A guide request

[wigglyfish]

When I look directly, without getting caught up in thought, there really is no separation. Experience happens at zero distance from 'me'. I have been watching the sky here, when I look at a piece of blue sky, there is nothing in my direct experience that signifies that it is at a distance. When my field of vision is all sky and there are no thoughts labelling, I literally am the sky, or I am the blueness! It's simple, I don't know why I tie something so simple into a knot of thoughts.

There's no division or between my senses (seeing, hearing, touching etc) and the world. They are all happening at zero distance - no barrier between a 'me' and 'it', no division. Thought makes the separation - just like it generates a separate sense of a controlling self by claiming that there is a decision-maker. When thought appears "there's a cloud", immediately a division is made that infers there is a 'me' (witness) watching a cloud (witnessed).

[EmptySet00]

Nice clear looking!

So - is there a separate self?

[wigglyfish]

Well, when I take an honest look - no!

It's so simple its comical. Why isn't this taught growing up? I sort of feel the wool's been pulled over my eyes for the past 30 years!

[EmptySet00]

Yes, it's pretty funny, isn't it?

Are you ready for the set of questions we ask at the end? We do this so other guides can take a look and make sure we haven't missed anything.

[wigglyfish]

It's actually quite impressive - how real the sense of a 'me' appears when left unquestioned.

Yes I think I'm ready for the questions. Fire away!

[EmptySet00]

Great! Here they are:

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

2) "Describe your experience of the illusion of separate self, how it arises/disappears. Is that process always the same, or does it vary, and if so, how?"

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.

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

5) Describe decision, intention, free will, choice and control. What makes things happen? How does it work? What are you responsible for? Give examples from experience.

6) Anything to add?

[EmptySet00]

Andrew, you there? You don't have to answer the questions all at once if you don't want to. Or if you don't want to answer them at all, that's fine too. Just let me know.

[wigglyfish]

Still here, sorry I disappeared for a while back then - literally. If I am honest the seeking for liberation has dropped considerably, which is quite liberating in itself.

I wrote and rewrote some stuff, I hope it's ledgible, it's quite long too, here goes.

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

There is no separate self.

The body is autonomous. There is no walker of steps, breather of breathing, blinker of blinking, digester of digesting, sleeper of sleeping, etc. If I lean on a hot stove, there is no-one who decides whether my hand should be withdrawn – it just happens.

The mind runs by itself too. I can’t control my thoughts, they just happen. They appear and disappear as they please, there's no thinker of thought. If there was an “I” entity that orchestrates thought, then why are they not all happy ones?

When looking at the world it appears there is a separate self ‘in here’ that perceives things ‘out there’. But looking honestly, there’s no-self in raw perception. There is just perception. The presence of colour is the perception of seeing. Hearing is the presence or perception of sound. There’s no self that controls this. If a bird flies past my line of sight, seeing cannot ‘not-see’ it. A separate self cannot determine what or what it doesn’t see, hear or perceive. When the visual field is taken up by the sky, there is only the presence of “blue” “sky” smudged with “white” “clouds”. There’s no separate self present, there is just experience of blueness with whiteness. The labelling divides the experience. “Blue”, “sky”, “white”, and “clouds” separate the experience into "things" that a self sees. Likewise with the other senses, no separate self perceives a world, there is just raw perceiving.

Therefore, under simple, honest looking, a separate entity ‘self’, ‘me’, or ‘I’ cannot be found anywhere, in any way, shape or form. If it can’t be found now, then why would it ever have existed?

There’s no-one behind the scenes directing the show. There never was. The separate ‘self’ is a concept built by thought.

2) "Describe your experience of the illusion of separate self, how it arises/disappears. Is that process always the same, or does it vary, and if so, how?"

There’s two ways that I can see how the illusion of a separate self arises.

The first is by a self-thought that claims a controlling entity carries out activities of the body and the mind. The self-thought references activities of the body and mind around an “I or me” that subsequently creates a “you”. For instance, an itch becomes “I am itchy, I need to scratch that itch on my body”. Natural breathing becomes “I am breathing”, or “I am holding my breath”, or “I am regulating my breathing”. Thousands of itches, scratches and hand movements spontaneously happen throughout a given day, and there's no need for a controlling self to scratch every itch. Breathing also happens naturally, with no need of a self. A controlling entity cannot hold the breath indefinitely – at some point the body will gasp for a breath naturally. There’s no controller or self present. The self is created by a self-thought that claims that an “I” was itchy, and that an “I” scratched, and that it scratched “my” body. “I” and “my” are empty concepts learnt from a young age that prop up a sense of self. This can be applied to any body or mind activity. Where it gets sticky is when a combination of senses and/or perceptions is experienced together, thought claims a self is experiencing, throw a load of thought-memories and a personality in the mix and the fact that there is no-self is forgotten. The self-thought is constantly inserting itself and claiming a doer of activity. The self is literally a habit. A persistent, self-referential concept of thought. In reality, it’s just a thought.

The second is by labelling, and objectifying raw perception. Thought labels raw perception. When a swaying cluster of green and brown appears in the visual field, thought labels the perception as “tree”. In creating an object “there”, it is implied that there is a subject “here”. The thought appears “I see a tree” – an “I”, “tree” and “seeing” has been created. When the tree is perceived unmediated by thought, it is clear that there isn't a separate entity viewing a tree. There is nothing in the experience of seeing the tree that advertises a separate self. There is just the experience of a swaying cluster of colours in the form of seeing. To take it a bit further, deduct the human-thought-concept of “colour” and the experience of “seeing” remains, which is an attribute of being aware(ness). The same being aware(ness) that types these words and is read by you. There is no seer and seen, they are one and the same – awareness.

Sometimes there is no-self, and it is obvious – but overlooked. For example, driving a car requires no-self, or sometimes when listening to music or painting a picture. The separate self is forgotten and the driving, listening and painting becomes a flow of experience. Time appears to stop, or pass quickly, because there is no self-thought making reference to a separate entity in time. Only afterwards does thought interject with self-referencing.

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 don't know if I am awakened or anything like that, but something is different. It feels the same as before, the difference is that the self has been seen for what it is – an illusion created by thought. This is empowering in the sense that it is easier to see how the self is (and has been) created, and easier to spot those thoughts that prop up the sense of self.

This is allowing me to look at life a little differently. Why take life (and all its blows) so personally when there’s no self to take it personally! It is quite amusing. Many times throughout the process I found myself bursting out in laughter at the notion of there being (or ever being) a separate self. I have never laughed so hard. It’s a joke, to think that for 30 years the self was so heavily invested in, and taken so seriously – but then everyone around me did, no-one questioned the self – so why wouldn’t I?

It is bitter-sweet to look back at the amount of time spent in a state of depression and misery, and how everything was taken so seriously and personally - all because of a repetitive self-referential thought. I was always seeking – a new book, an exotic style of meditation, or performing acts of good will under the assumption that these add onto, or improve the quality of “MY” consciousness. In hindsight, nothing has to be added; instead a tonne of stuff has to be dropped to see the simplicity of how it is. Peace and happiness was (and is) literally always right there, available on tap – a simple presence of awareness, untainted by thoughts of the self - that only ever says “yes” to experience, pleasant or unpleasant.

The seeking for spiritual salvation has stopped, in fact much of the interest in spiritual matters has completely gone, which is great, because now I don't have dialogues with “myself” about what practice is the most effective, or how I have to meditate for years to attain such and such, or how this practice is better than that, etc. It frees up a lot of time and space. As a by product of the dropping of seeking, I can enjoy life unfolding now, as opposed to being caught up in thought. So the seeking has dropped away, and has given way to simply being.

That’s not to say that I feel blissed-out. I feel exactly the same. The difference is the knowledge that the separate self doesn’t exist, and never did – that puts a whole new perspective on stuff. Paul Hedderman said something like “travelling lighter”. That’s what it feels like for me at the moment, seeing the self as an illusion allows travelling lighter over the terrain of life.

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

I’m a bit bone-headed and my mind likes to make things more complex than they really are. I had previously read sentences like “there’s no self” in books and online, however it had never really sunk in. I think through sheer repetition of stopping the mind going of on a wild tangent and coming back to “looking directly” helped a lot. It helps to have someone – a guide – to keep pointing back to simple looking.

Writing it all down helped big time, at least it did for me. It helped to lay-out, and clarify what I knew was true and false. I kept going back to this, reading it and re-clarifying. Then at some point it just clicked – the self isn’t real. There is no self-decision-maker. The decision was a thought – and who orchestrated the decision-making thought? No-one! The whole thing was a bit of an anti-climax, like figuring out a maths puzzle, that aha moment. I expected lights and special effects, but all I got was a tingly knee.

5) Describe decision, intention, free will, choice and control. What makes things happen? How does it work? What are you responsible for? Give examples from experience.

I spent ages writing stuff down for this, but it basically boiled down to this:

Circumstances arise naturally.
The body and mind react as sensation, thought and action.
Thought claims the sensation, thought and action as “I did…” “I chose…” “I decided…” etc.

Decision: A thought claims a self or “I” made a decision by implying “I made the decision to…”

Intention: Just a thought. There’s no director or controller of thought, they just come and go - likewise intention comes and goes under its own volition. Does someone or thing pick an intention? No. The sense of self is created by when action is preceded by an apparently “driving” intention – which is just a thought.

Free will: A thought that claims that “I” was free to do such and such. The “I” is a concept of thought, which means that there’s no real “I” to have free will. Not to say everything is predetermined. Instead, everything is unfolding naturally without the need for a self to control circumstances and outcomes. Free will is an assumption, and an illusion.

Choice: There’s no-self that chooses a choice, there is just spontaneous thought. Assume life presents two options. Apple or pear. Only one thought can arise at a time - Thought Apple or thought Pear, or thought “Applepear” (which isn’t a legitimate concept). So it’s one or the other – two thoughts cannot arise simultaneously. When thought Apple arises, the thought “I” claims to be the one that chose the apple.
There are possibilities, but choice between them on behalf of a free-agent isn’t real. There is the spontaneous arising of thought and action between these possibilities and the illusion of choice and a chooser by thoughts of “I chose such and such”.

Free will: There’s no-one behind the wheel. Who controls my breathing? Who controls what foot I place in front of the other? Who controls the thousands of itches, scratches, twitches, hand movements, blinking, etc that happen throughout the day? No-one: No-self. Thought that precedes action creates a sense of a doer, mixed with thoughts of an “I” that claim doer-ship, creates solid ground for the assumption – or a sense – that there’s a controlling “I” - until the assumption is challenged.

What makes things happen? Things happen, circumstances arise, and life unfolds naturally. It always has and always will, with or without “Andrew”. There’s no controller behind it all, at least not in my experience.

How does it work? I don’t know. It just works! It’s wonderful and humbling at the same time.

What are you responsible for? There’s no “you” to be responsible for anything. Responsibility and irresponsibility are concepts much the same as good and bad, or right and wrong. If I were to speculate, perhaps in the grand scheme of things “Andrew” is responsible to (but not necessarily obliged to) discover or understand who and what he truly is. Nothing, No-thing, Everything.

6) Anything to add?

I don't meditate, to be honest I find it boring. On the other hand, I found it helpful to find quiet places to sit and watch the world unfolding, a bit meditative like. It's possible to suspend thought, judgment and analysis by relaxing attention and just being. Just being awareness. Taking in the sights and sounds and sensations. It's not a state, it is what is always present before the thoughts limit experience, it is just overlooked. The phrase “I am” is accurate because it is what “I am” before a separate self is conjured into existence and layered over experience – awareness! I found it helpful to investigate from here.

[EmptySet00]

There are no further questions from other guides. You should get a PM soon about LU Facebook groups and other resources. It's been a pleasure to guide you.

[wigglyfish]

It's wonderful to see that what I have been searching for, for so long, has been staring me right in the face!

I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time out to guide me - and of course, having so much patience throughout the process. Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou!

Something tells me this is just the start :)