Ready to let go. Requesting a guide.

[vinceschubert]

Would you give a rant on these questions from your current perspective;
1) Is there a separate entity 'self', 'me' 'I', at all, anywhere, in any way, shape or form? Was there ever?

2) Explain in detail what the illusion of separate self is, when it starts and how it works from your own experience. Describe it fully as you see it now.

3) How does it feel to see this? What is the difference from before you started this dialogue? Please report from the past few days.

4) What was the last bit that pushed you over, made you look?

5) Do you decide, intend, choose, control events in Life? Do you make anything happen? Give examples from your experience.

6) Anything to add?

[Tao]

Hey Gomi and Vince.

1) Is there a separate entity 'self', 'me' 'I', at all, anywhere, in any way, shape or form? Was there ever?

No

2) Explain in detail what the illusion of separate self is, when it starts and how it works from your own experience. Describe it fully as you see it now.

It's a story, strung together by thoughts interpreting different states of consciousness (different appearances), thoughts labeling experience, thoughts creating appearance of duality. It is all appearances, imagery, trickery, illusion of the mind. Even the appearance of an 'I' looking is, appearance.

It is only thoughts that create this 'I'. When playing the piano for example, thoughts continually appearing, "What a great piece of music I'm creating" and so on, but the music is just happening. The intrusion of 'I' only appears to conceal the music's beauty more and more. The more 'I' thoughts, the more clunky, imperfect, uncomfortable the music becomes, and likewise for life itself, because it is labeled as such. Being tricked by the illusion is what holds it all together - yet there is no 'I' that can un-trick oneself.

Thoughts know patterns, repetitions, additions and subtractions, division, logic. This comes about as a result of fragmentation. Fragmenting 'one'ness, so it can be reassembled in various patterns, so form can be perceived and recognized, and memory can be created, from patterns, from a network of fragments, from a grid of pieces split from 'one'ness. Memories, or recognizable thoughts that appear NOW, create an appearance of a linear time line.

Things can appear to be known, but they are only recognized within repetition. Familiar patterns of light play, of sound, of taste, it's all within an apparent spectrum of experiencing. Every sense impression has a spectrum of experiencing, like the rainbow, or the musical scale, or the range between sweet and sour. Feelings too have a spectrum. PERCEPTION within these spectrums, followed by 'like - dislike' thoughts, create the uncomfortable appearance of 'I'

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. - 'Blake'

3) How does it feel to see this? What is the difference from before you started this dialogue? Please report from the past few days.

More of a sense of freedom, letting go of unnecessary baggage, following the heart more. There is still life in story mode, but it doesn't seem so important. I imagine there will still be suffering, when stories/conditioning are believed. The stronger discomforts are more believable. But at this stage of SEEing, things can only continue to unravel, as they are doing gradually, and conditioning is diminishing slowly.

There is no 'I' that has to do anything, it is all taken care of. That feels liberating at the times it is seen. And there is perhaps some reassuring stories in there too, now things are seen more clearly.

It doesn't matter so much how 'I' am judged by apparent others either. There is less of a sense to 'do' and more of a sense to 'be', or live and let live.

And even the story itself is taken care of - no need to change it. Benny is a story, that has a beginning, middle and end. The story is taken care of, no need to achieve, accomplish, JUSTIFY. No need to. Less will to.

4) What was the last bit that pushed you over, made you look?

I really don't know how to answer that. Looking just happens. Insight unfolds.

5) Do you decide, intend, choose, control events in Life? Do you make anything happen? Give examples from your experience.

Does who? There may be an appearance that mind effects reality, but it is only a thought that says 'MY mind effects reality'. Mind is reality.

6) Anything to add?

There's always something to add. ;)

Love and peace from this little fragment. :)

[vinceschubert]

Benny, a question from another guide;
Say more of "Mind is Reality" ?

vince

[Tao]

Benny, a question from another guide;
Say more of "Mind is Reality" ?

Nothing is real, nothing is fixed. Appearances are the only reality. Perception makes reality so. Mind perceives a reality from current experiencing. Without mind, no reality, no 'I', only infinite experiencing.

Benny

[vinceschubert]

Benny, Some more questions from another guide;

Can you give examples from experiencing in Q.5?

You talk about thoughts in a way that makes it seem that thoughts are a sort of entity: "It is only thoughts that create this 'I'." and "Thoughts know patterns,(...)". Can thoughts can do or know anything?

love

vince

[vinceschubert]

...and this from someone else;
"Do you experience a mind as an actual object? Or is 'mind' only a word that refers to particular functions you notice, such as interpretation of sensations?"

vince

[Tao]

.and this from someone else;
"Do you experience a mind as an actual object? Or is 'mind' only a word that refers to particular functions you notice, such as interpretation of sensations?"

You talk about thoughts in a way that makes it seem that thoughts are a sort of entity: "It is only thoughts that create this 'I'." and "Thoughts know patterns,(...)". Can thoughts can do or know anything?

I see mind as a sort of lens through which everything is perceived. Not an actual object, but more the way things APPEAR. Mind is in ever changing states, ever changing appearances. There is nothing fixed, the lens is constantly in flux. Thoughts don't do anything, other than appear and dissappear. Thoughts arise in mind, they cannot hold anything, like knowledge, but they have the power to make things appear a certain way NOW. They also alter the lens in such a way that habitual and conditional perceptions occur. In all truth, I have no idea what thoughts are.

Can you give examples from experiencing in Q.5?

Will come back to this.

Benny

[Tao]

Hi Vince, here is where I'm at with this one.

5) Do you decide, intend, choose, control events in Life? Do you make anything happen? Give examples from your experience.

Amazing things have been happening the last few days. A great amount of inspiration has been arising. I picked up loads of cheap canvases and acrylic paints from poundland and got painting. I've been convinced all my life I cannot paint, and it's true, 'I' can't paint. Allowing expression to happen, on the canvas, with colours, without thoughts trying to 'do', and amazing things emerge, pictures, scenery, that 'I' could never have painted.

Here's the point of focus at the moment. It seems, as thoughts come in and are followed up, they take away from the emergence of beauty. The more 'I' tries to do, the more clunky and dischordant the painting becomes. If 'I' try, the painting becomes crap. The real art is in allowing to emerge, that which wills itself into existence.

And here is the practice. It is not known at first what will be painted, and the colours are slapped on the canvas, the heart is followed. Images appear. Thoughts try to interpret, analyze, fix images in place. Thoughts create attachment to images and then there is a trying to 'do', to make the images more clear, to 'finish' them. Yet, the more the process is trusted, and thoughts and attachments are let go of, the more beauty emerges. It is a balancing act.

And so that brings it to apparent control. Thoughts make it appear that there is an 'I' that has control, and even though there is no control, when those thoughts are believed and followed up, the very act of following them up seems to affect the unfolding of now. The 'I' that thoughts create, when trying to 'do', acts like a clumsy and clunky businessman that knows nothing of true art, art which is life itself, unfolding the way that it will, in all it's abundance of beauty. When thoughts are allowed to arise and fall away again, without having an impact, there is a beautiful flow to life, this body being like water that is flowing in a great river, the water that is not separate from the river. When the water assumes an identity of it's own, it fails to flow in such harmony.

So thoughts, although they cannot control, do appear to disturb the flow.

Benny

[Tao]

More to add from what is noticed:

The 'I' comes about because of resistance to NOW. The NOW is resisted on so many levels, from obvious to incredibly subtle. It is uncomfortable feelings the 'I' is constantly turning away from. In other words, thoughts of resistance appear that make the NOW imperfect in some way. These thoughts are interlinked with the the spectrum of feeling, that is interpreted as inside a body. Different parts of the inner body - different feelings on the spectrum, tense and contract from resistance to the now. The greater the resistance, the more contraction. The bigger the resistance, the bigger the trauma. These contractions can last a life time and result in habitual and conditioned thoughts arising - stories rising out of the tense feelings. When awareness of the inner body happens, fully WITHOUT resisting what is felt, without judgement, then the contracted feelings open up and expand, and as they do, memories from the past appear as if they are being released out of the contraction as it opens up. Opening up is blissful, freeing, but only if the traumas can fully accepted as they arise - this way they are released.

The story of 'me' is just a story, made up from what is felt in the now. The story is just a dream sequence. What is felt in the now is real. The opening and contracting of feelings, the thoughts arising, the sense impressions, they are all part of experience NOW. The content of thoughts is a story of 'me and other' that is affected by these things, and so when contraction is felt, resistance is felt, story is negative in some way, and vice versa.

The 'I' is just experiencing, interpreted into a story of self and other.

[vinceschubert]

Benny, here are further questions:
Given that thoughts don't do anything, can they create an 'I' (or anything else)?
What is it that allows or doesn't allow thoughts "to arise and fall away again, without having an impact"?
Given that thoughts don't do anything, can they truly resist anything or have an impact on anything?
What is it that does or could possibly resist NOW?

v

[Tao]

Hi Vince

Benny, here are further questions:
Given that thoughts don't do anything, can they create an 'I' (or anything else)?

Nothing real is created. It's all appearances, a viewpoint.

What is it that allows or doesn't allow thoughts "to arise and fall away again, without having an impact"?

Well it's more about different states of being, one in which awareness is tied up in thought, and another where awareness is present. Awareness being present, thoughts arise and fall away again without captivating awareness. There is an overcoming of story.

On the other hand, a kind of drifting into sleep lethargy that happens and awareness sinks into the thoughts, and the stories run wild.

Again it's the way things appear, clear and present, or scattered and frantic.

Given that thoughts don't do anything, can they truly resist anything or have an impact on anything?
What is it that does or could possibly resist NOW?

Nothing can resist the now, it's the trying that is the issue. Thoughts make it appear that something needs to be different, which gives the sense of needing to 'do' something. The feeling of needing to 'do', which is maintained by frequent short thoughts that say something needs to be done. An uncomfortable and largely unsconcious sense of tension builds up and continues, resulting in feelings of being apart from, seperate from, and a stronger sense of self and other.

Benny

[vinceschubert]

'Morning Benny, you will be invited to join some Facebook groups of others that have seen through the illusion of self.
There are many new 'skills' to be considered now as you are entering a whole new world.
Anyway, lots of this kind of processing happens in these groups, so "friend" me on Facebook and so that i can invite you to join. https://www.facebook.com/vince.schubert

There is a small doc worth reading here; http://liberationunleashed.com/PDF/Awakened.pdf

love

vince