In ordinary everyday life the real things are the same. The chair stands on four legs. The picture on the wall stays on its hook. Trees outside the window remain green, brown and moving in the breeze I can feel on my skin through the window. The bus goes by with its noise and smell. What I hear, see, smell and taste as it always has. Things move, wave and make noise. Thought arises in response to events, labelling, creating stories, assumptions, etc. The sensations and the real are the same.
Absolutely, that is also my experience. In a strange way, all is the same and all is different. There is a opening to a new way of looking at life, a simpler way, it seems.
I have a new response taken from your early suggestion about fear. When sensations in my chest or head arise coupled with thoughts “That noisy person is waking ‘me’ up” or “I need to send that payment” I have just sat directly with the feeling and sometimes enquired “where is the I?” and others said “Just get into this feeling” and I’ve watched the sensations and thoughts subside quickly. That is a new way to respond and I thank you for the guidance on that!
I'm happy to know that staying present with what's going on, and seeing the difference between what is happening and what isn't, makes the storm subsides. That is also my experience. It's curious the way we think we are an I when all that seems to prove the existence of an I is always changing.
There is a “less heaviness” in thoughts that come up. This one is hard to describe in language. I remember being a habitual “if this then that” planner where the “this” and the “that” were somehow weighty, important and attention consuming. The substance of this thought structure has shifted in a way that is hard to describe. The logic still arises and I see/feel it, but it now comes up without the weightiness. There is no diminishment of clarity, energy or capacity - its that thoughts are just useful potentialities, not life or death realities.
Wonderful!
It has dropped. The thought/feeling that I am “here” and the answer is somewhere “there” is gone. There is just here. Sometimes I just laugh at how simple that is. And how hard I worked for so long trying to find the “there” when it never was!
Yes, it's amazingly simple. The there is never here, only in thinking :)
Oh, I did see a Unicorn. Actually, it was a dog dressed in a unicorn costume at a pet fair we attended yesterday. There was a costume contest and these dogs were dressed as all manner of characters. It was very funny. One was dressed as a unicorn. I thought it was such a fitting analogy for our work here.. how much like thought that costume was. The dog was just being a dog, and all the people were laughing and enjoying seeing a unicorn. But what was real is it was just a happy dog! The costume didn't change the nature of the dog.
This is delicious, thank you for sharing! I would love to see the dog dressed in a unicorn costume!
I am feeling a lot of gratitude for the energy and time you put into being a Guide for me. Thanks so much!
Thank you for your kind words and your openness to looking, Paul. It's my pleasure!
Let's see if there is something unclear. Can you please answer the questions below looking at your experience? Take your time with them, no need to rush.
Have you been able to find, a ‘you’ that is the ‘experiencer’?
Or a you that is the doer, or can control what happens?
Or a you that ‘makes’ decisions?
Or a you who ‘does the thinking’?
Is the "body" just another thought label for sensations (namely tactile & kinesthetic)?
Are the five body senses made to arise or experienced by this ‘you’?
Is there a you ‘in here’ which is separate from the world and others ‘out there’?
Is there doubt or unclarity that in all these cases the ‘you’ is nothing other than a mental fabrication?
And finally:
Are there any doubts about seeing through the illusion of separate you?
