Hi Perry,
To go back to the question that prompted your reply .... what IN DIRECT EXPERIENCE is this assumption? Is it actually there in direct experience, is an assumption something that is immediately present in experience?
Ok. No… an assumption is not immediately present in experience.
What you describe above are thoughts that might be considered to be evidence of an assumption ... perhaps you really mean "there is the thought (imagination) of persistence through time ... so surely there must be an assumption of I underneath that?!"
If so, then this 'assumption if I' does not exist in experience, all that exists in experience is thoughts (not necessarily verbal) such as "I persist over time", "I want this and not that", "I can make things happen" .... and indeed the thought "there is the assumption of I underlying these other thoughts"
Yes… except that in the area I've been particularly looking at - aversion - it is mostly not what I would call thoughts which reveal the assumption of 'I'. I mostly can't see thoughts: it's volitions and physical sensations, as I described before. So: there are sensations which indicate a wanting or not wanting, an imagining of what is wanted and a resulting tension. This is the evidence of the assumption of 'I': evidence of assuming something over here that is separate and has continuity. I've slightly done my head in with trying to see the thoughts. Sometimes they are there, but mostly it's a pre-verbal/instinctual gesture of clenching that means 'no', and other sensations in the body.
So, even in the midst of aversion, is anything going on other than thoughts, feelings and sense experience? Does the fact that some of these thoughts contain the character 'I' change this in any way?
Have been looking a lot at aversion and something's shifted. A moment of really seeing how aversion/craving create a sense of something over here that wants/doesn't want something over there. Seeing that, today I've no longer being caught by the illusion of self when aversion is present.
When a moment of insight comes, thoughts rush in to claim it. A moment of seeing that there is no 'I' is instantly claimed as 'mine'!!!!
may not be unique to claiming moments of seeing - if you look out for it, you can probably see exactly the same thought pattern going on 'claiming' every aspect of experience, and particularly claiming decisions after they are made.
Again this has somewhat done my head in. I can see tonnes of 'I' thoughts, some simple labels like 'that's mine', others which show an assumption of 'I', have 'I' as a point of reference. I can feel a non-verbal clinging on to certain aspects of experience, noticeable through tension in the body. There's also something I can just dimly make out, some sort of 'tracking' experience back to 'me', to the place in the body where my self-sense locates 'me'. But I just cannot see 'thoughts claiming every aspect of experience'. A lot of doubting thoughts have arisen around this: I'm missing something, 'my' awareness isn't refined enough to see this.
But today there hasn't been any point where, if I enquired, I couldn't see after a while that there is no self. There were many times when I noticed thoughts that assumed 'I', and was able to 'pop' them through enquiring.
Feeling sadness about my Mum's health, I baulked at letting go of 'I am sad'. I didn't really believe it. But somehow 'I am sad' felt so human. On turning it over for a while, 'there is sadness' felt ok too.
When I try to get my head around other people also not having a self...it's too much to take! They look so solid, from the outside!!
All best,
Deejay x
