10 years of meditation & no insight

[ElliottM]

Doing a bunch of nothing and it's fine. Sometimes the mind is busy, sometimes super sleepy and drowsy. Sick and quite tired at the moment so thats not unexpected. Overall its surprisingly tolerable. Sometimes an urge to get up or check how long ive been here or plan the next activity or fantasize comes and that's briefly uncomfortable, but bored/restless dont really happen much unless theres thinking about "something else" going on.

the trend towards less reactivity to life also seems to be continuing. "less" is the running theme generally. less severe reactions that pass more quickly, fewer and shorter instances of worry and rumination thoughts, less "need to do" thoughts, less judgement about what i do or don't do, less judgement of the thoughts that do appear, less need for approval and reassurance, less concern for doing or knowing or attaining much of anything that isn't an immediate practical need. not doing anything of these things as effortful actions, they're just happening and being noticed as automatic more often

[ty0]

Sounds good keep me posted

[ElliottM]

Spending an hour or two doing nothing every day, some longer periods and short bursts here and there pausing and doing nothing where i'd usually kill a couple of minutes on my phone waiting for something. and it's fine, largely it's totally fine. always some resistance thoughts about starting it but the actual experience of not doing anything is quite bearable in practice. nothing happens and its ok that nothing happens

the thing i've been noticing most often recently is the automatic nature of things, thoughts and intentions and even the noticing. not doing anything with that just noticing and noticing that it's being noticed

[ty0]

Any doubts? Anything you need? Who are you? Pancakes or waffles?

[ElliottM]

Right now: no, no, no idea, pancakes. No doubts to speak of at this moment, i'm not doing anything in order to get something, not making predictions or attaching to outcomes, not fixating on the future so there's just no speculations to be in doubt about in the first place. Needs too, plenty of thoughts about "i want" something come and go sure but none of that rises to a need. I'm safe and warm and fed and though unpleasant feelings come and go there's really nothing about right now that is so intolerable i feel it has to change. If this is all there is, that's ok.

I don't know who i am, i've only got a list of things i'm not. i'm not any of the transient thoughts arising and passing, nor their creator or controller. not a setter of intentions or a doer of actions. not this ever changing body thats falling apart in slow motion. not a personal history constructed of memory images. none of these uncontrollable sensory perceptions. that doesn't leave much, only this vague sense of observation/witnessing that seems to somehow relate to all these individual sense phenomena in the same way, like it's a common point of reference or a "here" which defines everything else as "theres", but there's no identifiable source of this feeling to actually be found in direct experience

[ty0]

Yeah, pancakes are the shit. Keep looking at this sense of observing/witnessing. Try to get it under your thumb so you can really give it a long, hard look. Put a magnifying glass to it. Put a microscope to it. See if you can find out what it is. Go ahead and start doing inquiry or meditation again if you want, but only as a means to get a closer look at this sense of observing/witnessing. I'd be curious about this 1 thing if I were you, cause nothing else seems like what you are.

[ElliottM]

Can't find the observer sense in any particular place but not finding it hasn't seemed to open anything up yet. Continuing to notice automatic things happening a lot, most bodily tasks fall into this, noticing after the fact that it all the doing carried on just fine while i was thinking about nothing or something else entirely unrelated to what i was doing. have had a few periods of walking around looking out seeing just vision without the thought overlay of my face mingled into the visual field, feels i-less there briefly but that sorta just happened on its own. triggered initially by looking at my own hand and losing the borders of sight at the same time and the "mine"ness of the handed faded out for a sec then i could carry that around for a minute or two more, just seeing as the body moved around without thought narration

been spending some sitting time just sinking into quiet, tuning into silence. curious about "what is it that is aware" but haven't found anything yet. otherwise noticing thoughts when i notice them, feeling emotions as they happen. not sure what else i should be doing, if anything at all.

[ty0]

How ya been since the call?

[ElliottM]

not the greatest i'm afraid. after the call i was just chilling and enjoying that taste of open intimate awareness that was waving in an out and giving it the opportunity to stabilise and right after we hung up the doubt thoughts started to kick into high gear and i guess i must have bought in, tried to hold on and then it was already gone like it never was. had a lot of equanimity the rest of the night which was nice but an undercurrent of doubt started building whether i'd even actually seen anything at all or just imagined it. went to bed and had horrible nightmares, woke up yesterday feeling miserable. fear and shame and grief, feeling like ive fucked up and done something wrong or deluded myself just battered me all day, felt totally helpless. physically pretty awful too, like i was hung over almost. tried to remind myself that nothing at all had actually changed since the day before, i was safe and loved and nobody wants to harm me, tried to recall the feeling of there being nothing else and nowhere to go so nothign could actually have been lost but it just wouldn't stick. tried to feel into the sensations and observe the thoughts but it was just too much, couldn't detach just kept getting in my head about it, i couldnt handle it im sorry. rough day, figured id just have to ride it out and hope it looked better in the morning which it does to some extent. still feel scared and embarassed like i've failed in some undefined way and im in trouble but not as badly. some perspective returning now, still a bunch of emotion here that hasn't released but not feeling like crawling out of my skin and running and hiding from all this like i was before

[ty0]

enjoying that taste of open intimate awareness that was waving in an out

Don't give it a name. It wasn't even a thing. Don't make it a thing. There was nothing there resembling awareness. There was nothing then that wasn't DE or thought. There's nothing now that isn't DE or thought.

Don't detach. Don't tell yourself anything. Don't try to do anything. Who failed? Who's in trouble?

[ty0]

Good call. Since you don't have any more questions, here are the final questions. If you can quote each question and type your answers under them respectively all in 1 post, that'd be great. Here ya go :)

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

2) Describe how the illusion of an independent, self came into being by giving examples from actual experience.
Then give some experiential examples of how life changed for you after seeing through this illusion.

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) Can you remember any specific inquiry that resulted in an epiphany? ..a before and after seeing the actuality of the Self. Was there a point when you ‘got it’?

5) a) Describe decision, intention, free will, choice and control. What makes things happen? How does it work?
Give examples from your own recent experiences to how these things happen and how they work.

b) What are you responsible for? Give examples from your own recent experiences to how this works.

6) Anything to add?

[ElliottM]

Ok then!

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

There's no separate self anywhere, and there never was one in the first place, just a bunch of thoughts

2) Describe how the illusion of an independent, self came into being by giving examples from actual experience.
Then give some experiential examples of how life changed for you after seeing through this illusion.

It's a learned belief, taught from childhood by people around us. We were first taught by others that "you" exists as a separate entity in a world of other separate entities, pointing to a name, a face in the mirror, a story about who and what you are. and this is reinforced all the time socially by the people speaking and acting as though that is true and we assume that it must be so. From that assumption we continue to elaborate, telling thought stories about this supposed entity and adding new labels then believing those too and building ever more on top of them. the original base "i" assumption that the whole structure ultimately refers back to is just taken for granted and nobody challenges it, when you do you find there was actually nothing real there. Seeing that there's no real basis for it all is a relief. There's no thing that changed as such, life is just what it always was, but tons of effort and activity and thought can now be seen as totally unnecessary and just dropped. There's actually no need to put all that effort into crafting and sustaining and defending this story of "me", and how nice that is.

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.

It feels freer, easier, but also entirely ordinary and normal. no transcendent supernatural spiritual experience, it mostly just feels like maturity, to put it in a single word. actually being a grownup for maybe the first time ever. All the reaction and struggle and drama, the issues and the problems and the seeking solutions that seemed so meaningful and serious before look like childlike imaginings now, all of it was based on believing in things that were never real and reacting to them like they were. fretting about the monsters under the bed. more than a little bit funny in retrospect.

4) Can you remember any specific inquiry that resulted in an epiphany? ..a before and after seeing the actuality of the Self. Was there a point when you ‘got it’?

There was no exact moment i can pinpoint but the theme that led to finally releasing the whole complex of seeking behaviour was "where else?" - i'd look dozens, hundreds of times at present experience and find no self there, but keep looking like i would find another answer hiding around a corner somewhere. If it's not here in experience right now then where else are you expecting to find it? where else could it be? where else could it even be possible to look in the first place? what is there, other than exactly this? and at some point the compulsive thought that there just must be something else to find or understand stalled out, and the obvious answer was already there

5) a) Describe decision, intention, free will, choice and control. What makes things happen? How does it work?
Give examples from your own recent experiences to how these things happen and how they work.

Those are labels applied to thoughts, they have no inherent meaning. There is a thought arising and the content can be given the label of "deciding" but this is just a convention of language, there's no actual thing that is "a decision" and there's no decider, just thoughts happening on their own. Intentions, control, whatever it's all the same, just a flavour of thought that has been given an arbitrary label. It wasn't created or controlled by anyone, and isn't any different to any other thought that might arise. How does it work? How does gravity work? I don't know it just does. Things happen, that's what they do, as a matter of experience i don't know how and don't need to

b) What are you responsible for? Give examples from your own recent experiences to how this works.

Nothing, there's no me that could be responsible for anything, and no separate things that could be owned in any case

6) Anything to add?

nothing to add, nothing to take away, no problems to solve :)

[ty0]

Hm, so what is a thought? Are thoughts separate/different from the senses?

[ty0]

Here's a question from another guide:

...and at some point the compulsive thought that there just must be something else to find or understand stalled out, and the obvious answer was already there.

Could you say more about what you experienced when the compulsive thoughts stalled out, and the obvious answer was already there?

[ty0]

Another guide's question:

With this new realization/understanding has the way your everyday life unfold and how you relate to others changed?