Hi. I'm looking for a guide

[biisuto]

Hi Lawrence, Yes, please take your time.

[Lawrence]

I see a grey rectangular screen like a Tv every time I try looking. Am I trying to look? Make excuses for not looking.Is the "I" blocking" me ? It feels threatening, sort of getting bigger and pushing down on me. |My arms are tingling and aching but there is a heaviness bearing down on me. I think of what you said about objectivity and how meaningless the statement I made was/ is. Quite laughable. Nothing moves here ..the actual TV is on with silent images that I am not looking at.Silent pounding. The curtains are closed. I want to push myself but I am pushed back. I want to look bigger a deeper but the screen is reforming like a dark heavy cloud to a grey screen and superimposed on it other and things get blacker and darker. The weather is grey outside. Would it be brighter if it were sunny like it has been for months ? I am trying to look but I feel slightly sick and feel trapped. This is all I actually experience... I will write more

[Lawrence]

I am not sure whether the grey is inside me or just outside. I walk outside and the wet wind rushes through the trees as they are blowing. I can feel my thoughts communicating somehow to the trees and bushes and they are talking back, but it is not me.

[Lawrence]

I think the end of the storm from your side of the world is just making a dramatic backdrop. I will wait till all is calm and as make sure as best I can that I am not being blind-sided

[Lawrence]

I find great difficulty in experiencing "me" as a "story". I know it, but do not feel it. It is totally logical but all I can do is work towards it. Can you point further for me on this point ?

In trying to revist the projected second self –image, to examine what I was doing I re-projecting but this time making the “real” self projected. The grey TV screen came again(the storm has passed it is/was sunny outside) a shadowy figure appears tentacled on to it in 2 dimensions . The screen is huge and I have the sense it is back-projected rather than front projected. It is only grey and formless, shimmering like an anemone.I do not like it-it is slightly unsettling, but does not frighten me. Part of me wants to approach it and part wants to turn away. I feel I am standing in front like a schoolboy or rabbit in the headlights. I cannot move on from this at the moment. I need to search elsewhere . It is like I have caught something, see something but I need more to go towards it.
I will continue looking but a sense of laziness or fear of the hard work needed is pulling me back. I need to rest,but the shadowy finger remains and moves and is locked.

[Lawrence]

"figure" not "finger"

[Lawrence]

I am disturbed as I get up in the night. The anemone grey figure has got huge and is whispering and really quite frightening... but the larger and larger and noisier it gets, I know I am still not testing or looking. I do not want to and somehow I must force myself too. I know thoughts are uncontrolled. I always spend time with my partner and wonder at her increasing paranoia ( even down to her anger and disappointment as I again bring fake toothpaste that is rotting her teeth)- or is it just another viewpoint. Nothing has changed. The toothpaste is always the same...the thoughts on it change . Do not worry this is not a counselling session for me-but nothing is in isolation and as I tackle what is happening to my thoughts this comes into play and there is always honesty here.

[biisuto]

Hi Lawrence,

I am disturbed as I get up in the night...

Good news, my friend, you need be disturbed no longer. The reason thoughts seem to be closing in on you is obvious: you’re already there and ego can see it. You are exactly on the threshold, about to step right through, and there are habitual thought patterns getting the whiff of looming extinction. Read on...

I find great difficulty in experiencing "me" as a "story". I know it, but do not feel it. It is totally logical but all I can do is work towards it. Can you point further for me on this point ?

Your honesty is commendable, as well as your demonstrated ability to refine your enquiry to the essentials. Yes, mate, I have an easy pointer for you here: You mentioned having "great difficulty experiencing self as a story", confused that you don’t “feel” it.

You’re going to laugh out loud when the penny drops, my friend.

What is the most obvious explanation for not being able to experience something? (HINT: if you have trouble with this question, instead of “something”, swap it out instead for one of Ilona’s favourites: “Batman” or "Santa Claus".)

The reason truth evades us is not because it’s esoteric or accessible only to the initiated, but because it is sitting out in the open, in broad daylight. We go off on fantastical journeys, attacking monsters and being assaulted by demons to satisfy ego.

We manufacture all kinds of lights to shine into all kinds of dark corners. But when we get honest ...and maybe a little humble (enough to just admit we don’t know, perhaps...) we awake to find it sitting right there, where we always were, without fanfare.

… how are you doing now?

[Lawrence]

What is the most obvious explanation for not being able to experience something?

As I read that line. I did not need to go any further. I saw the answer immediately. The reason is that it does not exist, so I can`t experience it. I am certainly chuckling. Ha ha. I love it. Thanks Michael. I know I am not there yet but I am travelling. Brilliant ...joy...happiness ...everywhere !

[Lawrence]

What is the most obvious explanation for not being able to experience something?

As I read that line. I did not need to go any further. I saw the answer immediately. The reason is that it does not exist, so I can`t experience it. I am certainly chuckling. Ha ha. I love it. Thanks Michael. I know I am not there yet but I am travelling. Brilliant ...joy...happiness ...everywhere !

[Lawrence]

I was at a care group meeting in a pub tonight. At the end of the evening some ordered coffee. They came back with with coffee with the words Costa on the cup. "I love Costa coffee" says one.". Someone else asks "How do you know it`s Costa it only says it on the cup ?" There are pointers evrywhere-I just need to look.

[Lawrence]

It`s 3.00am . I often sleep badly and take the cycle out. I hear the sea crashing when I open my window. (I am fortunate to get a place 100 yards from a quiet sea-front.). The street lights are always on and I decide to walk to the sea-front . Is the sea calling me ? Some fancy ? I walk down . There is a wind at the sea-front makes the waves turn and crash the stony beach. When I get to the sea-front and the lighting falls away I realise it is a bright full-moon in the sky and the the clouds are whirling and turning in the sky. I can see silver linings. The moon a burning centre. I feel quite frightened by the sky. The noise of the wind adds to this fear. It is not dissimilar to what goes on in my head. The sky is threatening me personally somehow.. I never felt that way about the sky. No that`s not true. I use to have dreams as achild in which storms invade , turning to black skies with a sense of impending but never realized horror. I look at the stars in the sky. Then I realise of course the sky does not exist. The clouds exists, the moon exists, the stars exist, but most of what I am looking at does not exist. It is a word for that nothingness that we can`t really “see”-sometimes reflected as blue or black but just like thoughts it is a nothing we use to put everything together on. I feel a sense of wonder and lightness at such a simple revelation as the clouds start to disappear at then return slowly blocking the moon. It is time to walk back.

[Lawrence]

On reflection ( no pun intended) I am not certain how far the clouds exist-they are certainly very insubstantial. You certainly can`t touch them. There is something confusing me here. I can`t quite get it at the moment.

[Lawrence]

With that last staement, I think I am starting to get too "clever" dicky again. I am analyzing what I am saying instead of looking

[biisuto]

Hi Lawrence,

I'm going to swoop in and hopefully draw your attention to what I reckon is without question the most fascinating aspect of this whole process:

What is the most obvious explanation for not being able to experience something?

As I read that line. I did not need to go any further. I saw the answer immediately. The reason is that it does not exist, so I can`t experience it. I am certainly chuckling. Ha ha. I love it. Thanks Michael. I know I am not there yet but I am travelling. Brilliant ...joy...happiness ...everywhere !

Mate, this is exactly why the truth is so easily overlooked, even in broad daylight: because it’s not hidden. Not even a bit. It just gets cluttered over by all the mind stuff, such as:

The anemone grey figure ...is whispering and really quite frightening...Is the sea calling me ? …I feel quite frightened by the sky. The noise of the wind adds to this fear. It is not dissimilar to what goes on in my head. The sky is threatening me personally somehow…

Like most, you see dark menace in the world around you…but yet also recognise that thoughts have no owner:

I know thoughts are uncontrolled.

I’m telling you straight here: what you just so blithely discounted (as if you knew!) was all the gap that anybody needs (or often gets) in the usual fog of self-delusion. You are there - right there. …and yet you totally deny it

I know I am not there yet

... as if you're somehow sure of what you’re meant to find, and equally sure that it wasn’t what just happened.

You understood it conceptually before we began chatting. Separate self is an illusion. And now you’ve looked straight at it, experientially, for about the time it took ego to reassert itself, dismiss the fact and quickly paper over the top of it.

Go back to it and dissect it, like a scientist. You don't need to work from memory: it's right there, any and every time you choose to look. Explain, from experience now, what this illusion of ‘self’ is and how it works?

And tell me again about not having expectations about the outcome of what we’re doing here. It’s only expectations that could have prevented you from getting exactly what you came for. ...So, what were yours?

Regards,