The Gate

...and what have you found in the space that waited for outside input?


"Watch out for that first step, doc. It's a doozy!" - Bugs Bunny

The same thing that you just found.

Life continues to flow with or without the influence of an answer.

Hi,

How’s the B’ingYOFT thing? You launched into it with a zesty, fuck-you attitude that cannot help but work, I thought.


Apologies for my sporadic attendance. I gave an undertaking to post once a day and haven’t done that. I have been busier than usual, but that’s not an excuse. I wanted to push you to really think and respond and saying, “I’m still waiting,” wasn’t seeming to work, so I opted for nothing, to wait and see. That was outside the agreement and I’m sorry.

Your post that concluded, "While life is presenting a world of illusion, I can only harmonize with what is,” kinda stopped me dead. You get this thing, I can see that…but then to come back to these loose kind of statements, from the deep south of duality, makes me wonder if you're just being poetic…so I have to ask: What is this thing you call ‘life’ that presents this illusion? What is this “I” that feels compelled to harmonise...and with what? You wrote really well about it, so I'm guessing that you know WHY...

You see why I need to ask, right? On the one hand, it’s easy to get hung up on words, but on the other hand...

I’ve gone back and re-read our dialogue from the beginning. I’m sorry for any lack of clarity or less-than-useful input along the way. My limitations as a guide are a part of the gift, it seems.

You asked a couple of times about what looking is. The process of direct looking involves the kind of exercises we did (raising the arm, trying to witness a choice being made, etc) and asking questions, such as “What am I?” “What is it that is thinking this?” etc., and then looking inward to find the answer...or destroy the question to allow you to move on to another.

I tried suggesting to first notice the process of looking itself and then make an incision at the point where looking and thoughts about the looking meet, to help better understand both.

Was that clear?

look around without drawing conclusions

Of course, this is the thing. To look around without drawing conclusions brings a world of no-thing. There is no thing to see. The things are the conclusions. My experience of no-thing is indescribable in words or concepts, how could it be otherwise?

You’re quite right in this and it was well put. Of course one cannot NOT draw conclusions and still function.

I’m really not trying to demonise thought or suggest you try and stop or even curtail it. Just witness it to see what it is in practice and its influence on perception of what is (and isn’t) there to be seen.

Thought seems a bit like the fat on a steak: essential to certain life processes, but can be bad for your overall health in large doses, so you want to cut most of it away before chowing down (not certain what “chowing down” analogises here, but I hope you know what I mean). But the “right" amount can really add to the flavour, so you don’t want to lose it all and it’s thus useful to see the difference between the two…

It’s also essential to be able to differentiate between observation and speculation. So I want to ask you to please answer the question I asked before, about how you would describe what we are doing here to somebody with no knowledge of it at all. It’s a very good question, really, and should help ensure clarity.

What is this thing you call ‘life’ that presents this illusion? What is this “I” that feels compelled to harmonise...and with what? You wrote really well about it, so I'm guessing that you know WHY...

I agree, without a common understanding of what the words mean we will just circle around endlessly.

Life is what I call the moment to moment change that is observed. In the observing I notice what I will label as a going with the change or a resistance to change, Harmonizing is going with the change. What is it that produces the resistance? I don't know. What is it that changes with the change? I don't know. I can only try to describe in concepts what I experience.

You asked a couple of times about what looking is. The process of direct looking involves the kind of exercises we did (raising the arm, trying to witness a choice being made, etc) and asking questions, such as “What am I?” “What is it that is thinking this?” etc., and then looking inward to find the answer...or destroy the question to allow you to move on to another.

What really is going to bake your noodle later is would I have raised my hand if you had not said anything.

You type things like look and notice. What is taking these commands? What is choosing to look or not look? What is there to notice?

It’s also essential to be able to differentiate between observation and speculation. So I want to ask you to please answer the question I asked before, about how you would describe what we are doing here to somebody with no knowledge of it at all. It’s a very good question, really, and should help ensure clarity.

Disregarding the question about what determines that something is observation or speculation and what chooses between the two:

This process is pretty much what you said above. It is to help a person determine what is experienced and what is imagination. I would guess most suffering is generated from imagination. To stick to what is experienced without excessive judgement or thought. To look beyond what your ideas and concepts are telling you about the world.

(aka to harmonize with what is)

Lol, you got your "...harmonise with what is" dig in again...and love the Matrix segue... I'm getting a better handle on this and will respond to your provocative post in full, anon. This thing is there, but I think I see now where it's yet to be a lock. I am on holiday for a long weekend in Melbourne, until Tuesday, so please allow me a couple of days to properly respond... But don't feel any need to wait for anything this side.

Deep regards and gratitude to you for making me think more about this thing, my friend. Have a nice weekend!


"Those who danced were thought insane by those who couldn't hear the music." - F. Nietzche

Hi Knabo,

Almost there, but don't want to rush to post just to make deadline.

Regards,

Apologies for the delayed response. Plenty of action going on both during and after the weekend.

This process is pretty much ... to help a person determine what is experienced and what is imagination. I would guess most suffering is generated from imagination. To stick to what is experienced without excessive judgement or thought. To look beyond what your ideas and concepts are telling you about the world.

Like all bliss, all suffering -and all between the two- is of the imagination. What you suggest as being the outcome of this process would make a nice waystation to the actual outcome, which is to directly experience nothing where "Thought thought it had a self, (but when it looked it didn’t)."

The process is not to help a person at all but, yes, should also clearly delineate what is experience and what is imagination, with the alleged “person” apparently doing the determining as the focal point. What makes it doubly challenging is that it doesn’t add to knowledge (which would make ego happier) but instead proceeds by elimination, removing the false as it is discovered, beginning a process of dismantling an apparently solid edifice nonetheless founded on untested assumption and inference (picture ego, in the role of Wicked Witch of the West, screaming, “I’m melting!!!”).

It’s difficult because we have spent a lifetime developing highly refined skills to stop us doing exactly that; to protect “me" from even thinking about what this process has as its core function. No simple feat - and with plenty opposition.

Honesty and rigour in pursuing this entails not drawing artificial boundaries, ie., without excluding anything. This becomes interesting because we must examine our most base assumption: that of a separate “self”, that paradoxically seems to have a central role, overseeing the process being put into action. My advice as a guide here is to choose to overlook this paradox, but only until it is no longer a paradox (and not a second longer).

And let’s not forget the crucial role of focus and brute persistence in the face of… frustration…and boredom. For what seems to most typically occur is that, when closest to that null point, where egoic hold over perception lets up resistance for just long enough to resolve that one, sweet point of unequivocal knowing, mind runs away with cool-sounding thoughts about the next bright, shiny thing to capture its attention. I assure you also here that this is no accident.

(to harmonize with what is)

Yes, your point. My feeling is that this would be a nudge in the opposite direction, but do not compromise if honesty compels.

Have you seen through the illusion of the separate self?

If not, then what is it you witness there, at the core, the agent of all this harmonising, thinking and writing?

Have you seen through the illusion of the separate self?

The separate self who is in charge is not there. It is clear there is no decision maker. But who are you talking to? And why? What is the "you" in the above sentence referring to? I can't find an agent doing the harmonizing. But I can consider a concept and see how things turn out.

Maybe we have chosen our words poorly.

Maybe we should say there is no continuous separate self, or there is no persistent separate self.

What seems to me is that action is taken. Then a self is created for review. Then the next action is taken. Rinse and repeat. Maybe this is why I can take direction and develop concepts and criticize myself for not following my own sage advice.

Knabo,

Sorry again, no time to reply tonight. I will post again tomorrow night- hopefully in response.

Regards,
Michael

Have you seen through the illusion of the separate self?

The separate self who is in charge is not there. It is clear there is no decision maker. But who are you talking to? And why? What is the "you" in the above sentence referring to? I can't find an agent doing the harmonizing. But I can consider a concept and see how things turn out.

…This is where the utility of a subject-verb-object structured language weakens. I need language to try to suggest a possible way ahead. The concept under the microscope is “self”. You need language to try and communicate what you are experiencing. Yet our language is poorly adapted to the discussion we are trying to facilitate…unless we recall that we aren’t really trying to foster any discussion, but rather a direct experience. All reports about the experience are just a bonus and whatever degree of accuracy of such reports can ony be fingers pointing at the moon.

Language makes concepts possible…or maybe it’s just the communication of concepts, I’m not sure. Either way, though, the focus isn’t on concepts - which are also nothing other than mental ephemera - but an experience... that you can come back and talk about, or not, but which fosters a liberation for which there is no analog.

Maybe we have chosen our words poorly.

Maybe we should say there is no continuous separate self, or there is no persistent separate self.

What seems to me is that action is taken. Then a self is created for review. Then the next action is taken. Rinse and repeat. Maybe this is why I can take direction and develop concepts and criticize myself for not following my own sage advice.

Words are chosen poorly, but I would take pity on them. They weren’t designed to do the job to which they are being applied…by what? Ah, and it breaks down again.

Concepts, words, ideas...use them like ninja stars, locate and discard them as quickly as possible...jump from crocodile's back to crocodile's back to get across the crocodile-infested river.

Yes, that was the conclusion here as well: there is no continuous, separate or persistent self. Something so ubiquitous surely couldn’t long hide from the kind of search this process ignites. But the telltales of a massive cover up of this simple fact are everywhere to be seen, when sincere effort is made to discover them. At first, it’s like suspecting something that could have previously only been thought ridiculous: that when you blink the universe (including the “my body” experience) no longer exists... and then over time, with close concentration, discovering ever more compelling evidence that supports it, until finally, for one, brief moment it is no longer speculation but an experiential fact.


Further delusion? Self-hypnosis? Wishful thinking? Maybe. You’ve done the math and found the self-thing to be conspicuously absent…what should come next, but that experience?

Like those 3D poster images that, once seen, cannot be unseen. When you see, Knabo, you know seeing has happened. Forget words and concepts around what or who sees and what is seen. They only fog vision. Knowing is already there and the thing that defends against the knowing is the very thing that disappears when the light is shone upon it. But it’s really fucking good at dodging that light…until it literally dawns that it’s not that its good: it just doesn’t exist and you’ve been stabbing into the blackness in search of a phantom, that actually resides behind the light, not in front. Your light will never touch it for that reason, but unaware of this you feel you cannot release the search.

There’s a Jed McKenna concept, where he talks about “the little bastard”. Do you know it? Loosely speaking, it’s the underlying consciousness beyond the no-thing calling itself “Knabo”. It knows. That same consciousness is behind the pond scum calling itself “Michael” and has noticed the Knabo beacon in the darkness. These words and all the concepts, egos and…well, the whole fucking universe, really, are the sum total of that darkness. Looking outwards will only ever return shadows and darkness until you experience the only source of light - in the opposite direction.

I’m really not trying to bludgeon the self out of you, but you’ve realised by now that this is a mutually beneficial process. The reason I persist is because (again, very poor wording) I’ve seen something that you came here to find and it serves me to try and help you. You seem sincere, but I get a strong feeling of resistance to your own findings…an (albeit understandable) reluctance to call a spade a spade.

But isn’t this what you came here for? Surely you’re not expecting to be convinced of something that can only be recognised when conviction is abandoned and sincere investigation concluded? I cannot convince anybody. And, athough I’ve had sniffs of it, this isn’t a club, a religion or even a movement. It’s just a beacon for travellers in the neighbourhood, and one either zeroes in on it until they touch it, or passes by with whatever degree of curiousity brought them here.

Which are you?

That's it then. The illusion is supported by the language we use. That's why it seems so persistent. Just when you think you've seen through the illusion someone will come up and ask, "What did you do today?" or ask my opinion. I get funny looks at times because I am slow to answer. I feel like I have to wake up my separate self and see what its answer would be.

I suppose, over time, I will not get distracted by words.

I get a strong feeling of resistance to your own findings…an (albeit understandable) reluctance to call a spade a spade.

I have had a habit of making sure my footing is firm before proceeding. Likely just another way of painting the fear of not existing. But it is clear there there is no footing. Nothing that can not re reduced down to illusion / imagination.

It’s just a beacon for travellers in the neighbourhood, and one either zeroes in on it until they touch it, or passes by with whatever degree of curiousity brought them here.

Which are you?

No battle is worth entering unless you can count coup. I am not here to generate fresh new illusion, this is what all my reading and searching has accomplished. I am here to swim down and touch the bottom.

I am not here to generate fresh new illusion, this is what all my reading and searching has accomplished. I am here to swim down and touch the bottom.

By "touching bottom" can I infer you are talking about Truth? Have you called off the search for a separate self?

For lack of a better word we can call it truth. More real, less imagined. Those are not good words either.

Language, I would say, is the greatest enforcer of the separate self. After finding no experience of a separate self, people will speak to you as if you are separate. Your own language will support an identity, a self making decisions and in control of things. Teachers who are on a path of no self, non-duality, oneness still talk to people as separate entities who then follow the person and rarely the teachings.

Even this has to be seen through. It was a daily challenge, and now it can be let go.

Am I searching for a separate self? No. That snipe will not be found.

Sorry Knabo...work stuff has dragged me (kicking and screaming!) back to the dream for a couple of days. Let me get back to you over the weekend.

- Michael