The Gate

Hi Daniel,

I made the experiment twice.

1st with I -night before sleep
I am feeling the cold floor
I am feeling a little out of breath
I am hearing a weird noise from the fan
I can hear my wife breathing
My heart is beating faster
I feel my hand tingling while holding the notebook
I heart a bell ringing
I am looking at a Buddha statue
My shoulders are relaxed
I am thinking that a single thought haven't appeared yet
I felt an itch on the nose
My breath is normal again

1st - no I
Back starting to hurt
Back tensed
Thought of silence
Sound of truck
Wife moved on the bed
Mouth tense
Mouth relaxed
Legs feeling relaxed
Chest heavy
Heart beating strong
Sound of bell
Back a little more tense
Mosquitos
Thought am I doing this right?
Chest light
Heart softness
Silence
Sound of fan

2nd with I - after work
I feel my head pulsing
I can hear the car on the street
I feel my heart beating fast
I'm seeing drawings in the carpet
I am thinking I had an awful day
My neck hurts
I'm thinking is stupid to worry about the future
I am starring at a beautiful painting
I am moving my toes
I smiled
I smell something burning

2nd - No I
Movement of breath
Sound of motorcycle horn
Mouth tensed
Voices
Stomach made a noise
Legs crossing
Voices
Sound of water in another room
Scratching the eye
Feelings of fear
Sadness
Swallowing
Scratching eyebrow
Smiling
Mouth tense

The second one describes my experience better. But I noticed something. Every thought that ends up getting my attention, starts with I or Me. I might spend all my day noting things without an I, and then some thought grabs my attention, it starts to fuel feelings and so on, it begins with I. "I shouldn't have done that" or "I thought that this..."
And when I look for the I, it silences. This exercise made me realize that.

See you soon.

Cheers
Andy

Hi Andy,

Thank you for your answers and for being so enthousiastic about this!

The second one describes my experience better.

Yes, adding the word 'I' in there, doesn't add to the experience, doesn't make it more real!

But I noticed something. Every thought that ends up getting my attention, starts with I or Me. I might spend all my day noting things without an I, and then some thought grabs my attention, it starts to fuel feelings and so on, it begins with I. "I shouldn't have done that" or "I thought that this...". And when I look for the I, it silences. This exercise made me realize that.

This is another great realization, yes the thought 'I' grabs our attention a lot.
The 'I' is useful as a social convention in day to day living but it doesn't contain a separate entity, does it?

For the sake of completion, I'm going to follow with two questions from previous messages for which I didn't get an answer.

When you say that you didn't find the thruth (related to meditation), this seems to suggest that you know what thruth is, but is that so? Do you really know what thruth is?

Going from the experience point of view: maybe truth isn't the word that best describes what I meant, but let's stick to it for the sake of argument...

'from the experience point of view'. Is there another point of view? Are you not always IN an experience? THIS one? Can you be OUTSIDE of the experience you're having right now?

To finish,
When we had our discussion on the permanent 'I', and I was asking you if it is there 24/7, what I meant, among other things was, what about sleep? Where is the permanent 'I' in sleep?

Regards

Daniel

Hi Daniel!

Always great hearing from you!

yes the thought 'I' grabs our attention a lot.
The 'I' is useful as a social convention in day to day living but it doesn't contain a separate entity, does it?

It doesn't! And its funny how this realization made thoughts lose more power and my interest a lot more.
On days like these I would be a lot more stressed, angry and so on. But I learned so much from just observing and questioning. Got to thank you on this. It's being a great experience.

Sorry about these questions, I must have forgotten to answer them. Here we go

'from the experience point of view'. Is there another point of view? Are you not always IN an experience? THIS one? Can you be OUTSIDE of the experience you're having right now?

There's no other experience. Only this one. I cannot be in another experience.
Thoughts may show scenes from the past or future, but are just thoughts.

When we had our discussion on the permanent 'I', and I was asking you if it is there 24/7, what I meant, among other things was, what about sleep? Where is the permanent 'I' in sleep?

Great question!!! When I dream, the 'I' is aware of the dream. If I dream I am working, or having a conversation, at the dream state 'I' is aware of it. So it's there in the dream, noting, being aware.

In deep sleep, where is no dream, for example, 'I' is also there noting "nothing here". Or noting no
Dream. But awareness is there.

I know you're my guide and there are the right questions for the right time, but I wanted to share this with you.

I'm an easy going guy, even funny at times, but I talk too much. Sometimes I say the wrong thing at the wrong time, with honesty but no filter. And that hurts people, and this ends up bothering me.
The thing is, and here is the curious part, I am hearing what I am saying, but I'm not thinking anything. The 'I' that we've been talking about didn't want to say anything, but yet something was said. It's like words are going out of my mouth as a habit not a will.

This doesn't happens always, because im talking less, since there's nothing to be said most of the times.
But there are days that a lot of words are said and I don't even know why. And that generate regret, sorrow, frustration, and it takes time to the seer comes out of the movie.
There are a lot of I thoughts, as the experience you proposed.

Now I am ok. Body relaxed, silence, peace, present. But it amazes me how powerful some things still are!

Anyway, just wanted to share. Let's keep up!!

Cheers!
Andy

Hi Andy,

The 'I' is useful as a social convention in day to day living but it doesn't contain a separate entity, does it?

It doesn't! And its funny how this realization made thoughts lose more power and my interest a lot more.

:)

There's no other experience. Only this one. I cannot be in another experience. Thoughts may show scenes from the past or future, but are just thoughts.

Yes! thoughts about the past or the future but only this Now experience :)

Now the question about the permanent 'I' in sleep:

In deep sleep, where is no dream, for example, 'I' is also there noting "nothing here". Or noting no Dream. But awareness is there.

This is an inference. It is not direct experience. You cannot directly experience nothing...The reason I'm being so fussy about this is that ultimately, no teaching is absolutely true. For any, you have to take some and leave some. Why? Because they are using words, labels and what we are talking about cannot be explained. Just try to define 'life' and you'll see what I mean. You'll never end up with a definition that captures everything of what life really is. And I'm not talking about biological life, but this life, the one you are experiencing now.

Now back to the permanent 'I' in deep sleep, if you say:

I was unconscious.
Or
'I' (awareness) is also there noting "nothing here".
Or
There was no 'I' present in sleep.

Does it change anything in the actual experience of deep sleep?
To label the experience one way or another, does it make it a different experience?

I'm an easy going guy, even funny at times, but I talk too much. Sometimes I say the wrong thing at the wrong time, with honesty but no filter. And that hurts people, and this ends up bothering me...

Thank you for sharing this, the timing is perfect for me to invite you to do a little experiment. You'll love this one I'm pretty sure. You are talking here about saying the wrong things, talking too much etc...
One of the ways that the separate self makes itself felt, is with the sense of being the doer, the one in charge in 'our' life. This experiment is precisely on this topic.

You will need about 15-20 min of calm to simply sit. This is very simple, but for this exploration to be successful, you must follow the instructions carefully. Before we begin, know that after reading the instructions, you will have to stop reading, do the sitting, and only then can you continue read on.

Here it is:
Sit in a quiet place, in a relatively still position or lie down on the back if you prefer.
Be silent and alert.
Do whatever you're doing.
Do this for 15 to 20 minutes.

While you're sitting and doing whatever you're doing, if you feel uncomfortable, you can shift a bit, move your legs, your hands, scratch, stretch your neck, but try not to move around or get up to sit elsewhere. For the duration of the exercise, stay at the same place.

Within these parameters, simply do whatever you're doing. Think what you're thinking, feel what you're feeling, experience what you're experiencing. There is no right or wrong way to simply sit. There's nothing to concentrate on, nothing you need to do.

It's not possible to become distracted in this because there is no object of concentration or method to follow. It's impossible for you to go wrong. If you enjoy the experiment, you enjoy it, if you don't, you don't. That's it.

Now, do the exercise, then read on.

*********************************************************************************************************************************************

If you need to repeat the exercise in order to check certain points before answering, please do so.

Here are the questions.

Are you doing something or you're doing nothing?
Are you breathing or it breathes?
Are you thinking or thinking happens?
What is THIS?

Sorry for the long post :)

Daniel

Hello Daniel,

great experiment! I´m gonna try this later and let you know how It went. If I feel I need to do it more that once, I´ll let you know and post my experience today at night or tomorrow morning.

About a couple of things you said:

The reason I'm being so fussy about this is that ultimately, no teaching is absolutely true. For any, you have to take some and leave some. Why? Because they are using words, labels and what we are talking about cannot be explained. Just try to define 'life' and you'll see what I mean. You'll never end up with a definition that captures everything of what life really is. And I'm not talking about biological life, but this life, the one you are experiencing now.

That was right on the spot! I know I already said this but stop reading spiritual things really helped to experience what you´re saying here. There is no expectation on what to feel, or sense or anything, there is just the experience.

Now back to the permanent 'I' in deep sleep, if you say:

I was unconscious.
Or
'I' (awareness) is also there noting "nothing here".
Or
There was no 'I' present in sleep.

Does it change anything in the actual experience of deep sleep?
To label the experience one way or another, does it make it a different experience?

It doesn´t. And this remark made me realize that this labeling or figuring out or whatever it´s not the experience at all, and most of the times experience cannot be put into words. So the deep sleep experience is the deep sleep experience, only that.
That put, this morning I realized that even saying aware, or attention is a kind of labelling and doesn´t change anything, because the attention or the awareness exists or it is before even the noting. I am realizing that theres not even the need to be aware, because awareness its already here. Anyway. I truly believe that todays experiment is going to help on these matters.

Talk to you soon!

Cheers!
Andy

Hi Andy,

Im going to reply once the experiment is done.

Talk to you later.

Daniel

Hello Daniel,

I´ve done the experiment three times, one in the morning and two at night.

Your questions were:

Are you doing something or you're doing nothing?

I am doing nothing. It felt like the body, mind, thoughts, senses worked like a machine turned on, even without any intention or effort, kept pumping.

Are you breathing or it breathes?

It breathes.

Are you thinking or thinking happens?

Thinking happens!

What is THIS?

The words that best describes it I guess is surrender and present,

I´ll elaborate a litte more.

Experimenting this was like when I used to ask me questions like "who am I". It brought me to the same state of peace but without having to ask anything, wich made everything more interesting (and faster) to me.

This was an experiment of surrender, because it´s really hard to just be, there are times when thoughts wants to get me and there´s struggle, but when you just stay doing nothing, without a struggle everything lasts less,

Sometimes It was really hard just to let it be while sitting. But the moment I started to get used to let it be all the thoughts and identifications got even weaker, as I said above. Automaticaly I started to maintain this attitude toward the day, so I kept asking "who am I" or anything like that fewer times because I simply don´t need to.

Hope to hear from you soon!

Cheers
Andy

Hi Andy,

There is no expectation on what to feel, or sense or anything, there is just the experience.

That's right, having no expectations on what to feel or experience puts you in a very good position to see what's really here.

To label the experience one way or another, does it make it a different experience?

It doesn´t. And this remark made me realize that this labeling or figuring out or whatever it is, is not the experience at all...

Right again, words and labels are not the 'thing'.

...and most of the times experience cannot be put into words...

I would go as far as to say that experience can 'never' be put into words. Of course, we can use words to try to describe or share our experience, but the words themselves never 'capture' the 'thing' behind so to speak. They are labels that we use by social convention to point to bits and parts of experience. But the experience itself is not made of bits and parts.
And one of these parts is an unfindable entity called 'I'.

So the deep sleep experience is the deep sleep experience, only that.

Yes only that.

Are you doing something or you're doing nothing?

I am doing nothing. It felt like the body, mind, thoughts, senses worked like a machine turned on, even without any intention or effort, kept pumping.

Yes, no effort, no doing...

Are you breathing or it breathes?

It breathes.

Yes.

Are you thinking or thinking happens?

Thinking happens!

Yes.

What is THIS?

The words that best describes it I guess is surrender and present

Agree, surrender and present is a very good way to describe it. I suggest two more: life happening or life living it's life :)

I´ll elaborate a litte more. Experimenting this was like when I used to ask me questions like "who am I". It brought me to the same state of peace but without having to ask anything, wich made everything more interesting (and faster) to me.

Ok but you seem to be looking for some state of peace here, no? We are looking for the 'experiencer' of these states. We are not looking for A state.

This was an experiment of surrender, because it´s really hard to just be, there are times when thoughts wants to get me and there´s struggle, but when you just stay doing nothing, without a struggle everything lasts less,

Absolutely not! Being is totally effortless. 'YOU' don't and didn't have to do an inch to be. But if you think and feel that you are a someone, a something, or some separate self that needs to do things to just be, then you are in trouble.
But the question is : in THIS experience can you SEE an 'I' or a me that needs do DO things? If you are doing nothing, where is this 'I', just LOOK in what's here now. Can you find anything that fits the bill?
'thoughts wants to get me', who is this 'me' that thoughts wants to get, LOOK again?

Sometimes It was really hard just to let it be while sitting. But the moment I started to get used to let it be all the thoughts and identifications got even weaker, as I said above. Automaticaly I started to maintain this attitude toward the day, so I kept asking "who am I" or anything like that fewer times because I simply don´t need to.

Yes, I like to think about the 'I', the separate self as a 'contraction'. So letting be, letting go, surrendering, acceptance etc.. are all going in the right direction :) but that doesn't mean that contractions won't be there anymore. Life will still be life ;)

Last question:
If there were no thoughts, what would you be?

Regards

Daniel

Hi Daniel,

have a good weekend!

Time to rock a little:

Ok but you seem to be looking for some state of peace here, no? We are looking for the 'experiencer' of these states. We are not looking for A state.

Yes, I know I keep saying peace, but I guess I can put it better. This feeling of peace, or better putting it, the silence that appears it´s not something I look for, but it seems like the consequence of just being. I sit, doing nothing, just beeing and this silence shows up, beyond all feelings, all thoughts, and I just am. It´s just presence and silence. It´s here and now, only that.

in THIS experience can you SEE an 'I' or a me that needs do DO things? If you are doing nothing, where is this 'I', just LOOK in what's here now. Can you find anything that fits the bill?
'thoughts wants to get me', who is this 'me' that thoughts wants to get, LOOK again?

Amazing question!
there is not an 'I' or a ''me' that needs to do anything. The last part of the question is excelent! Who is this me that thoughts want to get? Since the last experiment wich I'll keep doing for a couple of days, I realized that there isn't a me that thoughts can get. They are actually not getting attention, what happened is that I was having trouble surrendering to the moments where they showed up, even though they almost immediately went away. And the seeing confronted a resistance to letting it be. Now they are weaker and weaker and when they show up they barely lasts. And If it does lasts a little longer, it's ok.

If there were no thoughts, what would you be?

I guess that is the best question so far: if there were no thoughts I would be present. If there were no thoughts wich it's like that a lot of the times I would be life living the present. Right now there are no thoughts, and I am sitting in my mothers sofa, she's doing the dishes, talking to my wife, the wind is blowing. I am not separate from any of that. I'm here to this present instant.

Cheers
Andy

Hi Andy,

A little busy today,I will answer tomorrow.

See you!

Daniel

Hi Daniel!

No problem!

See you!

Cheers
Andy

Hi Andy,

I find it truly wonderful to see how things are getting clearer and clearer from one post to the next. Great.

I have only one question about your last post. Just keep in mind that what we are doing here, is to see through the illusion of a separate self.

Could you expand on this:

if there were no thoughts I would be present

Regards

Daniel

Hi Daniel!

Great to head from you! Hope you're having a great Sunday!

I find it truly wonderful to see how things are getting clearer and clearer from one post to the next. Great.

Me too. This process is being great. This was a great week.

About the question, I guess I answered how I'd be and not actually what. I kept that question yesterday the whole day. As I said it was a very important one.

As far as WHAT I would be if there was no thougts, I would still be awareness, still be 'I'.

The existance or non-existance of thoughts does not change 'I'. The moments that there are thoughts, or the ones that aren't I still Am.
As I observed with our last experiment, the 'I' doesn't change whether there are thoughts or not. This also applies to feelings, senses, emotions, etc.

Another thing I realized is that every time I sit to do our experiment it's not necessary to stay for 15-20, because there is no diference between this minutes and my everyday moments. It's like I've been doing the experiment, just being, no matter what happens, always, all day, which is quite interesting, because before our talks I used to miss my time meditating.

Actually I keep saying about the experiment of just being like if it was a practice, which is not. Because I am just being all the time, there's no practice and the result, there is just being.

See you soon.

Cheers
Andy

Hi Andy,

Thank you again.

A few things. Here at LU, we are using the word 'I' in the sense of the seeming entity which we feel is in charge of our life. We are trying to make clear that 'I' Andy, is not an entity. 'I' awareness neither.
My only concern right now has to do with the use of 'I' awareness concept. This is what I was trying to clarify with my last question and this is what I still want to clarify.

Please tell me:

Can awareness be seen?
Can it be felt?
Can it be touched?
Is it a thing?
Does it feel personnal in any way?
Can you really say 'I' (in the usual sense of the word) of this?

Regards

Daniel

Hello Daniel,

I see what you mean, and I sometimes use the wrong words and make your job a little more difficult.

But anyway, I really liked the questions, as always.

Here we go:

Can awareness be seen?

Nope.

Can it be felt?

Nope.

Can it be touched?

Nope.

Is it a thing?

Nope.

Does it feel personnal in any way?

No. Awareness is not something appart from Andy but it is not his, it doesnt belong to him. It is him. It´s not something Andy has to do or achieve thru practice or with effort, it´s what he is. It doesnt have a sense of personal because it doesn relate to thoughts, feeling or anything, there is nothing to attach to.

Can you really say 'I' (in the usual sense of the word) of this?

You mean as "I awareness"? No, I can´t. Awareness is not related to the usual sense of the self: the group of thoughts, sensations and feelings. When Andy says 'I' in the usual sense of the words it´s relating to all of this. When Andy is aware, there is no need to say, think, or infere that I andy am aware, it is just awareness. It´s not something attached, apart, above or beyond, it is.

When there are thoughts, there are thoughts, when there are feelings, there are feelings, It´s not Andy´s feelings, and it´s not Andy that is noticing them. On the other hand it´s not awareness that is noticing, pointing, or anything like that. Awareness is everything, it´s life.

A few things. Here at LU, we are using the word 'I' in the sense of the seeming entity which we feel is in charge of our life. We are trying to make clear that 'I' Andy, is not an entity. 'I' awareness neither.

I understand what you´re saying and tried to put it in words on the answers above. As we progress there´s a sense that is getting harder and harder to talk about all this, because I cannot find the words that best describes the experiences. Life is happening. Life is happening and all is okay. I don´t sense a separate entity, and I don´t feel a sense of struggle to anything.

This afternoon there was family lunch and everybody started to place their bets and expectations on how my son´s life would be. I didn´t say anything, because there was nothing to be said, there was no need to say anything, and on the other hand, it didn´t bother me that kind of talk, even though I know that it´s going nowhere. It was just life happening. Surrendering and being at the moment. No need to dwell on awareness, 'I', who I was, nothing. Simply living the present and being there, alive.A few weeks ago that might have turned out differently, but now all is ok.

I put this example to try to show how I am changing (in the usual sense), and how life is becoming more colorfull everyday.

Hope you had a great sunday.

cheers.
Andy