Could you guide me?

[Jack'n'theBox]

Hi Glenn, just relax, what is fighting what? Experience arises -- don't label it -- look at it with awareness, dissect it into its parts but don't follow it through into labeling -- that's where the whirlpool starts.

Also it's common once the gross sense of self has been seen through (I am not the body, I am not sensation, I am not thoughts) for the I to attach onto awareness itself -- please watch Elena's video on the LU homepage called 'drop the observer' -- can you work with this today and get back to me later today on how this goes?

[nowitis]

Thanks Mark, I watched Elena's video, and it subverts the earliest and most basic teaching I received - you are just a witness - and I will watch the video again tomorrow: for now, I can entirely see that 'fuck the observer' would be a profound relief - and it flies in the face of one of the deepest obscurations of seeing that is here. Namely, that there is an observer.

[Jack'n'theBox]

When attending to sense experience, emotion, or a complex of thought/sensation/labels such as feelings of 'frustration' or 'fear' -- basically when attending to any aspect of experience -- turn attention back on itself and watch how those sensations seem to always want to refer back towards a central point or some sort of observer; but notice how that 'point' is not a fixed position, not a "me" but is actually just another pattern of transient sensation. Observe how, in actuality, experience and awareness are the same 'thing' and, as with all phenomema, all sensations co-arise AS their own experiencing.

[nowitis]

Thanks Mark - beautifully put. Seems like there are times in the day (walking in nature, sitting on my couch in the morning reading and re-reading words like these) when all becomes clear, nobody here...and other times when the sense of me grows thick and heavy, palpable and problematic. I guess that for me that points to there being some experience to have, some experience - in the future.... - that would be a tipping point - seems like many people have had that who contribute to LU - and then I find myself chasing some sort of awakening again. Am I just not getting sufficiently pointed, utterly focused, and passionately clear about this?

[Jack'n'theBox]

Glenn you have everything you need to see through self here and in the moment. There is nowhere to go but here no time but now. The key is in your direct experience. When confusing “I thoughts” arise, turn attention to the body and see how the senses support a sense of "me" through misidentification. Close your eyes and listen to some inspiring music. Observe how, experientially, the process of hearing and the sound heard arise codependent upon each other -- how there is no actual separation between hearing and sound in the moment of experiencing.

Drink some coffee, feel the taste, in the experience of hot and bitter taste sloshing around and being swallowed, both me and the coffee is disappearing in a singular and unified experience ... “I am drinking coffee” is a misrepresentation of the actual experience – are you going to believe your direct experience or a thought? Is there any you in any shape or form that could create this seamless union with arising experience? Just LOOK and SEE this NOW.

Look more closely at feelings, including your current frustration, see how each is merely a cluster of physical and mental sensations, arising and passing away in awareness, not owned by anyone, lacking inherent essence and agency, but being misread, after the fact, in thought, as "my" feelings. Why believe the thoughts over direct experience Glenn? Thoughts don’t know shit. They are merely inert objects in awareness. Why believe stupid fuckwit thoughts?

Is there some advantage to believing these thoughts? They don’t seem to make you very happy. Let them go. See them as part of the arising and passing away that is the totality of experience in the moment – ungraspable, groundless, empty, belonging to no-one. Where is “me” in any of this?

[nowitis]

Thank you Mark. You write me these gems, and I print them out and sit and read them while I'm drinking my tea in the morning, sometimes astonished at the ease and spaciousness. I continue to deeply appreciate being able to be in dialogue with you, although I'm not sure that I have a great deal to offer from my side: but your reminders, and the steadiness of our being in contact are tremendously supportive of a process that I don't know how to forward. Nonetheless, disbelief in stupid fuckwit thoughts seems like a worthy aspiration - I'll keep going with it :-)

And you continue to direct me - I think - to investigate where me is in any of this. There are times of obviousness of no me - and then there are times when I get tight and tense and start arguing with somebody, usually my girlfriend, and me seems very solid. Me seems predominant in social life, especially if I'm reciprocating another's me me me with my own flow of me me me.

I know something important is happening, and I know something important has happened from just our brief contacts so far, but I don't think I've yet sat down with a Buddha-like to do or die attitude and said I'm not getting up until I know whether there's a me - or not.

[Jack'n'theBox]

There are times of obviousness of no me - and then there are times when I get tight and tense and start arguing with somebody, usually my girlfriend, and me seems very solid. Me seems predominant in social life, especially if I'm reciprocating another's me me me with my own flow of me me me.

Remember there are no Hollywood moments in this process -- no choir of angels and no permanently beatific 'states'. Mind weather, both good and bad, continues to blow through, even after self has been seen through. The habit of 'selfing', of pulling in pleasant experience and pushing away unpleasant experience on the basis of a lifetime of habitual preferences continues -- but these actions and experiences are seen to have no center -- no place to abide -- nowhere to 'stick' -- and they pass.

Can it be that you have already seen through self -- no self in the body, no self in experience, no self in thoughts -- but you still think (and this is very much something that just happens in thought) these habitual tendencies to grasp and push away are still directed by "me"? What would happen if you just stopped believing these thoughts?

I know something important is happening, and I know something important has happened from just our brief contacts so far, but I don't think I've yet sat down with a Buddha-like to do or die attitude and said I'm not getting up until I know whether there's a me - or not.

Sustained attention is important -- but you don't have to be Buddha to do this. Again, are you sure it hasn't already happened and what is holding you back is just a belief that there must be 'something more'?

[nowitis]

Thank you Mark, no, I'm not sure it hasn't already happened, although when the day has been as challenging as today has been, sitting with clients immersed in addiction, hopelessness and despair and experiencing what seems like very limited capacity to help them, a fairly solid sense of self seems present.

What would it be like to not believe my thoughts? Then there would be just the seen, just the heard, just the felt. Not the complex swirls of imagined-distasteful future whipped up out of thoughts and felt experience and served up to me as I drove home this evening after a long day of seeing people. And, I can recognize this is a serving with a particular flavor, and that tomorrow will be different.

In my break time today I walked, recognizing that the interludes of ease were simply the times when I wasn't trying to get anywhere. And as I write this, and sit with difficult experiences I realize also that this is just what is, and no less complete than anything else.

[Jack'n'theBox]

. . . a fairly solid sense of self seems present.

Is a "sense of self" the same as a real, existing self? Please look at this sense of self, break it down into its various constituents and describe it.

When you were a kid did you ever wake up and get terrified by faces in the curtains, or a shadow on the wall, thinking it was something real and malevolent out to get you? Did you lie there for hours too afraid to move, till eventually you get courage to switch on the light -- and immediately the fear vanishes because it is seen that the "thing" out there was just a misapprehension -- and you feel foolish for having believed in it with such intensity? Seeing through the self is just like this. Stop trying to look for something that isn't there. Look instead and see that the things that you habitually regard as self are simply the mind's misapprehensions.

[Jack'n'theBox]

What would it be like to not believe my thoughts? Then there would be just the seen, just the heard, just the felt. Not the complex swirls of imagined-distasteful future whipped up out of thoughts and felt experience and served up to me as I drove home this evening after a long day of seeing people. .

What is it that believes or doesn't believe thoughts? Can you find this entity in experience?

What is it that owns these thoughts? Is it "me"? Can you find this me in experience or does "me" only exist in thought?

Please read this blog, do the exercises and report back: http://this-is-cosmik.blogspot.com.au/2 ... ughts.html

[nowitis]

Is a "sense of self" the same as a real, existing self? Please look at this sense of self, break it down into its various constituents and describe it.

Wrote the following using "my" - my chest my feet, etc.. Then took out "my." My my, that takes some of the thrall out of the hypnosis.

Vibrating chest. Different quality of vibration in belly, and different again in solar plexus. Distinctive prickling/gulping in throat. Warmth and tingling in hands, heavy feeling in feet. Energy in face sullen and tight feeling, accompanying diminished heavy respiration in base of chest. Sense of disliking the whole experience but when I go to look and see who's disliking it can find only disliking. Heavy feeling behind forehead - closer examination reveals waves of energy, sense of frequencies tangling. Thoughts: I've felt like this so many times; crap, there she goes again, just like a million times before; see? this proves the experience of self.

I can only find experiences. As a conglomerate - without the examination you've asked me for - they seem like they constitute a sense of self. Is that the same as a real existing self? Laughter comes up, without reason: of course not.

[nowitis]

What is it that believes or doesn't believe thoughts? Can you find this entity in experience?

What is it that owns these thoughts? Is it "me"? Can you find this me in experience or does "me" only exist in thought?

I can't find anything that believes or doesn't believe thoughts - but another thought says that "I do so believe." And hall of mirrors style (as you pointed out a few days ago?) that self-referential nature is all there is, one thought affirming another, affirming another, in a circle without any more substance than just that.

And there are times when this is vividly and liberatingly apparent - walking by the lake today, looking looking, watching watching - and there are other times when this takes sitting down and being with this kind of inquiry for noticing to happen.

But looking in this way - and being once again, once again rather amazed at the fact that there's just experiencing here, and nothing else I find an image come up: doing this is pulling threads, one by one out of the enormous number composing a piece of silk. How long does it take before the color vanishes, or the materiality of the fabric become apparent as nothing?

[Jack'n'theBox]

Is a "sense of self" the same as a real, existing self? Please look at this sense of self, break it down into its various constituents and describe it.

Wrote the following using "my" - my chest my feet, etc.. Then took out "my." My my, that takes some of the thrall out of the hypnosis.

Good to do this. Note how both "I" thoughts and "my" thoughts depend on the assumption that there is a "me" -- it's a feedback loop.

Thoughts: I've felt like this so many times; crap, there she goes again, just like a million times before; see? this proves the experience of self

.

Do these repetetive experiences depend on an experience-er?

I can only find experiences. As a conglomerate - without the examination you've asked me for - they seem like they constitute a sense of self. Is that the same as a real existing self? Laughter comes up, without reason: of course not.

Right!

[Jack'n'theBox]

But looking in this way - and being once again, once again rather amazed at the fact that there's just experiencing here, and nothing else I find an image come up: doing this is pulling threads, one by one out of the enormous number composing a piece of silk. How long does it take before the color vanishes, or the materiality of the fabric become apparent as nothing?

Not sure about the usefulness of this metaphor as it suggests when self view is unravelled there is nothing left. On a conventional level at least our existence has reality. The people you treat have real problems that need addressing. You have a life, a home, relationships, habitual patterns of behavior, there's a certain coherence there. It's not that through dropping belief in self all this disappears or, yogi-like, you suddenly realise it has the quality of a dream. Everything carries on much as before. What is dropped is this idea that there needs to be a center to all "this" -- and that this "me" is that center. There is no center -- only flow -- is there a center to a river? Is there a specific part of the river, separate from the water, the boats, the fish, the plants, the rocks, that we can say "here, this, just here, this bit, that's the real river"? In the flow of life that is Glenn is there a center, something other than the temporary coming together in the moment of these different flows? You've been looking and not been able to find it.

So I'll ask you again and let's see what comes up:

Is there a "me" that is the originator, owner and ground of experience to be found anywhere in that experience? If not what are the implications of this?

[nowitis]

Thank you Mark. Forget my silk image, something of a pointless indulgence of a spontaneous pop-up - and when I referred to nothing I wasn't implying that everything vanishes, on the contrary only that me gets a bit threadbare. I don't have any imaginations about anything vanishing - in the world of the real.

But your continuing to press on this ("is there a me who's the originator, ground, and owner of this experience?") prompted me to get more serious this morning. When I'm curious, when I'm contemplative, when I've got more still space to notice what's real all I can find is experiencing and nothing else. There isn't anything like me - other than what is assumed to be me in the ordinary tumble dryer of living: body sensations, thoughts, seeming-self-experiencing.

Which brings me to what seems like a bind: perhaps I should arrange some prolonged time to be curious and contemplative, to sit with this no-me obviousness, rather than what tends to happen, which is I move out into the hurly-burly of my day and then the habits of assuming me have their own momentum, or seem to. This exploration is utterly and completely crucial because everything else rests on the foundation of it. Yet the days flow on by...

I feel quite altered by this whole process, and your pressing me is invaluable: when I realized I had to get serious this morning it made me really look. And then nothing other than experiencing is obviously what's so - and yet I feel suspended, paused, unable to go back and (seemingly) unable to go forward. I wonder what a whole day would be like in which I do nothing but notice over and over again that everything I take ordinarily to be me disassembles into just a whole bunch of experiencing. But I would probably have to not be working. Any thoughts about this? And thank you again for continuing to guide me.