Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!
These questions reminded me to tell you a few things in case I never come back to this again. I’m telling you in case it is of assistance to you. It may not be. Many, many things headed me in the right direction but below I’ve listed the key moments.
The foundation for it all was having the ability to separate reality from fantasy. (I have to go into story mode)… I guess I am a dreamer at heart. I likes movies like Lord of the Rings and Superman. If you had asked me previously if Santa was real I would’ve replied “Just because you haven’t seen him you assume that he is not real. I choose to continue to believe in Santa until I check every inch of the north pole. THEN I would know he is not real”. I read another post like this on LU and then I realized I was like that guy. I needed to get my head screwed on straight”. Damned right there is a thought of Spiderman. That thought was real. But the thought is only a pointer to something that is not real. After I got that clear in my head I contacted you.
I think the illusion really started to become apparent when I had disidentified from the body and you then asked me something like “did something arise from the body” (which suddenly brought your analogy about the University to mind). That triggered an extremely clear view of Michael (and others) as an illusion but funnily enough while that was happening thoughts were coming (that I WAS identifying with at that point) saying “Wow. Well then what was I before I was Michael?”. That was a weird point when it was clearly seen that Michael was always an illusion yet even then the mistaken belief of a self persisted as some sort of soul like entity. Yet… the fact that Michael was seen as an illusion could not be unseen.
Right on cue, following that realization there was a very traumatic event in my life (which I didn’t tell you) and the absolute worst of Michael arose in every way. Life felt so much worse then because previously there was a whiff of freedom and then I was suddenly thust into the middle of a dark cloud. It felt like being in a totally unescapable trap. The key to release was in 2 realisations: 1) that the dark experiences/thoughts were “friends” because they were evidence that things were going the right direction and 2) the pair of questions you asked me about what created the thought and what influenced it. Those questions made it obvious to me that Michael had nothing to do with it.
The other issue for this one was even though it was seen that thoughts are on auto-pilot and the body is on auto-pilot there would be a few “special” thoughts that were still totally identified with. Example: it was easy when I was walking to see everything was on auto-pilot but then I would stop walking and do something… “irrational” like stop walking and hold a foot up in the air. It was at that point that that the trick got me because I had the mistaken feeling of “Hey, look at that! I’m holding my foot up in the air! Now THAT is NOT on auto-pilot. Hell I’ll even do star jumps to prove it to adriandc”. I call these thoughts “pointy” thoughts (I don’t know why). BUT when you asked me what is it that created those pointy thoughts (to do a star jump or learning the piano)… well… that cracked the illusion.
The other issue for this one that was closely linked to the paragraph above is the issue of control. It dawned that if there was no me… not ghost me, no soul me, not even the tiniest trace of me floating in an atom… then WHATEVER is going on cannot be controlled including the thoughts that come up. Another serious crack.
For this one there was so much anxiety of the implications of what it meant to have no-self it really helped a lot when you addressed this. In fact, perhaps there would’ve been no progress if you had not. Also however I started to imagine when I had escaped the dark cloud… if there was no me, no control… then what would that mean for this body moving here and those bodies moving there?
I was deeply considering the 3 points in the 3 previous paragraphs while trying to figure out when I became the owner of this body (from the time the body was my parent’s genetic material to now) when BANG total disidentification with the body and mind. After an hour or so there was identification again but a sense of knowing what was going on. Like there would be a little emotional burst and then something would catch it and know what was going on. (what created that thought? Repeat, repeat, repeat)
Woke up the next day and realized effortlessly there was experience but no experiencer and realized that I had no idea what was going on around here but that was OK. In fact it was joyful.
explain in detail what the illusion of separate self is, when it starts and how it works.
I still don’t thoroughly understand this and I’d appreciate it if you could fill in the gaps. But what I do know is that this organism has a wonderful ability to be able to cough out a thought that points to something that is not real. One of those things it points to is the concept of a self separate from the universe. I mean why not? There is something here that people call my body, it’s moving and thinking and has sensations, why not bag and tag it?! Makes it easier for the Christmas presents to go to the right people. It labels everything automatically. It cuts off a piece of the universe and gives it a name.
If you look a little closer at what it cut off (in case of the body) you realize that actually it isn’t a body (that’s just a concept) it is a collection of arms, trunk, legs, face, brains, bones, guts (and I realize those are concepts too). All that is not me. It’s just what it is (a collection of stuff working together).
All that stuff is moving and just doing what it’s doing. Take a baby for example. It’s arms reach for a face and I’m sure it has thoughts. Those thoughts are not controlled by anyone and it doesn’t know it is a me yet. Thoughts just pop up and seem to be appropriate to the circumstances/environment and take into consideration memories.
All that is going along fine but at some point there is a change. The part bagged and tagged (in this case named Michael) becomes me. i.e. the illusion arises that the part of the universe that was bagged and tagged is me. Your parents would touch the foot and say “Michael’s foot” and the programming has started. Or perhaps your parents would get a wooden spoon and beat you with it: “Don’t YOU do that again!”. I’m pretty sure that that would go a long way to instill a sense of self in the organism. Also school, work, TV, society, etc all reinforce this illusion daily.
Of course also that bagged and tagged bit still just thinking and moving and experiencing starts also to put together a story and becomes identified with the story (my story). I worked at xyz company and went to abc university. When in reality that is just a story. In reality all that just happened. It rained, I didn’t do it. It went to abc university, I didn’t do it. Thoughts just came, bang, bang, bang.
In my experience it appears almost as if Michael is a set of mental switches set a certain way based on the path taken through life. The thought patterns that arise seem to take those switches into account. Me is just a thought pointing to the organism (the arms, trunk, blood etc) or pointing to a particular story made up for the path the organism has taken or an image of my face as a child I saw in a photo. Me points (i.e. it is a thought) to a lot of different things at different times and under different circumstances. All of the mind. Not real. You can’t smell it, taste it, hear it (with your ears), see it (with your eyes) and you certainly can’t kick it.
How would you describe it to somebody who has never heard about this illusion.
I wouldn’t, but for the purposes of answering the question I would say there is experiencing being experienced but no experiencer. It feels infinitely natural and quite amusing.
Please do, as you have, fearlessly drill where drilling might be required,