The Gate

Hi Ken

You're doing a really great job so far, and you're remaining well focussed on direct experience.

I hope your family emergency is resolving positively.

It has resolved positively, thank you for caring :)

Suffering is felt only when experience is referenced to an "I". Without an "I" there is no suffering. just experience as it is.
"I" exists in and as a thought. When looked for, it is not found. Actually,"I" seems more like an illusion than a thought, in that it feels like it exists, but really doesn't. Suffering disappears when the "I" is seen through.
The timing of this topic (suffering) is pertinent, as suffering has been present.

Do you see that even the process of "looking" is not being done by anybody?

Yes. Good point. Sometimes I think the looker is I.

Suffering is showing up, and thoughts about "looking" are showing up, and looking for the "sufferer" is happening, and the lack of an "I"/"sufferer" is being noticed, and the suffering is disappearing.

This is not some magic trick that a somebody is doing. Experience is just being seen for what it truly is - without the veil that thought throws over it.

Do you see that even if the "looking" didn't happen, there was never someone suffering?
I would say suffering happened, but it didn't happen to or for or from somebody.
Can you see that the suffering was NEVER there - even if the "looking" didn't happen?
This is confusing to me. It's true, that when the sufferer was looked for the suffering disappeared. It seemed that suffering was present before it was seen (through)
Can you see that the suffering was only ever in thought, and about an imagined thought-centre?
Yes, the thought-center is imagined. Does love also exist only in thought? I can feel it, but I can't find it.

Finally, dis you have any choice about "looking" at the suffering? :)[

/quote]

Sometimes the looking happens by itself. Sometimes it seems that the looking is intended.

Hi Ken

This is indeed a quick reply. My immediate reaction to the last couple of exchanges is frustration, annoyance, and even boredom. The topic of free will was interesting at the beginning, seems tedious now. I thought I was in a good mood...maybe I'm not. I'll revisit this later, though I don't really even want to.

Frustration, annoyance, and boredom are in the domain of thought only. I suggest that you take a very close look at the direct experience of "frustration", "annoyance", and "boredom", and see whether they exist anywhere but in thought.

I saved answering this one for the last, because it's the most difficult. The experiences mentioned above are reactions to direct experiences. It seems there are very few of the latter.

We were addressing the topic of free will because you asked about it, and because it's a very important one. You asked the question "Can choices be made without anybody making them?"

Yes, you're right.
Instead of answering the question, I got you to go through the process that we've just been through, so that you could see FOR YOURSELF that there is no such thing as "choice".

There is just whatever happens.

I asked you two questions in my previous post. Please answer them if you revisit this later. Or if you would prefer a different guide, please let me know, and I'll find one to take over your thread.

No, but thanks for the offer.
I made 3 posts.

Hi Ken

Suffering is felt only when experience is referenced to an "I". Without an "I" there is no suffering. just experience as it is.
"I" exists in and as a thought. When looked for, it is not found. Actually,"I" seems more like an illusion than a thought, in that it feels like it exists, but really doesn't. Suffering disappears when the "I" is seen through.
The timing of this topic (suffering) is pertinent, as suffering has been present.

Do you see that even the process of "looking" is not being done by anybody?

Yes. Good point. Sometimes I think the looker is I.

Yes, but the thought that the looker is "I" is obviously not true because you have already discovered through direct experiential evidence that there is no "I' to do the looking. Can you see that?

Do you see that even if the "looking" didn't happen, there was never someone suffering?

I would say suffering happened, but it didn't happen to or for or from somebody.

Right!!

So suffering sometimes seems to show up in this, but it's not happening to anybody.

Are you completely clear about this?

Can you see that the suffering was NEVER there - even if the "looking" didn't happen?

This is confusing to me. It's true, that when the sufferer was looked for the suffering disappeared. It seemed that suffering was present before it was seen (through).

Yes, it only "SEEMED" that suffering was present. This is because there was the idea that there was something that could suffer, but as soon as the idea was looked at, it was seen that there was nobody to suffer, so it SEEMED like the ILLUSORY suffering vanished - but it didn't vanish because it was never there except in thought.

If something SEEMS to be there, but when it is looked for it is not found, obviously was never really there. It's like thinking that a rope is a snake but when you look closely you see that it is just a rope - obviously it was NEVER a snake in the first place.

Can you see what I am saying?

Can you see that the suffering was only ever in thought, and about an imagined thought-centre?

Yes, the thought-center is imagined. Does love also exist only in thought? I can feel it, but I can't find it.

This is a good question, and it all depends on what you define as love. True love is unconditional. It doesn't refer to any "I".

Love is the opposite of "I" thoughts. There is no "I" in loving. There is nobody doing the loving, there is only loving and beloved.

Take a look at the direct experience of true love and you will find that feelings of love are never about an "I". Love is what shows up when the "I" isn't there.

However, much of the time, what people call "love" is based more on a sort of dependence, or having a need fulfilled. This sort of "love" can have a LOT of the "I" in it.

The love of a parent for their child is a good example of unconditional love.

There is a difference between a feeling, and thoughts about a feeling. Love can show up, and joy can show up, and pain can show up, and sadness can show up - but none of it has an "I" in it.

Pain and sadness are not suffering. Suffering only happens when the pain and sadness are referred to an "I". Pain is inevitable but the suffering of pain is not.

In fact, even when joy is referred to an "I" it can become suffering. As soon as joy is believed to belong to someone immediately thoughts spring up about maintaining that joy for the someone, and the joy disappears. Take a look at this next time joy shows up.

Finally, did you have any choice about "looking" at the suffering? :)

Sometimes the looking happens by itself. Sometimes it seems that the looking is intended.

But Ken, if you read through our past eight exchanges you will see that you've already discovered that there is NEVER a choice about anything, and there is no thinker of thoughts, so there can be no intender that could have any intention.

Can you see that what seems like intention is just stuff showing up with no intention?

Sometimes it seems like there is the intention to do something, but ONLY thought says that. Take a look at the direct experiential evidence of what seems like intention and you will discover that a thought pops up which says "I intend to do this", and then doing happens, and another thought says "That was intention happening".

But what decided to think the thought "I intend to do this"? Is there a thinker that could think "I intend to do this"?

HI John.
There us much frustration. Everyone of your questions was answered, and when submission was attempted, a message like "only 3 quotes/messages or whatevers can be embedded". Attempts were made over and over. Copying and pasting the whole response was attempted, unsuccessfully. So in summary: all your expressions were read, understood, and responded to in the affirmative.
Do you know the meaning of the message about being embedded means? This has happened before. Annoyance is present.

Hi Ken

HI John.
There us much frustration. Everyone of your questions was answered, and when submission was attempted, a message like "only 3 quotes/messages or whatevers can be embedded". Attempts were made over and over. Copying and pasting the whole response was attempted, unsuccessfully. So in summary: all your expressions were read, understood, and responded to in the affirmative.
Do you know the meaning of the message about being embedded means? This has happened before. Annoyance is present.

Yes I do understand what causes that problem. I had the problem for the first time yesterday. From here on I am going to use the word qooot instead of quote when I use the square brackets - like this [qooot] - so that the program doesn't actually do the quote function, but if you replace the word qooot with the word quote, in my example below, you will see how the quote function works.

Each quote is started with [qooot] and ended with [/qooot]

The problem happens when you have too many opening quotes without any closing quotes. So if you have more than three [qooot] functions without a [/qooot] function between them then you have more than three quotes embedded.

The best way to use the function is to press the "quote" button instead of the reply button when you want to reply, and then to just be careful where you put the [qooot] functions and the [/qooot] functions.

Also, it's important to press "preview" instead of "submit" the first time you enter your reply, so that you can preview how your message will come out before you actually submit it.

So here is an example if I wanted to take something that you said and quote it I would go:

[qooot] This has happened before. Annoyance is present. [/qooot]

And if you used the word quote instead of qooot in the square brackets above it would appear like this:

This has happened before. Annoyance is present.

And if I wanted to specify you as the one that I was quoting I would type:

[qooot='kdvoren"] This has happened before. Annoyance is present. [/qooot] This has happened before. Annoyance is present. [/qooot]

And if you used the word quote instead of qooot in the square brackets above it would appear like this:

This has happened before. Annoyance is present.

And if I wanted to "embed" quotes I could type this:

[qooot="Empty Mirror"][qooot="kdvoren"] This has happened before. Annoyance is present. [/qooot]
Does the annoyance belong to anybody? [/qooot]

Note how I closed the quotes off after each quote with a [/qooot]

And if you used the word quote instead of qooot in the square brackets above it would appear like this:

This has happened before. Annoyance is present.

Does the annoyance belong to anybody?

If you've made any mistakes in your quoting function, they will become apparent when you do the "preview".

Ok, You've sort of answered my previous questions and read, understood, and responded in the affirmative so then you are agreeing that there is no such thing as choice or intention, there is nobody that suffers, and that suffering is an illusion.

So let's go back to your expectations and see where we are so far. Please tell me what it is that you feel is missing, or needs fixing? What is there that stands between you and freedom?

Thanks for the tutorial.
Am still considering your last question, and will respond.

Hi John.
If it's alright with you, I'd like to take some time to see what, if anything, is missing.
Ken

Hi John.
If it's alright with you, I'd like to take some time to see what, if anything, is missing.
Ken

Sure Ken. But during that time please take a re-read of the entire thread.

You're standing at the threshold of freedom and peace at the moment. All it will take is a to TRUST your own direct experience. Let go of all beliefs, and all pre-conceptions, and allow "Ken" to be absent from the enquiry.

Don't give up on yourself.

I will take your advice.

I re-read the entire thread. Wow. There's a lot there. Thanks for your considerable contribution and participation.

Whenever attention is paid to direct experience, there is never any doubt about truth. But old habits continue without proper interruption. Perhaps what's missing is the frequency of the focus on direct experience, and that without awareness, old habits of thinking continue.

A recent experience is that presence or awareness is naturally arising and occurring with greater frequency. It is happening without thought or intention or effort. It's just here. It just shows up. There's nothing to be done with or about it. This inquiry has helped in that there is no fear about a self being absent in this space. Nobody's there. Nobody's here.

Hi Ken

I've taken a while to get back to you because you are "seeing' but don't seem to be "stunned" by what you're seeing, so I asked a couple of other guides for their advice.

I'm going to paste verbatim what one of them said to me here:

"Whenever attention is paid to direct experience, there is never any doubt about truth. But old habits continue without proper interruption. Perhaps what's missing is the frequency of the focus on direct experience, and that without awareness, old habits of thinking continue."


It seems like he is still ithinks of this as a 'process'... as a TIME-based 'clearing' so to speak... you need to push him to the edge.

You gotta ask him, that regardless of paying attention to Direct Experience, or not, regardless of whether there is old habits, or not... is there EVER a self? Can there EVER be? Will there EVER be? He needs to be sure.


You said: "A recent experience is that presence or awareness is naturally arising and occurring with greater frequency. It is happening without thought or intention or effort. It's just here. It just shows up. There's nothing to be done with or about it. This inquiry has helped in that there is no fear about a self being absent in this space. Nobody's there. Nobody's here."


He said: Tell him to get back to you with 100% certainty... tell him to confirm himself that there is NO self, doer, controller... and that there NEVER was... and there NEVER will be.


He has to be pushed to look at this with certainty, and get out of any oscillation. This should trigger the Awakening insight, if it has not already occurred.

In essence, I just get a lack of confidence in seeing no-self.

As you can see, it's also clear to him that you're standing on the fence and oscillating between trusting direct experiential evidence and believing thoughts.

Do you see that you never have to BELIEVE direct experiential evidence?

It is always directly experienced, so there is nothing that has to be believed.

I re-read the entire thread. Wow. There's a lot there. Thanks for your considerable contribution and participation.

It's my plesure Ken. You're doing really great. You're sticking to the enquiry and having some great insights. Like I said, its clear to me that you're already standing at the threshold of freedom, and looking at freedom in disbelief :-)

Whenever attention is paid to direct experience, there is never any doubt about truth. But old habits continue without proper interruption.

This is natural. Life has built up patterns of conditioned thoughts and behaviours, but there was never an "I" that had those conditioned thoughts and behaviours.

Even if the conditioned thoughts and behaviours NEVER change, do they ever belong to a someone or a something? Can they ever bother this "universe" in which they appear?

Perhaps what's missing is the frequency of the focus on direct experience, and that without awareness, old habits of thinking continue.

The frequency is not under anybody's control. Conditioned thinking habits show up, and then there is the thought: "This should be checked with direct experience". You were not the thinker of ANY of those thoughts.

[/quote]A recent experience is that presence or awareness is naturally arising and occurring with greater frequency. It is happening without thought or intention or effort. It's just here. It just shows up. There's nothing to be done with or about it. This inquiry has helped in that there is no fear about a self being absent in this space. Nobody's there. Nobody's here.[/quote]

This is an excellent observation. Do you see that this "space" has always been "open", and free, even when it was filled with thoughts and beliefs about an "I"?

Hi John. Thanks for your feedback, and for enlisting the feedback of others.
I'm going to digest this, as well as some turkey tomorrow, (it's Thanksgiving here in the U.S.) and will respond after the weekend (I'll be away).
Thanks
Ken

Happy thanksgiving Ken :)

Thanks for the nudge John.

There’s a lot to say. I’m going to respond in pieces, with a post each couple or few days. I’ll let you know when I’m done. I’ll start with an update.

After a couple of days of awareness spontaneously making itself known, which was gratifying and pleasurable, I started having intense anxiety attacks in the middle of the night, related to fears about not sleeping. Insane thoughts would burrow themselves into the brain, and it indeed felt as if I were being attacked.by anxiety. Thoughts like: there is no suffering without a sufferer…were of no use. There was an instinctual fearful reaction to the fear, which accentuated it, and sent me into a tailspin. It was a nightmare, and as I approached sleep-time each night, the fears were re-stimulated. This was not fun.

I don’t know if I’ve shared this with you, but each time it feels like I’m getting somewhere, in my life, in my process, in my spiritual development, there appears what feels like a force that sets me back, as if there were something that was deliberately blocking the light. Discouragement and more fear arise. I’m aware that one piece of feedback claimed that this is not a process, and we can address that later, or now if you want. A new tactic has been to welcome this “adversary”, which has actually been empowering. It seemed like the negative energy was neutralized, and all that remained was powerful energy. I don’t know if you believe in entitites…don’t even know if I do.
One explanation is that the imagined thought-center gets threatened, and brings out the heavy artillery when its predominance is confronted.

Another thing worth sharing is that the spiritual practice that seems most natural to me is to bring easy attention to the space that is naturally present between thought streams. This space then widens and occurs with greater frequency. I don’t know if this practice is compatible or an interference in the work we are doing together, but I thought it important enough to mention it.

That’s it for now. In future posts, I will respond to your feedback and questions. I appreciate the feedback you enlisted from other guides.

Hi Ken

There’s a lot to say. I’m going to respond in pieces, with a post each couple or few days. I’ll let you know when I’m done. I’ll start with an update.

After a couple of days of awareness spontaneously making itself known, which was gratifying and pleasurable, I started having intense anxiety attacks in the middle of the night, related to fears about not sleeping. Insane thoughts would burrow themselves into the brain, and it indeed felt as if I were being attacked.by anxiety. Thoughts like: there is no suffering without a sufferer…were of no use. There was an instinctual fearful reaction to the fear, which accentuated it, and sent me into a tailspin. It was a nightmare, and as I approached sleep-time each night, the fears were re-stimulated. This was not fun.

This is great feedback Ken. It's good to recognise the fear, and it's quite normal for this to happen. Many people report it. The fear is usually a fear of the idea that everything will become "meaningless", but the fear is irrational because what we are talking about is something that has ALWAYS been like this. So realizing that there is not only no I, but there is NOBODY here, can not change anything about the feelings or experiences that show up.

All that happens is that they are seen in a "new light", or from a different perspective. You already see that perspective, but at the same time you're believing that there is something separate in this that is experiencing things.

There is nothing separate in this that is experiencing anything. This ("universe") is experiencing itself, and you alone are this.

There can also be a fear of this total aloneness, but again that fear is irrational because this (that you are) has ALWAYS been totally alone. But it shows up as a "universe" filled with "others", and can love itself, dance with itself, laugh with itself, and even surprise itself. It shows up as thoughts, emotions, a first-person perspective, sensations, others, planets, and an infinite number of things, and it is aware of itself.

You alone are this that is aware of itself, and Ken and I are just stuff showing up in you. Check this with direct experiential evidence.

I don’t know if you believe in entitites…don’t even know if I do.

No I don't believe in entities. I have no beliefs.

Everything that exists is open to your inspection. If you can find no entities in direct experiential evidence then obviously they exist only in thought.

One explanation is that the imagined thought-center gets threatened, and brings out the heavy artillery when its predominance is confronted.

Yes, you've hit the nail on the head :)

But its centre has already vanished. You'll find that it has no ability to rebuild. Once its emptiness has been seen, you'll find that the experience of "awareness spontaneously making itself known" will happen more and more. The I has no place in this.

The only thing that I would caution you on is in thinking that "awareness" exists as something separate from "this". "Awareness" is the self-awareness that "this" has of itself. "This" and its awareness of itself are utterly indivisible - in the same way that you can never separate a thought from the awareness of it.

Another thing worth sharing is that the spiritual practice that seems most natural to me is to bring easy attention to the space that is naturally present between thought streams. This space then widens and occurs with greater frequency. I don’t know if this practice is compatible or an interference in the work we are doing together, but I thought it important enough to mention it.

I can see no harm in any of that, but it's important to realise that even when the decision to watch the space between thoughts happens, you never had anything to do with that decision. You are this in which decisions and thinking show up - amongst the rest of the universe that shows up :)

That’s it for now. In future posts, I will respond to your feedback and questions. I appreciate the feedback you enlisted from other guides.

Great. Thanks for the update. I haven't asked you any questions because I'll ask you questions when you've completed your reply.