Each reminder makes the seeing clearer, gives me confidence, even reminder that DE and Awareness are same thing!
Great – just notice that ‘confidence’ is not a personal quality. It’s a way of saying that reality (without reifying that word) is completely ok with being reality, being what-is, whatever that ‘is’ is right now.
Look for lurking beliefs that hold you back here. Is there some tenacious holding? Is there a sense of something being protected?
Probably.. Unsure what... A protection of the habitual, the familiar, the safe maybe... Which amounts to the self I guess....
No. It amounts to a protecting impulse mentally labelled ‘the self’.
…still perhaps a fear that too much energy will be released in seeing, that it will be overwhelming, fear of madness... and various lack of confidence lurking beliefs...
You can presumably see already that these are just thoughts. When open awareness is present – or let’s say, when awareness is in its openness phase – isn’t it clear directly that there’s no self-entity here to be mad or not mad?
So when it’s in its ‘thinking’ phase (also labelled ‘distraction’, ‘fear’, ‘anxiety’ etc.) can it be seen that this is essentially just the same? Meaning, no-one ‘decided’ to become openness, no-one ‘decided’ to get involved in painful thinking.
These are just varying modes of awareness or, put another way, different movies appearing on the screen of awareness. The main distinction, relatively, is that one appears as ‘no problem’ or ‘perfect as it is’ and the other appears – or is mentally evaluated right away – as ‘PROBLEM!!!’ Yet both are arising inseparably in the undivided space of awareness.
But the thing to note is that in neither case is there an actor / agent. Would a real ‘me’ entity choose to go into such painful thoughts? Contraction arises just as self-lessly as Openness. As you know from the old saying, the ‘mad’ ones are those who still cling to the idea that there is a self-entity doing and viewing it all, when no such self-entity ever existed. As you say, it’s all just thought.
Okay. Ta. But we had this exchanges recently which I found quite helpful.... Or is this a slightly different thing?
T: Can you find any ‘line’ or distinction between a feeling and the awareness of that feeling?
S: There seems to be a distinction, a different flavour, between getting lost in sadness say, (the feeling rettrieved in memory) and being aware of the sadness as it presents itself....
T: There seems to be – but is there a distinction in direct experience? Where is the boundary? Is awareness ever not totally inseparably one with what’s arising? Really look.
Well, any further observations on this from direct experience would be interesting :)
T.x
