write "at the moment" nothing in direct experience indicate a separate self. Is there anything else in direct experience than "at the moment". Could anything exist outside this-now, except in thought?”

Hello again Elad -

I’m back at the spot where I was yesterday at midday, by the water, facing, off in the distance, the Statue of Liberty. The day today is warmer than it was yesterday; it really is almost a summer day here in New York today. I had to move from the bench where I was sitting just a few moments ago to a more shady spot, more protected from the sun, which is so strong and so hot today that I needed a little relief before starting to write to you.

Your inquiry for me today is one that I find easier to address than some previous ones have been - although I do want to be careful to report to you what I am seeing right now, as opposed to what it is that I have come to understand and believe from previous work and contemplation and study.

I have come, over the course of time, to see and understand and believe that the past only exists as a thought, and that the future also exists only as thought. Eckhart Tolle helped me to see that truth already a few years ago. So that understanding exists here in me… as a belief. I don’t mind sharing that belief with you, but I also want to make sure that I am “tasting” that truth now as I report it to you, in my present, lived experience and communicate from that, not from some concept in my collection of concepts.

To do so, I need to look at my experience right now, holding on to no ideas at all (it seems to me), and just look. When I look at life and my experience right now, I notice that life now is vibrantly alive and present. The only way that I can gain access now to anything that is “in the past” is by thinking about it - now. And the only way to have any access to any part of what might be called future is to think about it… now. The present moment in which I am sitting here, and speaking to you, is filled with sounds, and visual impressions, and colors and sunshine and the soft breezes from the water, and is infinitely more alive than any memory of yesterday, or thought of what is not yet here/now.

I’m inspired to share with you little sort-of poem that I recite every morning as part of my self-composed morning ritual; it has some relevance to the question you posed today. It’s called “Salutation to the Dawn.”

Look to this day
For it is Life
The very life of Life
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence :
the bliss of growth
the glory of action
the splendor of beauty.
Yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision .
But today, well lived, makes every yesterday a dream
of happiness
And every tomorrow of vision
of Hope .
Look well, therefore, to this day.
Such is the salutation to the dawn” .

For some silly reason, Elad, my transcription software made it nearly impossible to dictate that poem to you right now, and I have almost completely lost the thread of what I was trying to communicate.

But perhaps I have already responded adequately to your inquiry. Yes, I do see and understand that life, aliveness, is now and never not now. To have access to the past, we have to remember it now. To have any interaction with future, one must have that interaction now. You can never be here five minutes ago. “Today” is another name, one could say, for the totality of everything that is - right now.

Thank you again a lot for everything . I look forward to hearing from you again soon.

With best wishes from
Joshua

Nice. Now look, could any words or ideas be reality itself? What is clearly here prior to you or me saying anything about it, can you or I create it or make it go away? Can our effort increase or decrease it? Can our words capture it? Is there separation or separate self in it?

Dear Elad -

Please forgive me here: it has been a very long, admittedly quite enjoyable Friday evening. I dictated my response to your most recent message as I was driving to a gathering of friends from university days. I have not yet had a chance to turn it into comprehensible reading material, and it is simply too late to do so now that I’m back home. I will do so tomorrow and send it along to you when it’s ready to be seen. Thank you for your patience. Meanwhile, I look forward to continuing this very auspicious conversation shortly.

Best wishes and sincere gratitude from
Joshua

Dear Elad:

In your last note to me, you wrote:

“Nice. Now look, could any words or ideas be reality itself? What is clearly here prior to you or me saying anything about it, can you or I create it or make it go away? Can our effort increase or decrease it? Can our words capture it? Is there separation or separate self in it?

Thank you so much for all of these questions. At the moment I’m driving on the highway to go visit with some old friends with whom I went to college. I can’t safely keep referring to the questions you’ve asked me at the moment – which I would like to do… instead, you know what? I am going to go and dictate this into my dictation software so that it captures everything…

Oh good -- I've got the dictation software now… and I want to keep referring to your questions, because they're helpful, really helpful. I'm going to…

“Could any words or ideas be reality itself?”

Certainly not. Certainly not. This is total.

I love words — don't get me wrong. I love that we have access to these tools that human beings have invented… or that *something* invented — the phenomenon of language, which I treasure.

But no, words or ideas cannot be reality, which is total and here, always, now.

You asked: "What is clearly here prior to you or me saying anything about it?"

What is clearly here prior to you or me saying anything about it is *This*… total, kaleidoscopic, ever-present, ever-changing, shimmering, multi-colored, noisy, quiet, magnificent, unfathomable, constantly present, never the same, shining, miraculous…everything.

"What is clearly here prior to you or me saying anything about it? Can you or I make it go away?"

No. It can't be made to go away. It's always right here, in front of you, and yet… I want to say “ungraspable,” but I don't feel like I've earned that right… to say that.

But it's like you can’t… there's something… this comes from my studies, but I… it's been pointed out to me that even though it's right here always, you can't actually grasp any of it. And that what seems solid evaporates. But THIS does not. It's constantly shifting, but it's never gone. That's another amazing truth.

I studied - I listened - I wrote - I read, really, from a man named Peter Brown, who had a book called “The Yoga of Radiant Presence.” And it was about the fact that this radiant presence is never gone and yet never stays the same for even a single moment… but it's always here.

What else did you say that I want to respond to?

“Can our effort increase it or decrease it?”

No, no, no, no we can’t.

And that brings me of course to a quote from…. that Hungarian Jewish writer from the 20th century who wrote Metamorphosis - I can't remember his name. Kafka! “Not a drop overflows, and there is no room for a single drop more.” You cannot through our effort increase or decrease this. Our words cannot capture it — they can point. And no, there is no separation… in it.

I have felt as if there is a separate self in the past, but I… and I and I don't want any of what I've said to you to give you the impression that I… feel... freed of the concept, or something — i don't know how to say this — but no, there's no separation in this, and I don't think there's a separate self in this. No, I don’t.

I want to go back over all of what you've said — all of what I've … all the what you asked, and repeat it all.

I feel that you are drawing me in a very, very important... direction. i don't know how to say much more about that at the moment, Elad, but I am excited and humbled... and a little scared, and also not at all scared. And… not exactly hungry, but eager for sure, energized for sure... and I very, very much want to keep going… where you are leading me, this.

Maybe that do will for tonight.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much… for every part of this gift.

Good night.

Dear Elad:

In your last note to me, you wrote:

“Nice. Now look, could any words or ideas be reality itself? What is clearly here prior to you or me saying anything about it, can you or I create it or make it go away? Can our effort increase or decrease it? Can our words capture it? Is there separation or separate self in it?

Thank you so much for all of these questions. At the moment I’m driving on the highway to go visit with some old friends with whom I went to college. I can’t safely keep referring to the questions you’ve asked me at the moment – which I would like to do… instead, you know what? I am going to go and dictate this into my dictation software so that it captures everything…

Oh good -- I've got the dictation software now… and I want to keep referring to your questions, because they're helpful, really helpful. I'm going to…

“Could any words or ideas be reality itself?”

Certainly not. Certainly not. This is total.

I love words — don't get me wrong. I love that we have access to these tools that human beings have invented… or that *something* invented — the phenomenon of language, which I treasure.

But no, words or ideas cannot be reality, which is total and here, always, now.

You asked: "What is clearly here prior to you or me saying anything about it?"

What is clearly here prior to you or me saying anything about it is *This*… total, kaleidoscopic, ever-present, ever-changing, shimmering, multi-colored, noisy, quiet, magnificent, unfathomable, constantly present, never the same, shining, miraculous…everything.

"What is clearly here prior to you or me saying anything about it? Can you or I make it go away?"

No. It can't be made to go away. It's always right here, in front of you, and yet… I want to say “ungraspable,” but I don't feel like I've earned that right… to say that.

But it's like you can’t… there's something… this comes from my studies, but I… it's been pointed out to me that even though it's right here always, you can't actually grasp any of it. And that what seems solid evaporates. But THIS does not. It's constantly shifting, but it's never gone. That's another amazing truth.

I studied - I listened - I wrote - I read, really, from a man named Peter Brown, who had a book called “The Yoga of Radiant Presence.” And it was about the fact that this radiant presence is never gone and yet never stays the same for even a single moment… but it's always here.

What else did you say that I want to respond to?

“Can our effort increase it or decrease it?”

No, no, no, no we can’t.

And that brings me of course to a quote from…. that Hungarian Jewish writer from the 20th century who wrote Metamorphosis - I can't remember his name. Kafka! “Not a drop overflows, and there is no room for a single drop more.” You cannot through our effort increase or decrease this. Our words cannot capture it — they can point. And no, there is no separation… in it.

I have felt as if there is a separate self in the past, but I… and I and I don't want any of what I've said to you to give you the impression that I… feel... freed of the concept, or something — i don't know how to say this — but no, there's no separation in this, and I don't think there's a separate self in this. No, I don’t.

I want to go back over all of what you've said — all of what I've … all the what you asked, and repeat it all.

I feel that you are drawing me in a very, very important... direction. i don't know how to say much more about that at the moment, Elad, but I am excited and humbled... and a little scared, and also not at all scared. And… not exactly hungry, but eager for sure, energized for sure... and I very, very much want to keep going… where you are leading me, this.

Maybe that do will for tonight.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much… for every part of this gift.

Good night.

Hi Josha. Good. You write:


"No. It can't be made to go away. It's always right here, in front of you, and yet… I want to say “ungraspable,” but I don't feel like I've earned that right… to say that."

What do you mean "I haven't earned the right"? What should that even mean, except in selfing stories that get in the way? Can "your" words and "you" ever grasp this? Yes or no?

Dear Elad -

Thank you very much for your most recent note, and thank you again for your continuing patience with me in these occasionally delayed moments. My family has had a little bit of a non-dangerous but urgent health situation tonight which I have had to attend to, and it is now far too late to begin writing back to you properly. I will pick this and us up again tomorrow thank you meanwhile, Elad, for everything. Talk to you again soon.

With best wishes from
Joshua

Dear Elad -

Greetings again, after a too-long day away from our conversation. You wrote last to me as follows:

“Hi Josha. Good. You write:

"No. It can't be made to go away. It's always right here, in front of you, and yet… I want to say “ungraspable,” but I don't feel like I've earned that right… to say that."

What do you mean "I haven't earned the right"? What should that even mean, except in selfing stories that get in the way? Can "your" words and "you" ever grasp this? Yes or no?”

Oh gosh. Well, I could try to explain what that meant, from the perspective of… a self in a story, a deeply ingrained habitual framing device. I guess I won’t pursue that here/now.

Can “my” words and can “I” ever grasp *this*?

Well I expect and feel confident that the answer is “no” without even doing any digging, any real looking, at all. Joshua was always good at figuring out what the right answer was in his classes back as a kid, in all his school days. But that's not how I want it, and …that kind of heads in the direction of what Mr. Fancy was saying (without even thinking of trying to be fancy) when he said that thing about “not feeling like he had earned the right…”

It seems to me as I consider the words that “grasping” and “seeking” have something to do with each other.

This is a very strange, somewhat destabilized–feeling place to speak from.

There has been a big desire to grasp hold of something, and right at this moment, I'm not sure where that stands… but it also seems to me to be related to “selfing-stories” as you put it.

Can “my” words and “I” ever grasp this?

How in the world do “I” let go of trying to grasp this?

How can one look at this so squarely and directly that…

It seems to be getting down to something quite basic… and I don't feel, it doesn't feel, clear enough to know exactly how to proceed. I feel like I need help to see through the grasping, through the beliefs that are animating…

I feel like I don't know how to say what I want to say here. What is it? Somehow they offered to say it is part of a compulsive selfing move that I have seen just enough to distrust but also frequently and unconscioudly experience as “myself.”

*Almost* completely.

This is a funny little terrain here, Elad. It's another moment in which I somehow, again, feel myself to be feeling along in the dark, trying to know how to walk forward, and the experience is something of a darkened space, even as there's light in this physical room, and I could find my way to the refrigerator or the bathroom if need be.

“What do you mean "I haven't earned the right"? What should that even mean, except in selfing stories that get in the way? Can "your" words and "you" ever grasp this? Yes or no?”

I didn’t see that it was a selfing story when I was telling it. I’m very confident you are exactly right - it rang true immediately. (Also N.B. I didn’t say I was “sure” or “certain,” as you can see).

Need more help please. Can “my” words or can “I” ever grasp this?

Finding it challenging to feel like “I” must let go of something here which some part of something here feels very reluctant to let go of.

Can “my” words or can “I” ever grasp this?

“I” still feel(s) like something , not like nothing.

“I” wants to get this, to be incredibly special, to be holy, to be the best boy in history, to be Jesus’s favorite nephew.

Sorry for all the noise, but I just have the feeling that “I” should speak truthfully — as truthfully as “I” can from where “I” feels itself to be. And if the master then needs to hit the student with a bamboo stick, it’s for the best and he’ll survive it.

Elad, it’s gotten quite late again, and I’m going to send this off to you without much more noisemaking. Thank you again for everything about this conversation.

I look forward to hearing from you again soon.

Best wishes from
Joshua

Sharing with you a couple of the last messages from another person who was guided here, who just crossed the gate. Hope for you to be inspired by the depth of emotional sincerity:



"Oct 25

After sitting with the disappointment…I have just been balling my eyes out for the past hour. I’m so heartbroken and disappointed. There is a feeling of being ripped off and wasting the past almost 4 years of my life. I’ve lost so much – all of my friends, my hobbies, my interest, my looks just over this stupid non-duality awakening thing. And all for nothing. I didn’t even get any glimpse or awakening experiences, no merging with oneness or being in awareness. I see now that I had all of these expectations. I don’t even know what I was doing that whole time, I was stuck in some weird non-duality thought world. This just feels so soul-crushing. Thoughts were saying that I was doing something but I wasn’t doing anything. I didn’t want to admit it to myself but I had so many expectations of what awakening was and even that last expectation that it was going to be a loss, not a gain. I didn’t even lose anything. It’s just nothing. It’s like someone has been playing a cruel joke on me. Is there even such a thing as non-duality...I feel like I have been in some weird dream.




PostFri Oct 27, 2023 9:39 pm

Hi Elad!!!!!!!!
I just had to write an update further to my previous message. After I wrote it I went downstairs to cut some vegetables and all of a sudden the tears of heartbreak and disappointment turned into uncontrollable laughter. The cruel joke is now the beautiful joke!! There is so much gratitude and joy. I feel like the weight of a million worlds has been lifted off my shoulders. I can't stop crying (in a good way now). I have so much energy I feel like I could run a marathon. There is so much energy in my body I feel like I am going to explode (in a good way). I don't even know what's going on. I just feel so happy. I haven't felt happiness in so long I totally forgot what it felt like. This is what happiness feels like!! I didn't even know I was unhappy!! There is just so much release and crying, I don't know what is going on. I have never had this much energy in my life! There is just so much energy!! I don't know what happened - this is all very confusing but oh my god thank you so much! I will write again tomorrow when I hopefully calm down LOL...I just wanted to give an update! T"

What you wanna understand is that the crucial point was she got it that she is not gonna get anything special or different. It's all ready it. Now how do we help you stop believing you will get something else? For some people the full dissapointment sets in after weeks, others can keep creating hopes for yours or a life time. It's not really a personal choice, but it is an out of control pattern.

Yesterday I was told about a baby who was baked in an oven by Hamas. And his father was shot but not killed, and made to watch the mother being raped. This could happen to us or your children. This is the reality that is it.

Elad Note Tuesday 10/31/23

Dear Elad -

OK, lots there, and I’m going to include the whole thing, just so I can have it in view as I write to you this evening:

“Sharing with you a couple of the last messages from another person who was guided here, who just crossed the gate. Hope for you to be inspired by the depth of emotional sincerity:

Oct 25
After sitting with the disappointment…I have just been balling my eyes out for the past hour. I’m so heartbroken and disappointed. There is a feeling of being ripped off and wasting the past almost 4 years of my life. I’ve lost so much – all of my friends, my hobbies, my interest, my looks just over this stupid non-duality awakening thing. And all for nothing. I didn’t even get any glimpse or awakening experiences, no merging with oneness or being in awareness. I see now that I had all of these expectations. I don’t even know what I was doing that whole time, I was stuck in some weird non-duality thought world. This just feels so soul-crushing. Thoughts were saying that I was doing something but I wasn’t doing anything. I didn’t want to admit it to myself but I had so many expectations of what awakening was and even that last expectation that it was going to be a loss, not a gain. I didn’t even lose anything. It’s just nothing. It’s like someone has been playing a cruel joke on me. Is there even such a thing as non-duality...I feel like I have been in some weird dream.

PostFri Oct 27, 2023 9:39 pm

Hi Elad!!!!!!!!
I just had to write an update further to my previous message. After I wrote it I went downstairs to cut some vegetables and all of a sudden the tears of heartbreak and disappointment turned into uncontrollable laughter. The cruel joke is now the beautiful joke!! There is so much gratitude and joy. I feel like the weight of a million worlds has been lifted off my shoulders. I can't stop crying (in a good way now). I have so much energy I feel like I could run a marathon. There is so much energy in my body I feel like I am going to explode (in a good way). I don't even know what's going on. I just feel so happy. I haven't felt happiness in so long I totally forgot what it felt like. This is what happiness feels like!! I didn't even know I was unhappy!! There is just so much release and crying, I don't know what is going on. I have never had this much energy in my life! There is just so much energy!! I don't know what happened - this is all very confusing but oh my god thank you so much! I will write again tomorrow when I hopefully calm down LOL...I just wanted to give an update! T"

What you wanna understand is that the crucial point was she got it that she is not gonna get anything special or different. It's all ready it. Now how do we help you stop believing you will get something else? For some people the full dissapointment sets in after weeks, others can keep creating hopes for yours or a life time. It's not really a personal choice, but it is an out of control pattern.

Yesterday I was told about a baby who was baked in an oven by Hamas. And his father was shot but not killed, and made to watch the mother being raped. This could happen to us or your children. This is the reality that is it.”

OK, so. Hello Elad.

Once again, a little bit here or there:

“What you wanna understand is that the crucial point was she got it that she is not gonna get anything special or different. It's all ready it. Now how do we help you stop believing you will get something else?”

I don't understand how to understand this. I am used to using my brain to try to understand things, and it appears that that's not useful in this case, somehow. She got that she's not gonna get anything special or different. I get it only in the sense that i have heard that same information many times, and it simultaneously seems true and false to me, and I suspect that it comes from how I wear my experience of being a living person that it does.

Forgive me, if I pursue this in what might be an old habitual way. I do so hopeful that at the very least it will expose my way that way to the light for you in my doing so. If I sit here, and use my brain, and read the words – which are not so very different from many different testimonies I have previously encountered, all of which say that nothing needs to change, and that nothing will change… and yet, and yet… a Gateless Gate is to be passed through, somehow some threshold that does not exist is crossed — a threshold that is seen by the crosser, in the crossing, not even to exist. But that’s not all that doesn’t exist. Somehow in the crossing the crosser recognizes that not only was the Gate never there in the first place, but that the crosser, himself, herself, was never there either.

Do I “get” this? Only to very limited, thought-based limited degree. I can write what I just wrote to you. I have not experienced the “Cosmic Joke” as she names it — at least not very recently.

The difference in the first and second installment of her testimony, of her letters to you, seems very visible to me, of course. Is that “before and after” based on no change?

“Now how do we help you stop believing you will get something else?”

Is there no such thing as the Gateless Gate? Nothing changes, it all remains the same, but somehow it is agreed upon by those who have passed through it that there is a “Gateless Gate” to be “passed through” on the way to an entirely new experience of exactly the same world and life one has been experiencing since being born.

I have also heard variations on this theme in other places and times, including, for instance, Rupert Spira’s saying something along the lines of “It cannot be found by seeking, and yet only seekers find it.” (I could be getting that one wrong, and worse, I could be twisting it into forms that “my own mind” creates out of misunderstanding.)

I have never completely bottomed out into being as "heartbroken and disappointed” as your speaker describes herself feeling when she felt she clearly perceived that she had been wasting her time and her life and her relative youth and her looks on seeking for something that does not exist.

And I also noticed that second major paragraph she wrote to you, the update, after she had crossed through the gateless gate, and “the cruel joke had become the beautiful joke.” I don't see it at all, and I don't know how or even if one can possibly engineer the seeing of it — including the part where it is seen that there is nothing that changes in there. This is completely opaque to me now.

I can certainly tell you that I don't want to spend the rest of however much time left to “this unit” on this earth banging its head against a wall. I can also tell you that I have given many more than four years to this process, this project, this ambition, this hope, this strong suspicion: that there *is* such thing as awakening, even if I cannot fathom it “from here”. I'm not sure if there is some funny way that this particular unit (to speak as Fred Davis might do) is built that is disadvantageous for the process, or what. That might just be more fantasies of specialness cooking, just negatively-flavored ones at this moment.

Is what you call “the full disappointment” a prerequisite here? Am I not yet miserable enough?

I don’t understand.

Thank you for sticking with me, Elad. At this point, I have no clue how to free myself from the bandage of hope for the “shift” that I have both always heard about and always been told does not exist the way I naturally misunderstand it to do.

That will probably have to suffice for tonight, i think.

I look forward to hearing from you again, Elad. Do I strike you as more hopeless and clueless than your average “client”? Or perhaps not hopeless enough?

I have no clue. Amidst that cluelessness, I am grateful for your attention and wisdom and kindness and help.

Best wishes from
Joshua

P.S. I didn't address the Hamas section of your note at all, I now see. I will leave that for next and future times.

Thanks again from
Josh(ua)

You are right you are incapable of understanding this. You don't exist. Keep seeing how you are not choosing anything, just a play of habits, in many ways predictable, but both the predictable and the unpredictable is not a choice, it just is. Keep seeing one moment at the time how thoughts, movements, moods, sensations,etc just come and go by themselves.