The Gate

but it isn't about space or time of oneness.

No change in personality, neurotic as ever :-), but but this is just being watched.

is not more loving or sane, no sense of wholeness or any of that nonduality stuff..

I feel like there is lots of work to do, but not on "self"... like the work left to do is about just watching and seeing how things that are noticed, fit together! :-))

So should this new shift have bliss and joy and love and oneness in it?

Or is an almost indifference about the play on the stage what awakening is all about?

seeyourself wrote:So should this new shift have bliss and joy and love and oneness in it?

Story again, but wait a minute. There will be now, an ability to tap into what i call wisdom, and this is a perfect example of it. Notice your question, then consider what a wise answer might be. What arises ?

These are the confirmation questions, please answer all of them with a bit of verbosity;
1) Is there a 'me', at all, anywhere, in any way, shape or form? Was there ever? how about self, is there anything that is separate from everything else?

No me, but now the "Stu- the tool for daydreaming and playing life game", is available whenever I want to get dramatic... or for a short time forget to not get dramatic:-)
No there was never a"me"... but somehow that was not known. Like, there was... maybe a belief, that an all powerful "slippery slide" existed as part of mind's basic structure... and awareness could fall from mild interest to strong interest, to desire, to entrapment as a self identity as a mind concept.
Yes, that is just a story, but an interesting one!:-)

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

The illusion of separate self is like noting deciding it is something... then looking in a mirror at itself and watching life as it is unveiled so that this illusion of a separate self can know when to suffer and when to be happy. (That was just an analogy.)
It also seems like a total forgetting to look at the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain in order to see that the stories are just stories.
The illusion starts when the "Stu's" dream was seen as real and the story, as just a story, was forgotten, and "I" seemed to be born in or as a seemingly real drama.

3) How does it feel to see this? describe in detail.

It feels natural and normal and obvious... It feels peaceful when I am noticing it. It feels like the struggle or quest never had a reason to be, other than that it may have been necessary in order to see THIS:-)... but I don't really believe that it was necessary. It feels like there was never a time when this perspective was not noticed.

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

I could say things like "I moved out of being an unconscious actor on a stage who didn't any longer know that it was all an act, to being the audience watching the play... or the actor waking up and consciously acting out a part in a play.

5) What was the last bit that pushed you over, made you look? was there a specific moment when seeing happened or was it gradual? what exactly happened?

No specific moment, the happening snuck up and snatched the veil off of my face so that I could see:-)
I was reading your one on one's with another person, and also reading Ilona's one on one's with someone... and there was at some point a shift... which was strange because I have been reading and talking to teachers for 50 years without this shift taking place!:-) Maybe the story about, "I was ready for awakening to happen so I found the people that would say the correct things to me"... can explain it.

6) When you say "I", what are you referring to?

A linguistic term intended to allow communication to take place. The imagined and mutually agreed upon point of origin of "Stu", as in a reference point so that orientation can take place in thinking or talking or writing.

7) Is there an experiencer experiencing, or is there only experience?

No experiencer... there is only experiencing.

"Actually look. Does experience belong to the body, or does the body belong to experience? (Thanks, James)"

Experience is an illusion and so can't belong to anyone. It seems like the body does whatever it does and there is no reason to know why it does it. The body does not belong to experience... experience is not an owner or thing or cause point. "Experience" is a picture of an idea about an event that does not exist and has no place in time or space.

8) What did you experience at the moment you awoke?

There may not have been an exact moment... but I could say... at some point there was the absence of the drama as a real thing, that was replace by... experiencing of life stories and daydreams and other phenomena such as shifting around various concepts like emptiness and fullness, etc.

9) Describe your experience in the hours and days following awakening