The Gate

Hi Stella,

We normally believe that we are inside of this body, and looking out of the eyes, and observing the world out there.
So we are here inside the body and the world is out there (outside the body).

Right? Is this how you feel yourself to be? Looking out through the eyes, observing the world out there?

Vivien

We normally believe that we are inside of this body, and looking out of the eyes, and observing the world out there.
So we are here inside the body and the world is out there (outside the body).

Right? Is this how you feel yourself to be? Looking out through the eyes, observing the world out there?

Yes, that’s pretty much my experience. I’m here looking at this computer screen, watching my fingers typing this response. There’s some activity inside, thinking, feeling sensations, hearing sounds but they are coming in from outside.

Aggie

Hi Stella,

I’m here looking at this computer screen, watching my fingers typing this response.

All right. Please look at the display before you.

Now, could you tell me where you are looking at it FROM?

WHAT is there? Is there a ‘me’ in that direction? What do you find there?

Vivien

I’m here looking at this computer screen, watching my fingers typing this response.
All right. Please look at the display before you.

Now, could you tell me where you are looking at it FROM?

From inside....no... here is a better word even though it doesn’t mean anything.

WHAT is there? Is there a ‘me’ in that direction? What do you find there?

No, no me.. just looking, seeing, typing... gets confused a bit when thinking starts. I have to go back to awareness. Something is aware and that feels like what I would call me.

Hi Stella,

I would like to ask you to look at each of my questions a lots and lots of times, not just once or twice, or not even 10 times.
Spend a whole day looking at it again and again… preferably hundred times a day.

Even if you cannot find anything… still look again…

It’s about a constant searching, searching and searching and not finding that brings about the realization.

When you reply back you have to be 100% sure of your answer.

V: I’m here looking at this computer screen, watching my fingers typing this response.
All right. Please look at the display before you.
Now, could you tell me where you are looking at it FROM?

S: From inside....no... here is a better word even though it doesn’t mean anything.

It doesn’t matter if looking is happening from inside or outside or from here or from there.
And it doesn’t matter if it’s called awareness of not.

You have a perception that I am looking at the computer screen.

So you have to find the EXACT SPOT, the exactly physical location, where the looking is happening FROM.

Where is this EXACT spot where the looking is happening FROM?

Don’t rush through these questions. You have to be very thorough.
You have to be certain of your answers.

Vivien

Where is this EXACT spot where the looking is happening FROM?

feeling really frustrated. If I’m really simple, 3 years old, and you ask where I’m looking from, I’d say “here.” And point to my body. A little older, I’d point to my eyes. But you want me to deal with this question 100 times a day. What am I not seeing? I do not know. After looking for awhile during the day, The head seemed a better answer as I am looking at something I recognize as something which would mean I need to include my brain. But you said simple without any intellectual knowledge. I’m confused Vivian. And you want me to be 100% sure. I’m not sure about anything right now. If I must wait till I’m 100% sure I certainly won’t be writing every day.

am I being thick? Am i missing your pointing? Feeling quite dumb at the moment.

Hi Stella,

feeling really frustrated.

It’s natural and completely normal that there are difficulties with looking at the beginning. Please be patient with yourself. Sooner or later it will click, and you will be able to see through the illusion. It might take a week, or two, or a months or two months. It doesn’t matter how long it takes.

am I being thick? Am i missing your pointing? Feeling quite dumb at the moment.

No, you are doing well.

And you want me to be 100% sure. I’m not sure about anything right now. If I must wait till I’m 100% sure I certainly won’t be writing every day.

The aim is to be 100% sure. But of course it won’t happen that easily. If you could be 100% sure right now, it would mean that you have seen through the self and you don’t need more guiding :)

So we are aiming for certainty. To look as thoroughly as you can, to get as close to certainty as you can.

Please sit on a chair doing nothing for a few minutes. Watch the thoughts coming and going.

Can you trace a thought back to where it came?
In the same way, can you follow a thought to its destination, if any?
Can you tell where thoughts come and go, without using any imagination or speculation?

Please repeat this exercise several times before replying.

Vivien

Vivien,

I did three sessions and they were all increasingly different.

Can you trace a thought back to where it came?

First time, my answer was yes. I watched how thoughts were triggered by things I saw, body sensations, problems/stress that presented themselves like answering this question presented by you, Some took awhile to trace back as I didn’t catch the chain reaction of one thought associating with another with another with another until later. So then I watched the chain reaction rather than tracking backwards. This resulted in fewer thoughts showing up unless I provoked them by looking around with the eyes.

Then the second time, as I tracked the thoughts I saw that there were soooo many associations and feelings, some of the associated thoughts were even deeper than the surface ones showed up, that I doubted that I truly knew where that particular thought got it’s first appearance, its origin. I wondered if what I had thought in the first round as the origin was only one step in many. So my answer changed to no. I was no longer certain I could trace a thought back to where it came.

The third time I did it. My mind had already become strangely quiet. I noticed a few thoughts but mostly they were labeling. But even that didn’t stand out. I knew I was sitting on the deck but where earlier I would have had a list of associations with “that” deck, it was just there. Honestly, there was almost nothing to trace back.

In the same way, can you follow a thought to its destination, if any?

It seems mostly unconscious movement. Like domino blocks. One thought touches another and another and another and so it goes until something else happens to start a new line of dominoes to fall or I become aware of what’s going on and stop to question. As the dominos falling is not conscious, I have no way of predicting where it will go. I also don’t pick which domino block will fall or where the connections are so I can’t predict where it will end. I can trace backwards to the beginning...or so I thought first time round, but as I state above, that certainty fell away as I looked. Very often the connections/realizations of the thoughts are so vaporous, like a dream they fade so quickly after they’ve been spun, its hard to track backwards. So the destination seems haphazard, and in some very circular, going no where. So my answer for this is no. I cannot follow a thought to its destination as it seems to have none.

Can you tell where thoughts come and go, without using any imagination or speculation?

No. There’s no feeling of control, or of seeing, experiencing thoughts other than them appearing and disappearing. Once they arise, I can sometimes say, “yes that’s a memory from when....” or “that’s a defense against a worry that ....will happen” But even that, I think, is speculation, not a knowing. I’m merely guessing. I have no definite evidence that that “guess” is based on anything other than limited knowledge.

Thanks so much for your help and guidance...

Hi Stella,

There’s no feeling of control, or of seeing, experiencing thoughts other than them appearing and disappearing. Once they arise, I can sometimes say, “yes that’s a memory from when....” or “that’s a defense against a worry that ....will happen” But even that, I think, is speculation, not a knowing. I’m merely guessing. I have no definite evidence that that “guess” is based on anything other than limited knowledge.

Yes, guessing is speculation. Guessing can happen only in thoughts. You have to put aside thoughts, and look at experience directly. To see what can be known WITHOUT thoughts.

Do 'you' think thoughts? Are thoughts 'yours'?

Try an experiment. Try to create a thought. Any thought, from scratch. What do you find?

Do you notice how thoughts seem to appear, hang around for a while and somehow pass, or be succeeded by the next thought?

Now try preventing a thought from appearing. Is it possible?

Vivien

This is a bit late to ask this question but better late than not at all. In your first directions you said this:

This exploration is based on Actual (or Direct) Experience (AE or DE) - smell, taste, sound, sensation, color and thoughts - only.

All this time I understood that to mean what I could see, touch, taste, hear or feel and left out thoughts all together. But that last on the list, “color and thoughts” isn’t the same as see is it and certainly not thinking. Could you explain this a bit more for me? Thank you.

Stella

Good morning Vivien!

So first I have to tell you that I have given this a lot of looking and unbeknownst to me at first, a lot of thinking. None of which I will put here but suffice to say that it was the last question that got me to the answers you’ll be reading. Felt like something shifted today.

Do 'you' think thoughts? Are thoughts 'yours'?

So I’m going to take all that back (everything I had written earlier)... it took the last question’s answer to get here. Thinking...thought happens... the question is whether we attach to it or not. Thought does what it does. All the talk about this event is associated with this thought and then that thought is all... just thought. Things just happen....they don’t happen to me. Thoughts, thinking does not belong or originate with me.

Try an experiment. Try to create a thought. Any thought, from scratch. What do you find?

As soon as I engage the thought process it’s like entering a library. Hmmm...what should we create? Looking through the stack of “things” “events” “conditions”. It’s a falling back on what is already there. Pick and choose.

Do you notice how thoughts seem to appear, hang around for a while and somehow pass, or be succeeded by the next thought?

all the time. Like dominos falling one right after the other. This one leads to this one to this one..and not always in any way that seems to make any sense.

Now try preventing a thought from appearing. Is it possible?

No. It’s like saying “don’t rain” when it’s raining.


Short answers I know but words fail what I’m feeling right now. Standing in the rain shouting for it to stop raining just blew me away. ;)

Hi Stella,

Short answers I know but words fail what I’m feeling right now. Standing in the rain shouting for it to stop raining just blew me away. ;)

Great!

So you have just discovered that there is no control over thoughts, right?

Which sentence is the truer:

I have no control over thoughts,
or
There is no I/me that could control thoughts?

Don’t think about the answer, but actually look at experience.

Is there an experience of an I/me which has no control over thoughts?

Be very thorough, and write only about what can be actually seen.

Vivien

Vivien,

Which sentence is the truer:
I have no control over thoughts,
or
There is no I/me that could control thoughts?

Don’t think about the answer, but actually look at experience.

Is there an experience of an I/me which has no control over thoughts?
Be very thorough, and write only about what can be actually seen.

I found this set of questions/looking a bit challenging. At first, there was confusion, another impossible task. How could I “look” for the answer and not use anything that couldn’t be seen? For a thinker, it was like asking me to draw but without hands. But I kept repeating “Look, don’t think.” And then as the day began today, I tried again.

Write only what can be actually seen.
This is the trick then, isn’t it. There was a hit of this yesterday, but it sunk in today. When held to that limit, what’s to be said about “me/I”? Nothing. There’s no one standing in the rain shouting for the rain to stop. It’s just raining. It’s rocking, typing, watching, breathing, responding to conversational cues. Walking, cooking, listening to tv, music...

No feeling of “Wow” like the no-self you talk about was there. Just recognition of all that has been considered “me” doesn’t really exist unless I conjure it up and think about it all. And, of course, the need to remember to look and not think as the day moves on.

So the second statement would be the truer.
And yes, when looking, just looking, there’s no I/me to try and control thoughts.

Hi Stella,

There’s no one standing in the rain shouting for the rain to stop. It’s just raining.

Exactly! Let this sink in.

Look at this again and again that there is no one standing in the rain shouting for the rain to stop.

How does it FEEL to see this?

Just recognition of all that has been considered “me” doesn’t really exist unless I conjure it up and think about it all.

“unless I conjure it up” – WHAT is it exactly that is conjuring up the me?
Is there a conjure-ER?

And yes, when looking, just looking, there’s no I/me to try and control thoughts.

And when not looking, is there a me/Stella?

Look very carefully with each questions. Be careful not to reply with the automatic knee-jerk condition thought reactions. Rather try to get outside of the box of the learned, collected intellectual knowledge, and really investigate with the simplicity and curiosity of a child.

Vivien

There’s no one standing in the rain shouting for the rain to stop. It’s just raining.
Exactly! Let this sink in.

Look at this again and again that there is no one standing in the rain shouting for the rain to stop.
How does it FEEL to see this?

Yesterday the state of depression for lack of a better word settled in. The body felt tired, dull with some dizziness. Writing about this has become more involved as so much of what would normally be written or said, now seems untrue. So the writing starts and stops, redo, and redo. But having relayed that, there is also a release felt, a corresponding lightness that alternates with that dampened state. It’s not up to Stella/me to figure out how the world works because there is no Stella/me. There’s no need to figure it all out to go forward. There is no forward. There is just this.

Addendum: part of the dampened feeling had to do with “I won’t be able to do the things I love any more. I won’t be able to read, to meet with people, do this, do that....” because of some of the looking shared below an understanding/recognition that these thoughts are untrue. What will happen will happen just without a sense of Stella/me and the pain that goes with her trying to manage the world by herself. Again remnants of a fading belief.

“Just recognition of all that has been considered “me” doesn’t really exist unless I conjure it up and think about it all.”
“unless I conjure it up” – WHAT is it exactly that is conjuring up the me?
Is there a conjure-ER?

This is one of those examples of the normal way of relating being untruth. There seems to be layers of understanding to this no me/I. Maybe not but it feels like that. Even the thought that Stella is conjuring up those thoughts is a thought in itself and just happening. There’s no choosing by her to “now to not think”. That’s just happening too.

It’s so very amazing to look at how deep this belief in thinking as the way to freedom is. In the belief in this separate “person” striving to achieve something. The depression and perhaps even the lightness just spoken of are remnants of that fading belief in Stella.

This morning I looked out on the middle of town and saw everything unfolding. Just unfolding. I drove by two young men beginning to do some work with a tractor and thoughts rose about who they were, what they were doing, why he had that smile on his face, was he limping.... and knew they were thoughts just floating by. It all happened in an instant. That recognition just happened too. And just now, that those “people” were just thoughts floating by as well.

And yes, when looking, just looking, there’s no I/me to try and control thoughts.
And when not looking, is there a me/Stella?

Good question. Me/Stella is only a thought/belief that sometimes happens. Sometimes not. Sometimes my looking sees it and sometimes it doesn’t but it is not real. It just happens like other thoughts. Perhaps one day it will not happen anymore but that would be guessing and against the rules. :-)

This is probably the most revealing looking yet. It feels like a release, deeper release of responsibility to “do” or “become”. There’s no one to make a mistake or do good. To get it or not get it. There’s just this, happening as it does. The real difference is before when it happened, it was seen as a strong, truthful belief thought and now when it happens it is a fading belief/thought. Don’t know if it makes any sense or not to you but there’s no one deciding to think different thoughts or now to look left instead of right....there’s only what is happening and that’s all that is truly known. It’s all in the seeing, the looking in the moment. If there is going to be a change, it will be the looking in the moment that will precipitate it. Not sure where that last sentence came from but it feels so true, it will stay for now.