The Gate

When I ask what 'I' means now, I get a sense of being here, like other people are, this person instead of that person.

A response from thoughts is that I is preferences, memory-story, rules, familiar thoughts, ways of dealing with things, pains and other feelings, caring about certain things, habits, suffering and happiness experienced, ideas about what this particular I is and is not. Also the ability to direct attention, ask myself questions and wait for a response.

Looking at direct experience seems to be an acquired skill, valuing it is another.
Now asking for direct experience, I find I label this mere sense of experiencing, of being, as 'I'. But when I see thoughts as being thinking only, I find no experience which actually IS I.

The EXPERIENCE of "this person" is NOT the same as this person's experience of "that person".

Thinking does a lot more than I realised... (in presenting a view of experience as 'the world'). And in everyday activity, it does a lot less than it claims!

Thinking chooses experience (it seems) - I think I will go outside and plant seeds, or stay inside and have a drink. It looks like something is choosing, but I cannot find anything but thinking here.

So if I can keep to direct experience there is no I found.

You are getting this so well give yourself the opportunity to take a walk and when you find that you have to make a choice, Sit down, turn right or left, watch a bird, Look at the sky see from direct experience what happened.
can You find the I that chose? or did choosing just happen.
Look at seeing what did you see did seeing just happen.
What did you feel on your skin what was this like.

Spend a lovely time just doing some of the above and them write down what happened
No rush you are bounding through this process.

Love and Light

Nina

This is mysterious! And magical. I'd like to do this some more before I report.

fantastic

Love and light Nina

Everything seemed to happen, no decision appeared to be made. Much of what 'I did' was a response to whatever appeared, or to the situation. I noticed that a thought came of what to do and I did it - but there didn't seem to be anything between the thought and the action. (Like when you feel thirsty and your hand reaches out for the drink automatically.)

A curious thing was that I wasn't trying to do anything different from what I usually do, except to pay attention to how things got done, and yet having noticed the ease with which everything happened, it all seemed so effortless and free.
Today an important phone call did not come to mind, but I completed another task I'd been wanting to do, quite single-mindedly. I was not worrying myself with thoughts of all the things I ought to be doing, I just did whatever it turned out that I did.
(When I've been stressfully busy it must have been just the same except I must have had a lot of extra unnecessary thoughts about things I wasn't doing.)

The exercise was also delightful because it helped me to focus on my sensing and thinking while carrying on normally (rather than while doing walking or sitting meditation).
I suppose the key thing to note was that there was just sensing and thinking and doing - without the complication of the imagined relationship of an I to all that.

Still playing with the toothache, by the way. It's the longest bout of it I've ever had. I've been trying to see what the pain is like without the thought judging it as bad / wrong. Or just to distinguish sensation from thought.

="Ngapa"]

The exercise was also delightful because it helped me to focus on my sensing and thinking while carrying on normally (rather than while doing walking or sitting meditation).
I suppose the key thing to note was that there was just sensing and thinking and doing - without the complication of the imagined relationship of an I to all that.

[/quote
Well done I loved this. i am off with my husband for a few days in Paris.I will be back late Sunday evening.
Back on line Monday.
I have given you some homework you can play with this over the next few days..

"are YOU the thinker of thoughts?
can YOU think and choose a thought?"
Love and light
Hope your toothache gets better soon

Nina

Wonderful to think of you enjoying yourself in Paris - check this page now http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-paris-with-you/

I'll post something for when you return.

Well the toothache has been painful, and quite distracting, even though I have tried to use this special circumstance to see clearly. I am aware how suffering cycles an intense focus upon self, and I've looked for the self at those times. They have not been the clearest times though. Sometimes I look and it seems obvious that there is just the sensations and thoughts - and yet other times I look knowing the answer is there but not seeing it. What seemed so clear is then not apparent. Is this because I "know" the answer? Maybe this is how it goes, that it's only seen at times, and other times the old ways of not-seeing are impenetrable. If so, that's OK, I'l keep going until seeing becomes too familiar to be missed.

Thank you for the poem loved them, Just returned from a magical time in Paris Looked at so many wonderful things I will get back to you later today

Love and light
Nina

Same news. When I am more caught up in thoughts I don't see thoughts as just being the presence of thinking, unproduced by "me". Sometimes same with sensations. Sight and sound is easier to see as unowned appearance.

Glad to hear Paris engendered wonder...

Had a fantastic time however the heat and lots of walking did me in we walked about 12 miles per day. Next time do less and relax more.
You are doing so well have a look at the questions below.

"does the body experience sensations and thought?
or
is the "body" just another thought label for sensations (namely tactile & kinesthetic)?"

Love and light.

Nina

Noticing what I experience, there is only sensations and thinking - no body can be known except by thinking it. In such thinking, I don't have another way to think of sensations than that they are from a body, which is how it appears in the normal flow of things - but in meditation or purposeful noticing, sensations just seem to be in a spaciousness, unnamed.
If I move an arm or leg for example (kinesthetic sensation) I am much more conscious of sensations as related to the body part.
I don't find thought as a body sensation. That just seems to be vaguely "here".

I don't have another way to think of sensations than that they are from a body, which is how it appears in the normal flow of things - but in meditation or purposeful noticing, sensations just seem to be in a spaciousness, unnamed.

Well done, Lets go on to the next stage.

Lets look in direct experience, How do we think or does thought just happen,

How do we name things are they just convenient labels that we learn

From your own experience what do you find when you ask your self these questions

Love and life

Nina

Looking this morning, thoughts just appear.

Noticing what kind of thoughts appear, it seems that if not prompted by previous thoughts, then thoughts based upon how thinking interprets sense information appear, also thoughts similar to previous thoughts appear (as if by habit or continuing cause). And thoughts spontaneously appear in response to thinking a question - this is when thinking can seem to be an active process but it's really only thinking that is "active" in producing the next thoughts. Of course thoughts from other people have their input too - as in communication, reading, hearing.
The only other thing which seems to qualify which thoughts appear is general intention - either set by thinking (e.g. "I am going to sit here for 20 minutes watching thinking"), or by an underlying life intention, which could be summarised as "to be happy and peaceful".

As for labelling, I commented above that other people's thoughts give me a general set of thoughts, and I can maintain or vary these. This is how I get my naming, almost exclusively from others, and it is a loaded process. When the news speaks of "ethnic cleansing" or "benefit scroungers" the naming is intended to carry a way of thinking about the matter. It can also control what constitutes a "thing" to be named. This seems like a digression from my immediate experience, but must be similar to telling a child "You're lazy, why can't you be good like your brother?" - or the language which gives us such a focus on "I" in the first place.

Thought just happens, but when I have the "inherited" thought from others, that "I think", this imposes a name on the mere experience of awareness, carries the idea that it is a subject-object situation, and offers the chance to fill in lots of further thoughts about my particular "I". My direct experience of this is the tendency to think: "I think thoughts", as an interpretation of what happens, rather than ignoring that red herring and noticing that thoughts just come anyway, before being claimed as "mine".

Considering again the statement that there is no me and never has been... There seems to be a huge gulf between the world of my thoughts and direct experience. Most of the things I do, like planning my day, thinking about my job, my family, what book to read, what is this pain in my tooth, what clothes to wear, writing, reading, in fact more or less anything but relaxing doing nothing or meditating - they are all in the world of my thoughts. So if it doesn't quite match my direct experience it makes little noticeable difference. As far as most things are concerned there always has been a me and it's doing these things now.

I "know" - i.e think, from exploring intellectually, that this slight inaccuracy is the cause of suffering, otherwise I wouldn't be having this conversation. But wondering why this examination of direct experience does not seem to sink in, this gulf would seem to be the answer. Can you tell me where this is incorrect please? Or how to align thinking with the truth of direct experience?