The Gate

Well. it is just a fact


From an email from Ilona

Nothing dramatic happened.

There were no fireworks.
No permanent bliss states.
No sudden personality changes.

And yet, something shifted.


Here are a few things people said afterwards:

“I’m not fighting my experience anymore. There’s more space around everything.”

“I expected something big to happen. Instead, life feels simpler and I trust myself more.”

“There’s less urgency. The seeking has softened.”
[

This is the kind of shift this work supports.

Ilona Cuinate

Does that help?

There are a few support groups. Feel free to go to those and chat with them about how it is going.

Vince Shubert

Weekly Free Meetup Times (Sydney, Australia time):
Saturday 9 pm,
Monday 6 am (for paid subscribers - recording only available to attendees)
Wednesday 4 pm (recorded and published on YouTube)
Friday 7 am (recording only available to attendees)
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⏱ Countdown timer for the next meeting on: www.wakingupwithvince.com (scroll down)
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He has a YouTube Channel


Todd & Pernille Lent Damore

Yes, we still have a monthly Inquiry Group that's free, and that they are welcome to join. We actually just had one two days ago.
We also have our Discord community which is free too.

Write to:

unfetteredmindfulness@gmail.com


Loving,

Does that help?

I didn't actually expect to feel anything from concluding that I have not found a separate self. It still feels basically intellectual. But since you asked how I felt, it seemed like you thought I might feel something. I do get the point that I shouldn't be expecting anything dramatic.

I might look into the groups.

This evening’s ButtChair meditation:
I started off trying to let go of the image of my body that I add to the sensations — an image with the “self” in the head and the butt-on-couch sensations in the butt — that is, an image of a separate “subject” and “object.” But then, more simply, I tried to let go of the whole "self"/"subject" idea and be fully immersed in the butt-on-couch sensations. And I tried to recognize, regarding other bodily sensations that caught my attention, that sensations in my face (where I tend to locate my "self") are no more an indication of a "self" than are sensations elsewhere.

Okay.

Remember that we want you to look and not so much think.

Loving

Remember that we want you to look and not so much think.

Yep.

This morning's 10-minute ButtChair meditation: Tried to immerse myself in, or "be," the butt-on-chair sensations. There's still a sense of a separate "observer" of the sensations, observing from my head.

Something I've thought of a number of times recently: Decades ago, living at the Zen monastery, I realized, while attending to the sensations in my hara (lower abdomen), that I felt like I was observing from a vantage point in my head, and I tried to let the sense of observing move into the hara. I succeeded only once, for an instant.

During this morning's meditation, I briefly tried to "merge" the "observer" with the sensations but then decided that this was probably futile, and anyhow, it still reinforces the subject/object duality and is based on the image-thought of sensations being in one place in my body and "me" being somewhere else. I also wondered if I could "move" the sensations "up" to the space in and around my head where I feel like my thoughts appear and merge them there, but that has the same issues.

So for now, it is perhaps best to just try to "be" the sensations.

None of that is in your instructions. Please stop all of that thinking & simply LOOK

https://liberationunleashed.com/resourc ... r-seeker/

https://youtu.be/wyNwhK2Ur1c?si=TZwuFEst-7Hsadpu

It's simple.

Loving,

None of that is in your instructions. Please stop all of that thinking & simply LOOK

Right. OK.

It's simple.

Simple is good. I like simple.

Spent my 25-minute afternoon meditation time focusing on just LOOKing at butt-meets-chair sensations. Unsurprisingly, the first 15 minutes consisted more of getting caught up in thoughts than looking at sensations, but then the thoughts settled down a bit, and the main remaining category of thoughts was putting my experience into words for me/you. So I kept reminding myself, “Don’t take notes. Just LOOK.”

Yes. good.

Just LOOK

It took me 3 months.

Loving

Did about nine minutes of looking at butt-on-couch sensations (y’know, interspersed with getting caught up in thoughts). Nothing new to report.

Thank you.

Several minutes of ButtChair last night: Nothing to report.
Five minutes this afternoon: Too drowsy to keep much attention on the sensations.
Will try again after a nap . . .

Sounds good.

Have I shared these with you? Might help.

Be sure to listen to the Introduction. Just another way to go at it.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ksba3zhi9uuz ... hsk1a?dl=0

Lovng,

Used a meditation timer to time a series of 5-minute periods of ButtChair (this often works better for me than committing to a longer period of any sort of meditation). This turned out to be mostly an exercise in noticing how busy my mind was and what kinds of things it was getting caught up in. For the first few 5-minute periods, I spent probably less than 10% of the time attending to butt-meets-chair sensations. Things settled down a little after that, but even in the fourth and fifth periods, it was still probably less than 30%. I kept reminding myself, "Don't take notes; just look," and "Let go [of thoughts]; just look." (I could list the main categories of thoughts that carried me away, but I'm guessing you'd consider that irrelevant.)

Yesterday when I lay down for a nap and when I went to bed for the night, I tried doing a bit of HipBed meditation, i.e., attending to hip-meets-bed sensations. But that didn't last long before I drifted into thoughts or sleep.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ksba3zhi9uuz ... hsk1a?dl=0

Yep, I'd already taken a look at those. I sampled the beginning of all of them and listened to a few all the way through. The one that I connected with the most with was "Perceiving Receiving," which is basically just a twist on self-inquiry, at least if the question you use is something directed toward seeing no-self. When I want to do something like that, which I do more days than not, I'm continuing to do self-inquiry in the style of Angelo DiLullo and Adyashanti.

Also, during some of my daily periods of sitting meditation and randomly while going through my day, I've been practicing noticing when I've been caught up in thoughts and then returning to clear(ish) awareness, which I've found I can access immediately, though I rarely stay there long.

So far, so good, then.

Loving,

Used my usual late-night meditation time with my spouse for ButtChair. Wishing I were better able to keep my attention on the butt-on-couch sensations, it occurred to me that I could bring to bear my recently-noticed ability to return to clear, open awareness whenever I wish. So I was returning to that general awareness but with sort of a spotlight of attention in the midst of that awareness on the butt-on-couch sensations.

One of the main topics of my wandering thoughts was wondering why attending to these sensations would be more efficacious for realizing no-self (or becoming more “accident-prone”) than, say, all of the attending to sensations of breathing that I did for a couple of years in Tibetan Buddhist and Zen communities.

Good morning.

It's probably not. It's just different.

But possibly those leading & guiding had not themselves seen. And then there is that whole story about it taking a long time. It doesn't.

Loving,