Hey ddm, let's do this..

[Rikki]

Awesome brother. Can you see the change in energy if you read through this again? It's gone from a lot of confused thinking to looking to 'wow, this is crazy simple.' i love that.

And you're right, is so simple it just didnt get looked at before. Self was assumed, and when looked at was seen to be fake.

The last bit about reminding yourself is unnecessary if you've seen this properly. I remember reading about a zen monk that, upon enlightenment, burned all his books on Buddhism and Zen.

Just keep staring into the void, into that space where a sled was believed to be. Allow this to deepen. See the space..

Lets make sure you got this....is there a self in any way shape or form?

Was there ever?

[Rikki]

*where a self was believed to be.

iPhone spell fail..

[ddb]

haha, a sled.
"rosebud!"

thanks, just what i feel the need for - knowing this for sure.
the experience has at times been a little denser or sadder today - self in its action that is - but it's like watching a slow-motion freak show. something is staring at this 'me' and its little ways, just not taken in, just kind of knowing. so the self that expanded into space has contracted again, or the space that rushed in has ebbed back out again, but, just, so what? i was a little worried thinking 'oh no it's back', but it cannot in reality be 'back' or anything resembling that ever. strange.
there's a desire to 'leave it behind' but even that is giving it more substance than it deserves.
the idea of there being a dead-weight i have to get rid of is not even true anymore - i mean, *seen* as true.
and the watching of what i guess i'll call contraction, kind of reverses it anyway, and space is seen again. that staring into the void thing. thanks, i want to work on that.

so the answer of course is just no, on all counts. there's some stuff that has it's own dynamics, and maybe there'll even be some fun in playing with that.
a confidence is slowly growing but not taken credit for in any way, because its slow and steady increase is one of the most natural things. a 'joy of life' thing.
but hey i'm not miraculously transformed at all, so ordinary still.
bit worried i might slip into sounding confused to you again by getting too liberal with the rhetorical floweriness, but i don't think you have to worry, it's just my frustrated would-be writer coming out. and yeah i'm a bit of a hippy.

years ago i was spontaneously shown life without me, and the exhilaration went to my head, and i went looking for a me to be. it didn't end well, and i was confused for a long time after. but that mistake will serve to keep me from making it again, so it was kind of useful.
so now i'm just going to play gently with this for a while and try to keep grounded, maybe talk to a few
others, read through the blogs.

thanks buddy...

[Rikki]

but hey i'm not miraculously transformed at all, so ordinary still.

Exactly, no fireworks, no celebrations. Just a simple look at what's true. It couldn't be any more ordinary, right?

thanks buddy...

My pleasure.

[Rikki]

Can you now see how the illusion was created and believed in now?

[ddb]

yeah, i've been having a few thoughts on that one.
short answer - yes, yes i do.
examining it here and now is a bit hard because it has disappeared (hence 'liberation' i guess). it may come back, but it'll be like an over the top drag-queen; easy to spot the fake.
it's just a mistake really, that's grown out of something practical, language, which has an inbuilt mistake in the use of the word "I". it's just grown that way, it never got corrected, and we get taught it and just go along.
maybe there's an isolated tribe somewhere who has no word for "I", and no concept of any solid or separate self.
or another image that i had was of a net, which represents consciousness, being bunched together at one point, and an "I" is created there as a reference point from which one part of the net can survey the rest of the net. this "I" is obviously arbitrary and can be swapped for any other point on the net. but sometimes a part of the net gets bunched up for too long and it is forgotten that it's only a context from which to survey the rest of the net.
or, as sentient beings one of the tricks, and traps, of intelligent consciousness is that we can virtually divide ourselves up and talk to another part of ourselves, we can create an instigator and an instigat-ee, an actor and an audience, and hold a conversation with ourselves. somehow this trick gets believed at some point.
also somehow all our emotional experiences get attached to "I", maybe as an attempt to make sense of them. when people refer to themselves in order to communicate to others, they say 'I am embarrassed, I am angry, I am sore', and, usually, the I has a lot of implied weight and assumed depth or permanency to it.
but seeing through the lie of self means the "I" in any statement used is paper thin, as indeed, is a label - it's a simple statement of the moment.
so maybe all those dynamics are playing into each other and become the belief in the self.
people believe in all kinds of shit.

[Rikki]

And after all your studying of this, and seeing of the simplicity of it, how would you now explain this to a 5 year old?

The billion dollar question dear friend: DO YOU EXIST?

[ddb]

(i've always wanted to know what the children's book is going to be to explain this to kids in the future. something like 'billy has two dads, but no self'.)

hey little girl, come over here for a minute.
do you like lollipops?
when i refer to myself, as a self, me or I, i am making a simple word for a collection of things, and describing where it happens. the things that are 'collected' are all that is capable of being experienced; and all that is experienced is connected to everything else, so the place where the naming of a self happens is the place where the universe happens. as such it's not a thing that exists, it's only a word for the collection of things that are happening in this place. there is no-one liking lollipops, but the enjoyment of lollipops is happening, the existence of lollipop liking doesn't imply the existence of a liker.

[Rikki]

Awesome bro, welcome to reality.

Now please oh please, write that book...