I'm ready now! and looking for someone to guide me

[DianaM]

Hi Damon,

I have answered most of these questions but I haven't replied. I am having problems to answer question number 5, I am not being able to find the examples from my experience, maybe this question is not clear enough for me now. Unlike this question, the answer to the first 4 came easily. I first thought to just try to answer but I prefered to be honest and tell you this before sending the answer to the questions. What is done in this case?

[Damon Kamda]

Hmmm... perhaps that question is indeed formulated a bit weird. It's not the clearest of questions.

Let me rephrase it and see if you can work with it then, allright?

Does this question work for you:

How do decisions and choices get made? How does that work? Can you describe, in some detail, the actual, experiential process of choosing and deciding?

[DianaM]

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

Absolutely FALSE!!

There is no separate entity behind the " I "
There was never an " I "
there will never be an " I "

What a relief !!!

Looked for it everywhere, in different moments and circumstances, at some point I gave up searching for it.
It is nowhere to be found, I was looking for an illusory thing.

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.

I will quote an older post I wrote here, then answer my own question.

If you look in the microscope someone could say: look our body is made of small "beings", they act independently. Look, they are separated by distance and perform different tasks in the body. Obviously we don't say that, we say they are part of a body.

But we see a group of people and say it is made of many different selves. Are we the same as these cells or something different? what are we?

Well, as I see it now we are just the same as cells!!! The distance that apparently divide them don't make them separate beings, we see that clearly because here we see the big picture. There are no separate selves a pregnant woman is not separated from the child, but here I will go further. After the child is born there are no separate selves there either, there is no place, no time, no circumstance where the separation existed. Just life flowing.

I see now what you wrote in a previous post:

The confusion is fundamentally linguistic in nature. That's all.

Again, common assumptions and the way language is used suggest things are a certain way, now the invitation is to look beyond common language and see for yourself what is actually going on here!

It started at some point when I was learning the language. People say my name and I learn they are talking to me. This is done with a practical purpose, but at a point some thought daclared this simple tool for communication, this "I" has a reality behind it, it defines a separate being and is "my identity".

Thought take a random segment of reality, make this division and enclose a segment in a little box with apparently defined limits, apparently enclosed by walls. Everything outside of the tiny box called "Brenda", "I" or "me", will be the outside, the others. Thought puts you in another box that I will call "Damon" or "you" and then believe we are separate. Then thought will take other portions of reality and label these as "my thoughts" "my feelings" "my decisions". A distorted reality is believed.

There is nothing wrong with the word " I " it is just a label. The confusion is not the word itself, but that we will firmly believe it separates us from everything, that something separate lives inside a box. Surprise!!! The " I " box is empty, nothing inside, more precisely it doesn't exist. If you really look with attention, you will not find the limits of the box either. That's how it works. It is really all about linguistic confusion !!!

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.

I believed this so firmly. how could I believe this without questioning it? be so convinced this was true for so long? It is surprising and even hilarious!! I was reading previous posts and laughing.

Before I started with this dialogue I have never questioned the existence of the "I" in such a deep way. I accepted it as a real by defautl. It seemed so obvious that there was no need to question it. It felt so real, my senses even seemed to support this. I had glimpses of the reality but they were confusing at that time, a defense mecanism discarded them as only some kind of hallucination, without reality.

I will post some quotes from my first posts, this is just incredible!!

"What is this self? this self or I is who lives the experience, the experience of my life, who learns, relates to others, has a story, a past, makes something well or makes a mistake, enjoys or suffer, and lives overwhelmed with concepts, ideas, judgements."

Are these one and the same entity? The one experiencing, learning, relating, thinking, etc?

"I think they are"

"It is difficult to imagine that the I doesn't exist as you affirm. I resist to this idea, If there is no I, who is having the experience?"

"Thoughts come from my mind, then I have to be creating them, thay happen in my mind.the thinker is not a physical form, it is more subtle so It is not located physically, even when it seems to depend of the brain. What is the thinker? maybe some energy."

Come on!! Did I really wrote that stuff????

I see now clearly that during the LU process, from the first posts to the “final push”. I felt as if I was carrying a heavy useless burden. This was made of excessive anxiety and thoughts; it stole vital energy and was overwhelming, I experienced fear of disappearing and worry and tension. All this was gradually reduced; now It’s gone.

The first clue was this answer I wrote:

Can you control your next thought?
I left this one at the end because with this specific question I found something strange, what calls my attention here is that I really can't control the next though, they seem to be somehow automatic.

The feelings at the moment of realization this were a total surprise, I felt as if a huge and heavy burden was taken off my shoulders. The feelings that arose were freedom, joy, lightness, understanding, unification, peace and calm.

I didn’t feel sad or upset about "loosing the I" I felt as going out of a trance, a dream, a hypnosis. Suddenly I felt lighter, why the excessive fear of seeing? So many defense mechanisms! Why was I resisting? I saw this so clearly that I couldn’t deny anymore what was there in front of me. After "The I fairy tale" was uncovered I was surprised to notice that the I was not necessary for anything, "I" don't miss the fairy tale at all. I could say I felt liberated but...

If a very realistic hologram cage is created around you and you notice it is a hologram, are you caged?

In the last few days fear was gradually replaced by curiosity. I remembered a question I was considering a year ago. If a woman is pregnant, at which point the baby becomes a separate being? This led me to think about the cells in the body and why we don't consider them separate beings. I was riding my bycicle, when I suddenly felt very light and comfortable in confusion, I started laughing. Then I remembered an experience where I was in a park and suddenly looked at everything as a dance, a choreography where everything was linked and no separation was perceived. After the final push I experienced the same thing again just after reading the lines. At this point many of my previous beliefs were starting to sound strange and some even nonsense.

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

I was already in the edge when a few words in one of your posts started a chain reaction.

THIS was the last push:

In short and fading glimpses, could it ever be more than that?

No, no... wait. I mean it literally:

YOU ARE ALREADY SEEING THIS.
YOU'VE ALWAYS ALREADY SEEN THIS.

This.
Is.
It.
This!

Just reading these few lines and my previous ideas about this started to get big cracks, at this point it was already difficult to keep all this glued together a few things were not fitting, but after the lines I wrote above it was becoming nonsense, I started to question all I wrote before in this forum. After these lines the following posts were radically different.

I mentioned the impact of those lines, and you answered this:

Then read them again and ponder it some more. Could it be true?

I read those lines again, could it be true? At this moment it all became clear. It was there. How could I be so blind? It was under my nose all the time, but I was not seeing because my expectations of something else happening were getting in the way.

5) Do you decide, intend, choose, control events in Life? Do you make anything happen? Give examples from your experience.
5) How do decisions and choices get made? How does that work? Can you describe, in some detail, the actual, experiential process of choosing and deciding?

This was not so easy to see, or to explain. The last bit of resistence was hiding in this question, so I couldn't answer sooner. This morning I got an eureka moment that started just as a sensation and got clearer with the reformulated question. There is no I, but there are decisions and choices, then they have to be just as thoughts, they are just occuring. But there is no I behind them making them happen. I need images here to make it clear.

illusion shows us this as reality
http://gymgrafx.com/graphics/wp-content ... 7-1200.jpg

Behind it, reality may graphically look more like this web.
http://www.scielo.cl/fbpe/img/jotmi/v7n1/art06_f4.jpg

The lines are what is happening (thoughts, feelings, life, decisions) these lines form a unity, the lines cross at some points. And these crossing points and generate other things. Some lines will cross and a decision will happen. The "separate beings" are absent in that web, just life happening.

6) Anything to add?

This post is already long, now "I" just want to thank "you" Damon. If I have not found LU, this clearer way of seeing may have not happened, or it would have taken decades. Hope that this website continues, so that "others" will be as thankful as I am now. If you want to ask something else just tell me.

[Damon Kamda]

What a wonderful post to read! Hahahahaha!!! What a relief indeed.

No more questions from me. I'll ask some fellow guides to review this thread to see whether they have any additional questions. This usually takes a day or two.

Hope that this website continues, so that "others" will be as thankful as I am now.

Well, all of this is made possible by guides, admins, artist, writers freely sharing their time and energy, so as long as that continues, LU will continue.

We'll be in touch. Would you consider guiding others here on this forum? Your expression is really clear and to the point, that's really helpful.

Warm regards...!