The Gate

Do the thoughts and sensations arise together?
It feels like there is unpleasant vedana, most immediately known in the body as tightness and heat, and then thoughts about that experience arise. That would mean I've interpreted the experience on some level as one that I don't want (karma vipaka?), and then from here I form a story about it with thoughts labelling it fear.

Behind the fear, the urge to protect the self, behind this is the view that there is a self.

Yes. Sensations arise and we quickly label them with thought.
What if there is no self to protect?

If there is no self to protect then the experience called fear doesn't arise - there may still be the body sensations but without the thoughts about the experience there isn't the arising of fear.

Yes, good.

We'll spend some time now exploring the difference between what's there in immediate experience and thought.

Imagine that you are holding a spoon. Imagine form, size, weight, temperature, keep it there, close your eyes, and feel the imaginary spoon.
Open your eyes; is there a spoon here, in real life?
So how did you see that there is no spoon?
What happened to the spoon?
Did it disappear or it never existed?

Let me know what you find
xxx

The imaginary experience of the spoon is based on memories - there was no direct experience of spoon through any of my senses. Are memories thoughts? If so, then the imaginary experience is just a flow of thoughts. There was nothing in that experience that I could directly see, smell, touch etc. When I open my eyes and stop thinking of the spoon, the imaginary spoon no longer exists. It never did exist in the sense of something I could know through sight, smell,taste or touch.

Are memories thoughts?

yes

It never did exist in the sense of something I could know through sight, smell,taste or touch.

great
Notice, that there was no boom and no bright light flashes in the eyes when the imaginary spoon was no longer imagine. Remember this, a shift is not going to be more than this, it’s just a drop of belief- the glue that holds the illusion together.

Look around the room notice what is real. What is here now? Notice things, notice looking around the room. If you think that this world is not real, check it against an imaginary picture.
Here is another exercise:
Close your eyes and imagine you are in the kitchen. Just visualize and look around, notice where things are put. Notice the space, the feel of it.
This is an image, it can trigger feelings and contractions - expansions, thought stories and feelings attached to them.
Open eyes and see how an image can be created and explored in the mind.

Go to the kitchen and look at the same things that you saw in the image, how does imagining and experiencing the same things differ? Is the image of the kitchen and experience of the kitchen the same?

xx

I look around the room and I see ‘things’. This is the experience of the visual sense. I see ‘lamp’ - what that means is that I experience colour and shape through my sense of vision and I label it ‘lamp’. In fact all I see as I look around the room is changes in colour - even the boundaries that surround objects are imposed.
Lamp is known through sight, lamp in imagination is a mental impression. Lamp I look at is more real in the sense that I am percieving it directly through the sense of sight. If I looked at a picture of a lamp that too is visual - is the lamp I look at directly more real than the picture of a lamp? They are both based on visual input. But I could touch the lamp on the table, in one sense making it more real. But right here, in this moment, I am only seeing it across the room - is it more real than a picture?
The difference in imagining being in the kitchen and my experience of being in the kitchen is that the direct experience is more vivid and rich and alive. There is also more breadth to it - the imaginary experience can hold less within it at any one time.

Hi Sara
Great, good noticing
Repeat this exercise today, but this time focus on the bathroom
xx

In imagining the bathroom there is a sense of effort, of having to actively do something. I notice slight tension in my face. In actual experience I can just allow the experience to unfold - my senses are registering the input without me having to do anything. The quality of awareness can change in the actual experience - I can be more open and receptive, more subtely attuned, I can pay attention or I can be distracted by thoughts, but always I am receiving information through my senses without any conscious effort. This contrasts to the imaginary experience, which would cease to be if my mind was distracted by something else.

Hi

In imagining the bathroom there is a sense of effort, of having to actively do something. I notice slight tension in my face. In actual experience I can just allow the experience to unfold - my senses are registering the input without me having to do anything

great noticing.

In the same way, next focus on the image of "me", the separate individual entity, is that an image or an actual entity?

xx

Any idea/image I have about myself is a thought - ‘I am’ is a thought. My actual experience without thinking about my experience is a field of sense impressions and a sort of hedonic ‘flavouring’. The sense of ‘me, here’ and ‘lamp, there’ is an extra layer of thought imposed on the base experience that make an image of me as a separate entity.

I notice that I am not controlling what I take in visually when I look around the room - ‘I’ am not ‘doing’ seeing. Seeing is happening. It’s the same for the other senses, including thought - ‘I’ am not ‘doing’ thinking. Thinking is happening. I am not choosing my thoughts. However, as soon as I have an intention (thought) to look or listen or think about something, there is a slight tension. So as soon as thoughts about myself making an effort to direct my thinking, or to look carefully etc arise, there is tension in my body, a slight sense of strain.

The image/idea of myself is not necessary in order for things to happen.

That's great, Sara,
If I was to tell you that Santa is real, would you see it in the room right now? Can you see the difference between real and imagined?
xx

Hi Prabhakari,
No, I would not see Santa.
Yes I see the difference between real and imagined - imagined is a mental impression, real is known directly through the senses.
Sara x

Excellent. Just going out, so more in a few hours xxx

Self is also imagined. You can look for the real self, but can it be found?
Look in each sense- can you find the self? ( is there a self in touch, smelling, tasting, seeing and hearing? Test with each sense.
xx