My humble and sober request for a guide...

[Delma]

Actually, I love the santa analogy. Love fairies and ghosts too because depictions of them exist.

Mentally (or even physically) draw any one of those things.

Can you draw a self?

Tell me, do you think that anything will look differently when seeing through beliefs?

And also... what happened to Santa? Where is that belief now and where or why is it gone?

[Dimitri]

Ha! That's interesting. At least I can draw a picture of Santa. I could also draw a picture of Ben Parco but I definitely can't draw a picture of Self.

I do have this idea that things could look differently, that this one could find itself less bound to expectations, hopes, achievement... but I'm also aware that this may not be how it works.

Santa? He simply turned from someone I thought was real into an imaginary idea that I know isn't real, overnight. Crazy how that happened. The belief simply flipped. Someone simply helped me to question Santa one day and the facts that already existed suddenly added up to the opposite conclusion.

Crazy really, how the same set of facts dissolved the illusion with no more evidence one way or another, just an added note of uncertainty. I suppose the new seeing can partially be chalked up to maturity, the end of child-like, fantasy mind.

[Delma]

Or you could say that it's the very opposite of maturity and a return to childlike mind which saw the world as it actually is rather than ideas about it.

Ironically, it's adults that plant the notion of fairies, santas, and selves.

Have you ever witnessed the process of teaching the idea of separation to a child? All adults do it. Do we even know why we do it? Isn't it a case of monkey see, monkey do?

[Dimitri]

Yes, I suppose you're right Delma. Seems so sad that this is what we teach, as if one couldn't get along in the world unless they thought of themselves as separate. Such a strange thing to do. I suppose it's because we believe it ourselves.

[Delma]

Do you clearly experience the difference between a belief and reality?

To be honest, you still seem disappointed and hard to read. There is still a holding back, isn't there?

Please express what it may be because I don't mind. We need to get to the bottom of this. There's still something missing.

What is it?

What the first thing that comes up when reading that there is no separate entity with a past?

[Dimitri]

Yes, disappointed. Not sure what you mean by hard to read but yes, holding back or holding on still seems to be here.

What it is is that I feel? Massively malcontent - not ok with the way things are, not at all. Life feels like an annoyance, and agitation. I feel uncomfortable. I feel sad and angry that I can't seem to free myself from all my wants.

No separate identity? The first thing that comes up is the idea of time, a past. It feels so real. It feels painful, the distant past, the recent past, all of it.

When I think about separation I want to cry. I feel so alone. How could something that is so not separate experience so much feeling of so much separation?

I know these are all just thoughts and at this moment I can't see how or why they wouldn't matter or mean anything.

[Delma]

Thanks so much for your honesty. I really appreciate it because it means I can address your specific situation rather than just kind of put stuff out there and hope something strikes a chord. This entire process is such a two way street. I can't do a thing without your input.

So let's take a look at each point to see whether we can get a crowbar under some things.

Yes, disappointed. Not sure what you mean by hard to read but yes, holding back or holding on still seems to be here.

What it is is that I feel? Massively malcontent - not ok with the way things are, not at all. Life feels like an annoyance, and agitation. I feel uncomfortable. I feel sad and angry that I can't seem to free myself from all my wants.

All of this is true. There is malcontent. Not okayness. Annoyance, agitation. Discomfort. Sadness, anger, and a desire for freedom. There's nothing wrong with any of that. What we need to do is to deeply look to see whether any of that is attached to something. I mean LITERALLY ATTACHED to anything. Sure, it's there. Can't make it go away, either, but looking for the entity that is experiencing all of that is THE key to seeing how this works. Spiritual teachings would have you believe that it's all supposed to magically go away, but seriously.... can that even be true? If there is no you to put it there, then there isn't one to make it go away.

You HAVE to look for what's experiencing all of that. I'm not sure how to emphasize this enough, actually. Look inward and find whether the emotions exist *in addition* to the self. Do they? Where is the owner of those emotions? If there is an owner, wouldn't that owner get rid of them when they're unwanted?

Freedom isn't in having it disappear. It's in seeing that it's not stuck to anything.

No separate identity? The first thing that comes up is the idea of time, a past. It feels so real. It feels painful, the distant past, the recent past, all of it.

It does feel real. Painful. Distant/recent. But where does it actually exist? Please find the location. I don't mean this figuratively. I mean this very literally. Find the place where it actually exists.

When I think about separation I want to cry. I feel so alone. How could something that is so not separate experience so much feeling of so much separation?

I know these are all just thoughts and at this moment I can't see how or why they wouldn't matter or mean anything.

Knowing that these are thoughts at the moment doesn't help. Analyzing them doesn't help. Understanding them doesn't help.

The only thing that helps is finding out the truth about what they actually *are*.

So, can you work with the questions in this post? As yourself what would happen if you took them and really put everything into finding out the answers.

You have an intellectual understanding of this stuff, but that will never, ever free you. The only thing that will is to do the homework, the examination, no matter how elementary the exercises may seem.

I will not steer you wrong on this one.

Everything I have highlighted and underlined above is an exercise rather than a talking point. Can you report back your findings on each of them?

Thank you! Trust this process.

Delma

[Dimitri]

Thank you Delma. I will work on this over the weekend and get back to you.

[Dimitri]

OK, here we go...

As to whether any of it is attached to anything, this is what I see. It seems like gravity. While the vase isn't actually attached to the table, it does sit on the table - it's located there.

With thoughts, feelings, and sensations, they are here... wherever here is. They seem to collect in a location, just as through the force of gravity space dust collects to form a galaxy. Is the galaxy an actual thing? No. It's just like the beach. None of it is actually attached, more like it's all collected around a vague sense of place - here, now. It's a view really.

So what is this place? That's tricky. It doesn't seem to actually exist. It's more like the view. Whatever this view is, that's the place where these thoughts, feelings, and sensations land. And yet each of them is different so with no actual place, how do I know that there is a place such as view? View just seems to somehow know that view is here and that when these things land, that they land here, at view.

A literal location? None. I can't find one. I know that there is none. There is simply this view and it feels like something like a place but it's not an actual, literal place. It's just view.

There's something here. This feels like the thread. Let's pull it.

[Delma]

Nice.

Really good.

Yes! There's a thread here. It's the view. Is it attached to anything, or is that a base assumption from which all else was built?

Is there an owner of the view AND the view, or is there just, View?
What if there is no actual location for the view? <--- Is that possible to see by looking at the view? You'll have to abandon all conditioning and just look at how the view actually exists.... how it presents.

I'll stop here for now. Then we will tie this back to something we looked at earlier.

Delma

[Dimitri]

OMG, how arrogant! How can view own anything? That would be like a lens owning light or a piece of paper owning poetry... or in this moment, "me" owning the patterns of leaves blowing in the trees outside. There is view of the leaves but they are now owned. The experience or its contents aren't owned. It's simply viewed. Images of leaves land in view. Neither the leaves nor their image is owned. View just is.

View itself isn't owned either. Nor is it attached to anything. Apparently I've simply made this up - an assumption that everything has been built upon. It's as if I'm looking at a portfolio of images (experiences and memories) and I have had the lens as the owner, attached to it all. Sure, the nature of this lens may impact the nature of the images (or memories) but they are not attached.

View can't see itself either and in a way it is all there is - just view, everywhere, all the time, except when sleeping. Trying to see view is like trying to look at one's own eyeball. It's all view. No way to see view itself. Nothing else to be seen but view. Yikes!

There is a new seeing here, a new recognition. It's as if I've had it all backwards, as if I've had it that gravity owns galaxy but it doesn't.

[Delma]

This gave me goosebumps. Always does when I recognize a genuine shift.

Remember when I posted the Bahiya Sutta and said we'd come back to it? Well, we're back to it. We've looked at the seen and the owner of the view.


In the seen, there is only the seen,
...
Since, Bahiya, there is for you
in the seen, only the seen,
...
and you see that there is no thing here,
you will therefore see that
indeed there is no thing there.
As you see that there is no thing there,
you will see that
you are therefore located neither in the world of this,
nor in the world of that,
nor in any place
betwixt the two.
This alone is the end of suffering.” (ud. 1.10)



We can revisit old exercises in the same way as this one. Is there an owner of what's heard? As it is happening... clap or make a sound. Is there both heard AND hearer? Or is there just hearing with no owner, no controller? :)

Delma
. Remember the Bahiya Sutta back in the beginning of the thread? :)

[Dimitri]

Yes, I remember it. Hard to forget such a profound thing.

I'm seeing more now... and feeling profoundly sad that I've taken it all so personally. This lens analogy is really working for me. How could any of it be personal? So much confusion I've created in the world by seeing things this way. Humbled.

No, just as nobody owns the trees or the leaves or the images of them that are seen, there is no owner of what's heard. When I listen, there is just hearing, simply more view.

[Delma]

Beautiful. And I bet you've already gone into the other exercises as well.

What about "knowing"? Is there an owner of knowing?

This one is MUCH more subtle, but if you can think about two things:

1. Thoughts and how they appear
2. Ideas and how they appear
3. questions and how they appear
4. Knowledge and how it has appeared/been "built"

Is knowing controlled? Is there both a "knower" and knowing?

[Dimitri]

Ha! No, I hadn't already moved on. I've been so in it that I haven't even been tracking what exactly all of these exercises have been, only generally knowing that we are watching thoughts, feelings, and sense. It's felt more like I've been swimming in this crazy stew where you throw in a new vegetable now and then and I just try and figure out what to do with it. Yikes! Kind of embarrassed. : )

So when I look at thoughts, ideas, and questions, what's funny is that they seem to just appear, just as seeing, hearing, or sensations do. They just show up... out of thin air, no different in a way than the sensation when a fly lands on my arm.

So strange how it seems that they are controlled. However, this seems to be an illusion, created mainly when one though seems to lead to another. What's funny is that this theory doesn't get thrown out when one thought DOESN'T lead to another and something completely out of be blue arises.

Knowing, what do you mean by knowing?