The Gate

I’m just unsure what I’m supposed to be seeing yet

You are supposed to be seeing nothing.

If you knew that, you would not need guiding.

Just sit there in silence and not knowing.

Loving,

Got you, on it.

Hi Stacy,

I did the desk exercise again. Don’t know if I came up with anything new but thought I’d post it anyway.

3) Do you find an 'I', a body, a hand 'feeling' . . . or is there just 'a sensation'?

There is sensation, but there are stories and mental images about the sensation which blur the perception itself. It makes it difficult to experience the sensation on its own. With my eyes shut my mind creates an image of the hand in the desk and leads me to think of the sensation as 2 things- hand and desk.

Look very carefully. Where does ‘feeling’ end and Sensation begin? Can a dividing line between ‘feeling’ and sensation be found? Or is there just sensation?

There is sensation. Then there are sensations about the sensation- mental images, thoughts- ‘I am feeling’ etc.

Can a ‘feeler’ ever be found in 'what is being felt' – AE sensation?

Not one that I can find. Just sensation.

If that is all, and no INHERENT FEELER is found . . . would anything that is suggested as the feeler be other than a concept/idea/thought?

There’s nothing in addition to the sensation that is ‘feeling’ it, the feeler can only be found as the content of thought.

Thanks
Chris

Good morning
You're not looking for anything new it will pretty much always be the same.

Remember this is meditation not a quiz with right answers.

Keep practicing and looking and keep posting here.

I could give you a 100 more pointers but one is all you need.

Loving

👍

Morning Stacy

1) How many things do you find? Are there two things (hand and desk) or is there one thing – AE of sensation.

Just a vague cloud of sensation. The cloud is thicker in some areas but it is singular. I don’t feel a hand and then a desk, just a cloud.

2) Do you notice 'one thing feeling another thing'? Or is there just 'a sensation'?

No, just the cloud of sensation

3) Do you find an 'I', a body, a hand 'feeling' . . . or is there just 'a sensation'?

There’s nothing in addition to the sensation that is doing the feeling. Just the sensation itself

Look very carefully. Where does ‘feeling’ end and Sensation begin? Can a dividing line between ‘feeling’ and sensation be found? Or is there just sensation?

There is no dividing line. There is not a sensation then something else feeling the sensation. Feeling and sensation are one and the same.

Can a ‘feeler’ ever be found in 'what is being felt' – AE sensation?

No, there is just one phenomenon- sensation. If there were a feeler I should be able to find it but there’s nothing there.

If that is all, and no INHERENT FEELER is found . . . would anything that is suggested as the feeler be other than a concept/idea/thought?

I don’t see what else it could be

Thanks
Chris

[

color=#0000FF]concept/idea/thought?
[/color]
I don’t see what else it could be

Good. How does it FEEL (body Sensations) to see there's nothing there bit thought?



Loving,

Hi Stacy

Good. How does it FEEL (body Sensations) to see there's nothing there bit thought?

I feel tingling in my upper back. It’s fear, it’s still scary.

Chris

Okay.

There has always been no "self," Chris. It s not that different.

We're looking for ca shift in perception something like the truth feeling. Ilona wrote this:

From an email from Ilona

Nothing dramatic happened.

There were no fireworks.
No permanent bliss states.
No sudden personality changes.

And yet, something shifted.


Here are a few things people said afterwards:

“I’m not fighting my experience anymore. There’s more space around everything.”

“I expected something big to happen. Instead, life feels simpler and I trust myself more.”

“There’s less urgency. The seeking has softened.”


This is the kind of shift this work supports.

Ilona Cuinate

That's all. Nothing scary. Why don't you do the fear meditation again & write what comes up here

Loving,

Sure I’ll keep doing the meditation. Were you expecting a shift to happen? It happens when it happens right?

Chris

Hi again, I just did the meditation again. This time I realised the fear is of losing control. I know in principle that there has never been anyone in control. Shall I just keep reminding myself of that?

Chris

Yes. We are looking for a shift in perception.

"Enlightenment is an accident. Meditation makes us accident prone."

Sunryu Suzuki

We cannot predict it and we cannot make it happen. We can only practice the conditions in which it is more likely.

This frustrates the mind because it wants everything to be linear and logical and step-by-step, but this is not. It is non linear and unpredictable.


Thus you should see that
indeed there is no thing here;
this, Bahiya, is how you should train yourself.
Since, Bahiya, there is for you
in the seen, only the seen,
in the heard, only the heard,
in the sensed, only the sensed,
in the cognized, only the cognized,
and you see that there is no thing here,
you will therefore see that
indeed there is no thing there.
As you see that there is no thing there,
you will see that
you are therefore located neither in the world of this,
nor in the world of that,
nor in any place
betwixt the two.
This alone is the end of suffering.

Loving,

I understand that. What should I do about the fear of losing control?

Chris

Were you ever in control?

I feel an emptiness when I look for a thing that is deciding to turn the hand. I’m not quite sure what it’s usually filled with. I suppose the absence of a self is always there, I just don’t notice it. Just thought I’d share that.

There has never been a "self"to be in control. So what is there to be afraid of?



Drink Exercise

The aim of the following exercise is to discover whether the function of choice can really be found or confirmed in actual experience. The idea of making ‘choices‘ is a very clear example of a function that we wrongly identify as the basis of our identity.

Here's what’s needed - a chair, a table and two different drinks. Any two drinks you like are okay for this: coffee, tea, milk, water, juices, smoothies, beer, wine, etc.

Preparation - Place the two drinks side by side on the table in front of you, sit comfortably on the chair and mentally label them as drink A and drink B.

Experiment - Finding the function of choice

Sit for a few moments, take a few relaxed breaths and let the dust settle. When you feel ready:

1. Look at drink A and at drink B. Think about their respective qualities, the things you like about them, compare and weigh the pros and cons of each. See if a preference is manifesting for one or the other.

2. Count to 5.

3. Choose one of the drinks. Pick it up and take a sip.

Questions:

Remember that we’re looking for some kind of function, a something, an ‘I’ which is doing the ‘choosing’.

In step 1 when thinking about their respective qualities, did you ‘choose’ the qualities? Or did they kind of appear by themselves? If some preferences manifested, did you ‘choose’ these preferences? Or did they just pop up by themselves?

In step 2 when you counted to 5, if the preferences took the back seat while the numbers took the front seat, did you ‘choose’ this sequence of event? Did you ‘choose’ to shut down the preferences to give way to the counting?

Did you directly experience a mental function or faculty doing the ‘choosing’? Have you seen this function in action?

In step 3 where you made a choice, did you actually witness or directly experience a mental function or faculty doing the ‘choosing’? Did anything arise that announced, ‘I am the chooser’? If so, what does this function look like?

Sometimes we describe this sense of choosing as a ‘feeling’: It feels like ‘I’ did the 'choosing’. But the question is, can a feeling ‘choose’? Is it in the nature of a feeling to 'choose’?


Loving

In step 1 when thinking about their respective qualities, did you ‘choose’ the qualities? Or did they kind of appear by themselves? If some preferences manifested, did you ‘choose’ these preferences? Or did they just pop up by themselves?

They popped up by themselves. There wasn’t choosing process of the many possibilities of preferences in my head. They just appeared.

In step 2 when you counted to 5, if the preferences took the back seat while the numbers took the front seat, did you ‘choose’ this sequence of event? Did you ‘choose’ to shut down the preferences to give way to the counting?

I didn’t notice any choosing of the sequence of events

Did you directly experience a mental function or faculty doing the ‘choosing’? Have you seen this function in action?

A thought popped up- I definitely want the milk more- but I didn’t choose the preference or the thought

In step 3 where you made a choice, did you actually witness or directly experience a mental function or faculty doing the ‘choosing’? Did anything arise that announced, ‘I am the chooser’? If so, what does this function look like?

I saw no such function

Sometimes we describe this sense of choosing as a ‘feeling’: It feels like ‘I’ did the 'choosing’. But the question is, can a feeling ‘choose’? Is it in the nature of a feeling to 'choose’?

Other than the thought ’I want the milk’ there was nothing to indicate any choice being made. It all just happened on its own, including the thought

Thanks
Chris