The Gate

And this may be a sidebar, or significant, but what is the whole constellation of what I've taken myself to be, the physical stuff, the moods and hard to define spaces of being that float through this, are simply not me at all? One thing is for sure about all this content: that it's noticeable.

Just as physical pain means a problem somehwere in the body, mental suffering means there is a problem in thinking somewhere.

Touch a hot plate and you will burn your fingers.

Take yourself to be a separate self, you will cause suffering.

Why dont we keep getting burnt on hot plates?

We don't keep on getting burned on hot plates because getting burned is quite rare, and not at all the norm, and consequently we learn deeply from it.

I find myself wanting to protest to you that being in the separate self is the norm, as if I don't know anything about any other state. But I do know about another possibility, which is that here now, in direct experience, there is mostly great ease because absence of separate self means presence of everything, and everything is well.

When I'm seemingly away from here now, busy regretting yesterday or dreading tomorrow, then there's a someone in the fantasy of that - that would be me!!! - who is suffering. But I think you're pointing out that the suffering is the suffering of a fiction, a thought-feeling-image.

And is this any different than good old (or eternally fresh and new) Be Here Now? I've had days of resolving simply to stay now, and sometimes they've been amazing. I know I'm not looking for 'amazing' but less separate-seeming self suffering would be great.

.....at the same time, not being so flippant, the reality is that herenow is astonishing...also astonishing is how there-then seems SO compelling.

Yes, burn on a hot plate is very painful and we avoid it.

This is why many have seen the absence of self when they face great emotional turmoil. Some say we clearly see this on our death bed.

Yes, i am pointing to suffering happening to an imagined self. There is no body to burn, just mind which only has thoughts to burn you, heal you, make you happy, sad, angry and peaceful.

So what will it be?

Dont say you cant chose, directing your attention to that which is always at peace is all thats needed.

"That which is always at peace"??? What in the name of heck would thatbe? (That's not a question issued in the spirit of challenge to you, just my own charge in respect of a lifelong hunt for THAT!)

Given that I've tried mightily in my life to uninterruptedly be the pure consciousness that is apparent as the abstract backdrop of all experience. And failed, because like any other thought, it's an abstraction, so it seems to me.

Please correct me if I'm wrong about this: that abstracted "pure" awareness is obvious, whenever I notice it. It's relaxed, welcoming, open, nameless, formless, genderless, timeless/only now....

Trouble is, there seems to be 'someone' noticing it.

Now is peaceful — but there's a BIG difference between now with some'one' in it, trying to be now — and now relaxed, with no-one pretending to be separate, tensing up to be something-other-than-now. The 'someone' trying to 'be now' is tense. But 'Be here now' has another meaning, which is the more visceral and surrendered version: be the entirety of now, being relaxed as-it.

Relaxing like this feels profoundly safe, in the moment — and filled with danger to the process of remembering-anticipating that is me-in-thought. I reflected this when I wrote, about a hundred years ago (just yesterday, in calendar-fact) "The natural state is utterly relaxed." Whatever this relaxation is, it's me — not separate, uprooted, anguished me, but whole-me, undivided. It's immensely peaceful.

Noticing this is a kind of alchemy. What was the routine noise of a car zooming up my hill now takes place in me, although the edge of 'me' is unknown. With a switch into the preoccupied tension-zone of time-thought-separate-me loneliness and anguish re-appear. In this unnatural state, I don't belong, and must strive to find safety. There is no intrinsic delight in being alive, and life is nothing but the solving of endless problems. Nowness is becoming again as a child, with the fascination inherent in it about life itself.

I wonder what you will say about all this. I don't feel like I'm on a soapbox, but rather feel mostly humbly unable to bring about this 'tongue tip taste of tao.'

The confusion persists as it has for millennia between you and you; the make believe you and what you think there is a real you, the omniscient God like nothing. You will never find either.

The one who is looking for an uninterrupted bliss doesn't exist. It is just a thought that expresses a desire to create other happy blissful thoughts and call it Nirvana either because the painful lies are too intense or is recounting some other story.

Let's get back to basics again and again, why do you think there is a you, any you, big small, godlike or disturbed?

Only in direct experience, please. No fancy words like consciousness and awareness unless you can show me or describe it like an itchy nose.

There is NO ONE noticing it.

That's the ego's Trojan horse as it sticks itself to all thoughts.

What a piece of software!

Thank you Sunil,
I will write again later this afternoon...."why do you think there is a you, any you, big small, godlike or disturbed? " If I take that to mean "Why do I believe there is a 'me'?" would that be right?

Thanks. Re-read Neil Jaladeen's article on DE.

Why do I think there's a 'me'?

Answer (knowing intellectually in advance that anything I answer will ultimately turn out to be invalid....): Actions: There, that was me writing that. Except, there was writing, and all the components of that (thoughts, decisions, actions) but it's more like a happening than someone 'doing it.' Still, the assumption of 'someone' is strong.

Why do I think there's a 'me'? Seeing. Always close to the inference of 'me' (as in 'me seeing'.) But accurately noticed, truly just seeing. OK then, must be seeing by spaciousness?! That's a thought-inference. Additive to the seeing is the thought 'this is seeing by virtue of spaciousness, etc,' which is very seductive, because the promise of nirvana lingers close to this. But the actuality of seeing is impossible to describe. And there is no trace of an actual 'me' seeing. But the assumption of a 'me' is compelling.

Why do I think there's a 'me'? Thoughts. Now there's a 'me'! But there's just a cluster of experiences: looking blankly for a moment + thought occurring + familiar flow of body sensations, then another thought" "This couldn't possibly be true, that there is actually, really, no me." Each thought seems to spontaneously constellate a noticer of the thought — Ah, now that would be 'me,' the famous imperishable witness — but this too is another thought. Scary. Threatening edgelessness of a particularly unhinged-from-anything variety. That would be 'me' who's scared. "I have to put my life on the line if I really do this." Take seriously what is being seen here. Not have it be just intellectual play. Look, really look.

Why do I think there's a 'me'? Body sensations. Someone feeling them is an added thought. Sounds, ditto: someone hearing them is another thought. What if I looked and looked and found — find — there is no 'me'? Or what if I looked and looked and see there's no 'me' but then succumbed to the compelling momentum of assumptions again? (And who would that 'I' be who 'succumbed'?)

Why do I think there's a 'me'? All this sophisticated language and observation. That must be me. But that's just a thought.

Mostof your answers end with “ the assumption remains strong” or to that effect.

What assumptions are we talking about?

Most answers say; yes i see things are happening without a doer BUT i have dobts.

What are these doubts?

Assumptions of there being someone, 'me.'
Assumptions = believed-in thoughts.
'Believed-in' = unexamined
What's left behind after this looking ('what's left behind' is purely a figure of speech) is inexplicable.

Doubts = thoughts + very, very familiar sensations.
Familiar? Occur frequently, usually seem as one ('me') with the thoughts these frequently-occurring sensations accompany.

And writing this, doubts: this level of rigor cannot be maintained. There will be a collapsing back into apathy and numbness, non-seeing of the truth. These are thoughts, so often repeated, with such frequently-occurring sensations accompanying them.

Hmmmm.

Yes, this only works if you clear the unexamined beliefs.

You can’t sweep anything under or gloss it over. Thats how we get into this trouble to begin with, accepting concepts which can not be verified in direct experience.

This is not metaphysics, its actual physiscs. What you see is what you get?

Do you find a “me”?

What do you really find which can be directly experienced?

Please, no ideas or theories. Which sensation tells you that there is a you?


Its not that you can’t do this, Glenn. It is becuase you dont want to do this.

That which doesnt want to do this is a thought, of fear, of pain, of abandonment of lost love and a host more of unexamined thoughts.

What is the nature of your greatest suffering, now?

Thanks Sunil,

No, I can't find a 'me.'

What I do find, that I can directly experience, is sensations, thoughts, perceptions (seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling) and tingling aliveness (not truly sure where 'body sensations' stop and this more generalized aliveness/energy starts.)

Which sensation tells me there is a 'me'? No sensation tells me there is a 'me.' These sensations don't constitute a 'me.' They are sensations.

Went to sleep with the ease of this; woke up with the recognition of it. Rather amazing: the nameless mystery at the center (so to speak) of all this utterly defies description, yet IS.

That's kind of a sticky thought, isn't it, apt for your 'Trojan horse' observation about the ego a few posts back?

The nature of my greatest suffering as I write this is the idea - thought - that this clear seeing will fade, or will turn out to be hallucinatory. But there remain only thoughts, sensations, perceptions, and tingling aliveness - no 'me.'