The Gate

Hi Mike,

I'm happy for you that you are finding benefits from our conversations, and am willing to carry on further.

I am seeing more clearly what is arising in life, and that these things are just happening. Life is here for me to more directly experience without consciously or unconsciously having my mind create the illusion of separateness from this life experience.

My intention (what i want) is to experience life more often without the mind creating the illusion of separateness. I now feel myself smiling and chuckling as i think about the mind creating the illusion of separateness all in the vein of safety - when really im no more safe (only something in the mind has changed), and i would propose less safe because i don't have input from some of my sensations, emotions, and feelings to navigate life.

Are you saying the mind creates illusions of separation? How?
By saying this you are implying there is some kind of control in the mind over You, Mike. Is this true?
Look at this deeply. Watch the mind, watch your thoughts.

Thanks,

Burma

Hi Burma,

you wrote,

Are you saying the mind creates illusions of separation? How?

I feel I could get heady about this, so I am trying to stay present. The experience of separation, which I am not feeling now, I recall being not in touch with sensations, emotions, and having a sense of confusion, and sometimes lost in thoughts. So that may be my internal experience of life in that moment. Others I have been told experience me as checked out, not available, lost in thoughts when I am having that experience. My experience is that something happens (the mind, and human system do something) that and am not in touch with my awareness of my feelings, emotions, and body sensations. I have noticed that when I really put my intention and focus on staying in the present moment this experience doesn't occur as much, but when I don't put my attention on staying present it happens more often. My experience feels more separate from myself and the world, and I have been told by others they experience is less available. However all this is happening within life, just as it is. I feel a bit confused and conflicted as I have written this, like the experience or feeling is of being separate, and that's validated from a feeling perspective by others, but its all unfolding within life.

you wrote,

By saying this you are implying there is some kind of control in the mind over You, Mike. Is this true?
Look at this deeply. Watch the mind, watch your thoughts.

The mind can definitely generate thoughts which can lead to the experience of different sensations and emotions. All this just happens within life. As I sit here, I feel I to a large degree I have the choice to stay present, but it takes intention and focus. I feel I stay within choice (control) of my actions if I stay present even in the presence of sensations and emotions - however I don't have much choice over the emotions, and sensations. Same with thoughts, if I stay present, I can simply watch them, I don't have to believe they are true or react to them, I have choice. So, its my choice to let my mind dictate my actions and beliefs - so the mind only has control over me if i choose this - which means it doesnt have control over me once I am conscious of this (which I am now).

I feel I now get to be the chooser of how I experience life,
Mike

Hi Mike,

What if… There is no chooser and no I ? Burma

Hi Burma,

you wrote ,

What if… There is no chooser and no I ?

Then there would be no control of outcomes, no control of others, no control of myself. There would just be life unfolding. And I feel challenged as I write this, challenged as in confronted in some way. I feel you are confronting my beliefs about what all has been. I am trying to stay present, but I watch my mind want to take control. It wants to argue with you. My mind wants to say, what about......, how can........, if there is no chooser is there no choice in life ............

If the chooser and I were just an illusion, then this illusion was just this unconscious programming / mechanisms that were identified as the chooser and I. But it had no consciousness, it was just mechanistic.

I remember a day after doing a 2 day plant medicine ceremony, I came into work, and it felt like I was walking around separate from my body a bit, like I could see all my mechansisms, and I was struggling to function, like have I been walking around as just a bunch of mechanisms ? Who am I if all these things were just mechansims ?

You are touching on something deep here I feel, yet parts of me want to argue with you.

Mike

Dear Mike,

You are touching on something deep here I feel, yet parts of me want to argue with you.

This is good! Certainly not what you were expecting?

The illusion of a separate self is being challenged, all the programming, conditionings may get triggered, may resist. That's normal and good that you are aware this is happening. Stay with it. And relax if possible.

Expectations that life will magically transform into a bed of roses is not going to happen. Issues and challenges don't disappear, seeing thru illusion is a shift in perception; like seeing the myth of Santa is a story. Life goes on....... with all the ups and downs.

Say more about mechanisms?
Is this a thought arising?

Who am I if all these things were just mechansims ?

Thanks,
Burma

PS--You said:

Believing thoughts creates suffering in my experience.

Believing that i am separate creates suffering. The experience of being separate is created by the mind (psychological mechanisms) to create safety in an unsafe world.

Mike

Hi Burma,

you wrote,

Certainly not what you were expecting?

I didn't expect to access a place of truth about my ego/mind like that! I feel you are pushing me (which is what I have asked for, lol) - and I can see the urge/mechanism that wants to defend/argue.

you wrote,

Say more about mechanisms?
Is this a thought arising?

By mechanisms I mean behaviors, things that happen where I didn't have a conscious intention to have that happen. It could be a verbal reaction, physical reaction, a thought, an emotion, etc. This human is just walking around acting out unconscious behaviors without any choice beyond its conditioning/programming - isn't there more to this human - doesn't it have choice in what it wants to do and how it wants to act / behave, etc beyond its own psychological programming ? Doesn't this human have a higher level of conscious where it can over ride these mechanisms/desires/urges ? Are these just thoughts that arise from my mind/ego as a defense against accepting that - no - life is just happening - there is nobody flying the ship - the ship is just flying so to speak. I feel like part of me is pushing back or resisting what your suggesting.

If I look at this like a dog just does what a dog does, sniffs, runs, barks, wags its tail, runs. A hummingbird just hums along. A cat purs, meows, jumps, etc. Humans act weird lol, talk a lot, drive cars around, get sad or mad, etc. When I look at it like this, I would say the dog just does what it knows what to do or wants to do. You can train him to walk a certain way, sit, roll over, but all in all he just does what a dog does based on being a dog and how he has been trained. Is another way of saying this, humans just do what they do being a human, getting trained/conditioned, and perhaps the genetic specifics (like a german shepard is different than a collie). When I look at it like this, I see a lifetime of conditioning (parents, friends, schooling, jobs, society messages, etc) that not only trains me out of who I really am (trains the human wildness out of me) but also trains the Mike into me - the attachment to this idea of Mike, that there is this thing called Mike. All this paperwork that identifies this human as Mike.

I feel more relaxed and less defended now. Like I just want to care for this human, he has tried so hard for so long to think his was around what to do and say and how to be. This human is exhausted. The mind is exhausted too. I feel like I want a knap to get away from all this trying. Maybe this is checking out of the difficulty and sadness of what I am beginning to see.

Mike

Hi Mike,

This process can move slowly or quickly. Take time to process these new feelings, really the aliveness of now.
Realize there are now many NEW TOUGHTS about who you are and were etc. new stories may arise---BEWARE. And as you said:

there is nobody flying the ship

There is no "I" meaning no doer, driver, and now may I add:

no experiencer.

This is on the LU site in articles, and is very timely for you and is a core to reaching The Gate. Take you time to digest and then answer the last question.

I look forward to your reply.

Direct Experience
Neil Jalaldeen

The most important catalyst for triggering Awakening to no-self is to investigate our Direct Experience. Direct Experience is what is noticed, here and now.
We can skilfully divide d.E., for the purposes of investigation, into 3 main aspects:

1) thought

2) sensations
seeing
hearing
smelling
tasting
feeling [tactile + kinesthetic)

3) an unmistakable sense of Aliveness
(presence, being)

The illusion of separation is maintained by a stream of self referencing thoughts that are based on past conditioning. The most common reference point is a thought-created center referred to as “I” / “me” / “self”. There is no such center, and those self-labels refer only to other thoughts, or to some aspect of Experience.

By referring to d.E., one is able to deconstruct any assumptions of separation or self, and see that there is just an Experience. There may be thoughts about Experience that conceptually divide certain aspects of Experience into a “me” and other aspects into “the outside world”, yet those thoughts are also just a part of Experience, and as such there is ONLY Experience.

There is an assumption that there is an experience-er that experiences. This is propagated by a belief, as expressed by a thought such as “I experience”. We investigate this in d.E. by looking for this “I”. Is there a separate “I”, or is there just an Experience that thought conceptually divides as such: “I” + “what is experienced”?

There is an assumption that there is a perceive-er that perceives. This is propagated by a belief, as expressed by a thought such as “I am the perceiver”. We investigate this in d.E. by looking for this perceiver. We can see that there is no such thing as a perceiver, just a perception and thought dividing it in to an “I” + “body” + “perception through the senses”.

A sound is heard, then there is a thought “I hear a sound”. We can investigate and see that there is no hearer of sounds, just sound. If there is something felt and assumed to be the hearer, or self, is it anything more than some other sensations? or that sense of Aliveness? or another thought?

“I feel my body against the chair” a thought says. So, we investigate d.E. and see that there are sensations that are habitually labelled “body” and other sensations we refer to as “feeling of chair against body”. When we investigate where this “I” is that claims these sensations, it cannot be found, as there is either another self-referencing thought, some sensations or another aspect of Experience.

We can pick up an object, and look at it. We might say “I am looking at the object”. We then test this conclusion to see if it correlates with d.E., and what we find is that there is a sensation of seeing, and maybe some sensations that we usually label ‘head’ or ‘eyes’, or even other feeling-sensations labelled “body”. A thought may arise with the conclusion that these are inherently separate, and that one is “self” and the other is “what is observed”. When we test this out we see that there is never an “I” looking, never a watcher, never a seer. There is only seeing, only feeling, only Experiencing. We can say that it is simply Experience experiencing itself.

We look deeply in to Experience, and see that the assumptions of separation, self, “I”, perceive-er or an experience-er are just references to Experience. There is never an actual separate object, just the perception of such, and thoughts labeling it. We deconstruct all these assumptions of there being a watcher, or a looker, or a hearer, and find that there is only Experience, never an actual separate self.

Is it possible there is just Experience, with no separate experience-er?

Greetings Mike,

Just a quick check-in. Please reply daily, even if it's just to say you are processing. Thanks! Burma

Hi Burma,
Still processing and have been swamped with my kids, back tomorrow!
Mike

Enjoy!

Hi Burma,

You wrote,

Is it possible there is just Experience, with no separate experience-er?

As I read your note, thoughts arose. Could experience be different based on the perspective its viewed through (a different human, with different histories, different emotional systems, different brains, etc) and thus Experience is essentially infinite in its varieties based on the point of view its seen from. Plants, animals, humans, places, time, etc. So experience is infinitely complex or varied. Yet experience is always happening. If its taken as personal then we immediately feel separate. Its just experience through a point of view. I think I get this intellectually, and also see how in the complexity of life that everything is always in a moving balance, one point of view of experience is much different than anothers within this system and yet all things get to shape and shift the experience which impacts the experience from different points of view. Its all happening, incredibly complex and beautiful. This ongoing dance provides for infinite possibilities for infinite points of view to create infinite possibilities which are impossible to predict! Become alive and engage this dance of life , become a creator of experience ! I am not a creator of my experience but of Experience, which has infinite points of view.

This feels a little heady, but it also feels like I am drawn to experiment, engage, and put down the seriousness of figuring everything out which feels relieving and down right fun as opposed to exhausting.

So, yes, I see there is Experience, with infinite points of view to see experience through.

Mike

Greetings,

Yes, you are spot on!

This feels a little heady, but it also feels like I am drawn to experiment, engage, and put down the seriousness of figuring everything out which feels relieving and down right fun as opposed to exhausting.

Yes, "heady" is a challenge. Imagine you are headless---find a space where you can experiment safely while imagining you are headless for 20 minutes. How was this?

Mike, as these insights unfold (to no one!) there could be AHA! moments followed by confusion.....all put under the heading of "experience". The habit of thinking is strong, and this habit is constantly "figuring stuff out". Sure, it's vital when doing certain tasks, and then can be dropped.

Can you notice the urge coming from this illusionary "I" or "Me" to interpret what is happening. In other words, consider there doesn't need to be a filtering process constantly keeping vigil. A door slams---BANG--just the bang is heard---then the thoughts flood in to interpret the sound. Same with taste, smell, seeing, and the trickery of thoughts and stories from arising emotions.

As you are sitting here right now, what is happening without "filtering" and "interpreting"? Is it screen light/ squiggles/ thoughts/ breathing/ hands touching keyboard/eyes blinking--- all the un-divided happening as experience? This is where the "aliveness" happens, this is what fully living in the present is about.

Report what you notice.

Try this when preparing a meal. Report what you notice.


Have fun!

Burma

HI Burma,

Wow. I am so conditioned to think and figure things out and interpret. The vigilance was programmed deep.

I have found a few minutes to take in the experience without filters and figuring, but have not been able to remain there for beyond a few minutes at work. Breathing is happening. There is sensation where body meets chair, expansion of lungs is happening. Typing is happening. Air flowing through a vent. Then thinking arises, lol.

I wont have 20 minutes of quiet time until later tonight, but will report back on being headless for 20 mins and preparing a meal.

Mike

Hi Mike,

When are you able to discern the illusion of the"self/I/Me"?

Burma