New contact introduction

[JonathanR]

Liz,

I'm sorry, I must have posted just as you did and you beat me to it so I didn't see your entry before I submitted mine.

There is still pain - is anyone 'doing' the pain? I don't see anyone - I see expectations there - wanting not to suffer.

Desire to not suffer and expectation that suffering will be completely overcome are not the same thing, are they? Some people do have the expectation that The Gate will somehow mean the immediate and complete cessation of suffering. This is unrealistic, though seeing through identification with a 'self' that 'suffers' certainly has the potential to help.

In the story of 'Liz's life' all sorts of things will continue to arise as they always have done (or at least this will be the appearance). Sometimes resistance may arise (resistance to pain, for example). Will there be a seperate 'Liz' who imagines that 'she resists pain' or will there be simple, non-dual witnessing of the 'resistance'? Has there ever been a 'self' that had control or could resist, let go, or avoid pain? If one can, it may help to look directly at pain.


Best wishes,

Jonathan.

[JonathanR]

Hi Liz,

It may look as though I just posted once, in reply to your message last evening. But if you go back to page 4 you'll find I posted twice. The first time was the longer, containing quite afew questions.


Jonathan.

[lizinprocess]

Hi Jonathan

After reading your questions I wanted to leave a space to just be with them - watch the expectations arise too. Your post talking about pain and suffering was helpful.

Here goes:

Q1 With 'you' revealed as a thought story, what remains?

"My" story is just that - a thought story with accompanying emotional associations that are triggered from the stories. There are no ultimate truths in the Liz story. Re-running stories reaffirms ideas about a fixed separate self - the stories woven from thoughts that change constantly depending on other conditions that are also rising and falling. What remains are patterns re-running, recognition of old pains and sadnesses that pass through the body, clarity about what is real and what a fabrication.

Q2 What experiences? What thinks? What does?

I don't know! Really I don't...it seems to just happen. There isn't a solid separate 'thing' that does the experiencing or doing. The word 'flow' is used in LU and that seems to be the best description. There is the brain and the body that makes spacial and intellectual decisions, and the sense from the heart centre of inter-connectedness.

Q3 What is aware?

There feels to be an awareness, presence or consciousness but nothing fixed. There is a sense of expansiveness but I hesitate to develop this theme. There is awareness of 'events' situations which jar the flow and situations/events that connect and flow. But no thing/self is aware and separate from everything else.

Q4 Have you been able to find, a ‘self’ that is the ‘experiencer’?

No I can't find a separate self as experiencer. This would have to be a separate fixed entity and that doesn't exist. Phenomena are arising constantly and that includes experience. Patterned behaviour arises but then I see that this is patterned behaviour.

Q5 Or a self that is the doer, or can control what happens?
Or a self that ‘makes’ decisions?
Or a self who ‘does the thinking’?

This is very subtle! Life is a constant flow and I am not controlling it. This has been a revelation to me as my patterns reflect believing I need to make effort, to keep trying, to plan to ensure best conditions, etc, etc.
Struggle, struggle born of fears. When I ask what is the fear it is always about loss of sense of self. A challenge to self hood - this is delusion. But this insight feels fragile - as though I could lose it. Though when turning towards a fear recently - it dissolved.
As for thinking - it flows on, thoughts link with other thoughts, repetitive stories, planning - it slows when conditions enable peaceful states, it speeds up when in busier situations, but on it goes. There is not a self that does the thinking.



Q6 Is the "body" just another thought label for sensations (namely tactile & kinesthetic)?

Is this a leading question?? This body has it's own patterns of responses, areas which hold tension and pain, areas that mirror thought patterns with sensations. It senses the environment, digests, eliminates, expands and contracts. It is aging and changing like everything else. I do find myself clinging and emotional reactions arise in relation to how my body is. But the body is a label for endlessly changing processes. There is no one thing that is 'body'.

Q7 Are the five body senses made to arise or experienced by this ‘self’?

A self cannot control the 5 bodily senses. The senses are constantly receiving stimulation and the experience is felt in the body. I can look and contemplate a changing sky but cannot control/make the received experience.
There is something here about making time/being awake/conscious which opens to experience - but no doer.

Q8 Is there a self ‘in here’ which is separate from the world and others ‘out there’?

I can write a belief, an intellectual understanding that sees this as absolutely untrue. But I still can sense separateness - difference between myself and others. This is personal historical, personality traits, likes/dislikes, skills/non-skills, cultural differences. But we all breathe, experience a body, we are all in change, experience thoughts passing through the mind, we experience the same delusions of having a self and rub up against each others beliefs about self - and so experience suffering.
I experienced this week someone trying to be competitive with me. A common reaction from me would be irritation and disappointment but I saw what was happening - saw and felt her fear and the root fear in my reaction - and it passed. So no there is no difference - a sense of loving kindness arises.

Q9 Is there doubt or unclarity that in all these cases the ‘self’ is nothing other than a mental fabrication?

Intellectually I have understood this - caused wonderings about rebirth. What an earth is reborn as the idea of self is always being recreated by thought. But I do 'feel' it now and see it happening and oh, a longing for liberation from this.
Slight anxiety about losing any insight I may have.....feel I have seen through something but could lose it.

So appreciate your kind attention and clarity Jonathan.
Love Liz

[JonathanR]

You are very welcome Liz.


About your answers, I have a few more questions: We won't move on to the six I mentioned just yet.

The senses are constantly receiving stimulation and the experience is felt in the body

'Felt in' the body, exactly? or 'via' the body? An airplane high up is heard. Is that 'felt in the body'?

In other words, 'where' does the body 'end'?

Q6

I do find myself clinging.

Would you say that this is noticed and recognised as a thought-feeling 'I cling'. Is there an 'I' that 'clings'?

Q7

I can look and contemplate a changing sky but cannot control/make the received experience.

OK, 'you' cannot control the sky but is there an 'I' that 'receives experience'?

In thought there is the idea 'I receive experience'? But what about the 'glued-together' quality of DE? How can 'experience' be 'experienced'?

Is there an 'experiencer'?

Is the 'seeing' of what IS achieved by thought?

Q8

But we all experience thoughts passing through the mind.

What mind? Can you find one in DE?

Convention has it that there is 'mind' but where is it? Wouldn't thoughts appear and disappear anyway, even if the thought 'mind' was not one of them?

I experienced this week someone trying to be competitive with me. A common reaction from me would be irritation and disappointment but I saw what was happening - saw and felt her fear and the root fear in my reaction - and it passed. So no there is no difference - a sense of loving kindness arises.

Lovely.

Q9

But I do 'feel' it now and see it happening and oh, a longing for liberation from this.

The longing for liberation. Look at this. Whilst longing and seeking persist these can indicate unresolved expectations. It is possible to 'seek it afar' rather than 'seeing it near'. It is possible to imagine that there should be some sort of 'firework display'. You have talked of the subtlety and of fear of losing what you have 'seen'. These are not uncommon thoughts. It is also quite possible to underestimate this realisation because it can seem that 'nothing has changed'. But is there any doubt that you 'see'?

Love,

Jonathan.

[lizinprocess]

Oh dear - having doubts at the moment - this is going on along time isn't it and I wonder if there is any progress.
Doubts are about the use of words and my use of words - whether they are reflecting the truth or a version of truth.... am I persuading myself about the non-existence of self?


Quote:
'Felt in' the body, exactly? or 'via' the body? An airplane high up is heard. Is that 'felt in the body'?
In other words, 'where' does the body 'end'?

There are alot of jet planes around where I live and they are felt in the body, heard, the air vibrates, the body a receptor with thoughts that arise in response to this experience colouring emotions that arise. I can feel anger at the aggressive noise sometimes, and other times just waiting for it to pass. I don't know where my body ends.

My Quote: I do find myself clinging.
Your quote: Would you say that this is noticed and recognised as a thought-feeling 'I cling'. Is there an 'I' that 'clings'?

The clinging sensation that arises is connected to thoughts/fears, and when investigated it changes.


Quote: In thought there is the idea 'I receive experience'? But what about the 'glued-together' quality of DE? How can 'experience' be 'experienced'?
Is there an 'experiencer'?
Is the 'seeing' of what IS achieved by thought?

I don't know what to say about this - it feels complicated and academic.
Thought separates, contracts - I experience that. The separation comes and goes. I do see the glued together quality of DE but it isn't experienced constantly. There seem to be levels there - I feel non-separation, then observe thoughts that have arisen, sensations, emotions, cycles, and change. This isn't fixed but would you say there is an experiencer?


quote:
What mind? Can you find one in DE?
Convention has it that there is 'mind' but where is it? Wouldn't thoughts appear and disappear anyway, even if the thought 'mind' was not one of them?

I slipped into dharma - the mind seen as one of the senses. No there is no separate mind that can be pointed to.

Quote: The longing for liberation. Look at this

Yes - seeking it from afar! I do long for freedom and seek to be liberated from habitual patterns. Accepting that all doesn't happen in a flash and I transform into something white and floaty-like .....isn't easy but I see much has to fall away. I did meditate for many years with the expectation that, with sufficient effort, I would 'break through'. I would say my practice until recently included applying positive mental states to whatever arises. But there was the expectation of fruition. Now I just be with whatever arises - and that includes expectations. 'Working' with LU has transformed my meditation.

I do want to be completely certain and honest. But don't know how to interpret sometimes your questions. Doubt about whether my 'seeing' is cutting through delusion of self.

Just holding all this and will post tomorrow.
Liz

[JonathanR]

Hi Liz,

Oh dear - having doubts at the moment - this is going on along time isn't it and I wonder if there is any progress.
Doubts are about the use of words and my use of words - whether they are reflecting the truth or a version of truth.... am I persuading myself about the non-existence of self.

Please do not feel under any pressure or constraints in terms of time. These things take as long as they do. I apologise if I have pushed you rather hard with such a succession of questions? Yes, the choice of words, semantics, can create confusion, for example, we know it is perfectly possible to use the word 'I' in completely different senses. For this reason I have probably repeated questions rather a lot.

In that you have consistently confirmed finding no self, for the sake of clarity, it would be helpful to us both now if you could be very particular about the use of 'I' in your answers? This could help to prevent repeated requests for clarification about the sense in which you mean 'I'. Does this make sense? Guides must be sure that there is no remaining unexamined belief in a seperate 'self'.

]Is the 'seeing' of what IS achieved by thought?

This may seem academic but is not. It's a significant question. What is it that 'sees' non-duality....is it thought that does this? Do answer.

Many of your answers are really excellent.
I love what you say about the change to your meditation. Do you find that you can now just 'sit' or 'reside' without the compulsion to be making meditation happen?


Best wishes,

Jonathan

[lizinprocess]

Hi Jonathan

[quote="JonathanR"]Please do not feel under any pressure or constraints in terms of time. These things take as long as they do.

Recognising that thoughts have been arising - beliefs in a self that 'is unable' to 'do' this - fixing, fixing a fictional self. Old beliefs, old stories. Accepting it is what it is. I will miss this when it ends - appreciating the clarity and direct pointing to any delusion about an existing self.

Quote: for the sake of clarity, it would be helpful to us both now if you could be very particular about the use of 'I' in your answers?

Yes, thank you for bringing this up as I have been wondering about this. The 'I' here - the interpretive, analytical function which is brought to your questions and which, along with intuition and opening sensitivity, 'feels' into what is true rather than reasserting beliefs and habitual response which are linked to attachment to a 'self'.

Quote: Is the 'seeing' of what IS achieved by thought?

This morning it rained - a soft, steady falling. I sat and simply was with this raining - feeling the wateriness there with it in my body. There was no separation between the body and the rain, birds sang and I felt them with the rain, voices arose and fell in the street - all was together, no witness, no thoughts achieved this. Aware of occasional thoughts there but quiet, non-intrusive. Just sitting non-doing with what was - the body resting on the cushions, breath rising and falling, sense of no boundaries, of interconnectedness of all things.
This could not be achieved by thought - there was no experiencer.

Love Liz

[lizinprocess]

Just re-read my previous post and thought - umm there will be questions about the 'analytical function. So what is happening here? When a question probes? There is an acceptance of the question and an opening out to what could be revealed. Maybe not a function then - that suggests something fixed and solid - that doesn't feel 'right' or true. Sensing truth has an opening feel to it, a revealing, not a closing in. 'I' - a wider sense rather than an ego based sense - have found that leaving a problem for a few hours/a day can resolve the problem - insight into solutions can arise, poems can emerge, clarity arises- so analysis isn't it! Letting go and opening is...

Liz

[JonathanR]

Hello Liz,

Thanks for your posts. Spot on.

Do not worry too much about our conversation ending because there is a whole community of 'no-selfers' beyond this as well as 'aftercare' forums on Facebook and also the possibility of continuing to investigate 'no self' with a guide.

I'm going to ask you to answer six questions that always form the culmination of guidings. Let's see how you get on with these. At some stage I'll pass these answers to the other guides, who will take a look and possibly ask further helpful questions. Answer these one at a time and from DE rather than from much conceptualisation.

Here are the first three:

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

2) Explain in detail what the illusion of separate self is, when it starts and how it works from your own experience. Describe it fully as you seeit now
.
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.


Love,

Jonathan.

[lizinprocess]

Hi Jonathan

The questions - yes, feel the possibility of conceptualisation, and (subconsciously) regurgitating phrases from others responses read from LU blogs. My responses have to come from DE to be real - so just sitting here at the computer and opening out to DE....and feeling a way with this....

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

The idea of a separate entity is born from cultural messages, fears, patterned behaviours, continual thought processes that seek out confirmation of an idea of self. The idea of self separates and alienates from life living and flowing - it is a fabrication that is continually reinforced but it doesn't exist, has never existed. Investigations show constantly changing phenomena both within the physical body, thought patterns, sensations, relationships with external phenomena - all in constant incredible flowing creative interaction. No - the idea of something being separate from this isn't possible.

2) Explain in detail what the illusion of separate self is, when it starts and how it works from your own experience. Describe it fully as you seeit now

Babies have no concept of a separate self - they have no language to generate thoughts that say 'I am this/not that'. They respond with the flow of life, physical sensations, sensations of pleasure/pain. They reach out to connect. As they get older they absorb messages that tell them that they have a separate self which is like 'this/not like that', the idea of separateness of 'I' and 'You" 'this' and 'that'. So awareness narrows - effecting a sense of interconnectedness. Familial roles, concepts of ability, repetitive behaviours are absorbed into an idea of a fixed separate self - the illusion is created. Concepts drawn from family/community reinforce a sense of 'I am this/I am not this' - experience is lived searching out reaffirmations or, alternatively, rejection of these ideas. Either way a setting of a solid concept of a self becomes created. Friendships, chosen words/language, lifestyle, thoughts - all have reinforcing effects of this idea of a self, and this can feel comforting, boundaries are set with the idea of protection - producing temporary feelings of security. But of course, as everything is in flow/constant change - this is based on a delusion, these boundaries and ideas are constantly being challenged, instinctively knowing this is not based on truth - starved of any sense of interconnectedness anxiety arises, and effort is made to keep the idea of a self alive, to believe it can be controlled. Feeling out of control can be equated with fear of extinction. Fear has the effect of contraction, withdrawl which, felt as sensations in the body, are interpreted as proof of a separate self.
This is a cycle that goes round and round - unconscious reinforcements of a self that doesn't exist - the effect producing suffering.


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.

How does it feel to see this? - great sadness to see this played out in the world both on a wider stage and within.
For myself - HUGE relief and slight bewilderment. I have seen this before, glimpses on retreat and over the last year or so, but it felt like an opening door that suddenly closed again. feelings of freedom and then stuck, trapped. Not knowing how to see this/know this. Before starting this dialogue I had gone through a depressive phase - very aware of habitual patterns on a retreat. Strongly feeling I needed deep guidance from someone who 'knows'. Feeling tired out of generating effort, a sense of time passing and liberation not being a possibility. A sense of disappointment too. I see now I was looking from a point of 'doing' this, of a self trying to control spiritual awakening. A polishing up of an 'unspiritual self' to a more 'spiritual self'. An impossibility! A delusion cannot be polished up.
So I see now the total interpenetration of all things and how I close/contract, then open/expand, and I also see old patterns playing out. Sadness but also delight too. Feeling lighter.

love Liz

[JonathanR]

Hi Liz,

Thank you very much for such detailed answers.

Here are the other three:

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?


See how you get on with these and we will look at your answers,


Love,
Jonathan.

[lizinprocess]

Hi Jonathan

Have let the next questions 'sit' for a while and so...


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

'Last bit' not sure about a last bit - rather a slow culmination and then the phrases (word may not be exact) "can you unglue the experienced from the experience" and 'where does the body end - or the experience of the body end'
These were, and still are, very strong and have stayed with me. Looking for the ending/edges or boundaries of the body and sensations - these cannot be found, are impossible to find. It is windy today and during my meditation sit the echo of the wind could be felt in the cells of the body, the bird sailing across the sky could be felt, a sense of being as a intense vibration/energy within vibration and energy that is everywhere. There is no separation.


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

There has been delusion that has driven decision, intention, free will, choice and control.
For so long I (the Liz as seen as a separate striving being) has felt responsible, judging decisions made, feeling the need to control life - this has been fed by Buddhist teachings and practice to strive develop skillful means, meditation practice, ethical choices. Habitual behaviours born from...described in Q2. adopting a spiritual practice, but fed too by a longing in the heart for freedom, liberation from struggle, sense of isolation, feeling 'wrong'. There has always been there a strong sense of others energy and states echoed in physical sensations - self and other, and comparing self and other. So intention and control has been habitually struggling against sensations and behaviours and trying to 'spiritually polish' a sense of self. All speaks of belief in separateness, a sense of a self alone struggling, trying to make the 'right' decisions.
The difference now? This feels fragile, tentative but truer. Decisions happen without forcing, there is a subtle flow of constant movement, of connectedness, a creativity which, when opened enables things to happen. Intention suggests a separate intender which applies an intention. This has a closing, contracting feel - a separating off and so delusional. 'Letting go and opening out' - phrases often used also suggest a separate self doing something. A release? - perhaps better wording. There has been a fear of 'letting go' of clear intention turning into passivity/apathy but this is all bound up with maintaining a self and getting tangled up with past history and thoughts.
There is so much suffering in the world - what am I responsible for? To begin to look into habitual restless agitation that says I 'should be doing something' and to see the root fear that is there. And to see that, when looked at, it dissolves serving nothing. There can still be action but without the illusion of self getting in the way. Thoughts arise and habitual responses - I trust that these will drop away, sensations of emotional pain arise when I see these.
Free will - the words indicates a someone who wills/applies a will to make something happen or choose one thing over another. The myth of Liz includes a habitual tendency towards judging a decision as good/bad, of seeing herself as morally superior. All this does is separate, isolate and fix self reaffirming a fear of not being moral - result - suffering. Things happen, choices are made, without a sense of self getting in there. Opening out to the connectedness of all things opens the heart - I cannot but feel loving kindness to all beings.


6) Anything to add?

But I don't always feel loving kindness to all beings!! I found myself judging some personal behavior from last night. Habitual drives to make a decision arise. I notice these but still feel pain, feel alone. Is this liberation?
Opening my heart to myself.

Love Liz

[JonathanR]

Hi Liz,

Thanks for your answers. Much of what you have said is great.

Before asking other guides if they have questions for you let's take a look at question 5.

Thoughts arise and habitual responses - I trust that these will drop away, sensations of emotional pain arise when I see these.

Might this be a subtle expectation?

What does the 'seeing'? What does the 'trusting'?

Do the thoughts and habitual responses have an independent reality that 'exists'?

(Can they touch or harm 'no-liz' for example?)

In order for liberation to 'happen' would thoughts/responses need to 'drop away'?

But I don't always feel loving kindness to all beings!! I found myself judging some personal behavior from last night. Habitual drives to make a decision arise. I notice these but still feel pain, feel alone. Is this liberation?

I don't know. Is it? It doesn't sound very 'liberated' but then you appear to be measuring the unmeasurable against the idea that it should always look like loving kindness.

What is liberation if it is not freedom? Freedom to explore DE, to feel loving kindness ( if that's what emerges) but not be bound to any notion, including the notion 'It must be like this'. What is it if it is not 'holding to nothing whatever'?

Let me know what you think.


Love,

Jonathan

[lizinprocess]

Hi Jonathan

Really good direct pointing - thankyou - they all struck home...

Might this be a subtle expectation?
What does the 'seeing'? What does the 'trusting'?
Do the thoughts and habitual responses have an independent reality that 'exists'?
(Can they touch or harm 'no-liz' for example?)
In order for liberation to 'happen' would thoughts/responses need to 'drop away'?

Oh yes I can see 'subtle expectations', aversion is there, pushing away at things (emotions/thoughts) that do not fit into an idea of liberated self.
The thoughts and habitual responses have felt like an independent reality as the emotional force experienced that accompanies them can be powerful. The question 'can they touch or harm no-Liz" shone light onto what happens. The emotional force is the pushing away, the apprehension when a thought/memory arises - in other words the grasping then aversion of it - fearing the effect on the conceptual self. The aversion is also about not wanting that memory/thought to be part of a desired concept of self. All this entangled up in efforts to maintain a self concept and fear of that which challenges it.
I am emotional, I have experienced sad events, memories and thoughts will flow in and out. I can see that just allowing this movement within experience brings freedom. Is freedom.

What is liberation if it is not freedom? Freedom to explore DE, to feel loving kindness ( if that's what emerges) but not be bound to any notion, including the notion 'It must be like this'. What is it if it is not 'holding to nothing whatever'?

These last comments/questions seem to reaching a deep attachment to self - and fears which seem to be about releasing a sense of a flawed self. This is a creation of my own making - it doesn't exist as an entity but as an idea.
There is a tension at the moment. Allowing this to just be.

Liz

[JonathanR]

Hello Liz,

These last comments/questions seem to reaching a deep attachment to self - and fears which seem to be about releasing a sense of a flawed self. This is a creation of my own making - it doesn't exist as an entity but as an idea.
There is a tension at the moment. Allowing this to just be.

Do you see how 'tension' and the need to 'release tension, attachment or a sense of flawed self' are all thoughts about a control that was never real?

There appears to be a 'center' that is threatened or uncomfortable. How can you let go of a control that you do not have already? The assumprion of control spawns the idea that letting go must be the answer. But what about just noticing the effortlessness of all that appears? Isn't everything flowing freely, including thoughts of 'I need to control', 'I need to let go of control' and 'it's frightening to let go of control'?



Best wishes,

Jonathan.