realizing selflessness

[vinceschubert]

Why dangle that in front of me? Won’t that just stoke seeking, and isn’t that counterproductive?”

Fair challenge. I was trying to make the recognition feel embodied rather than merely intellectual—but, yes, framed that way it can become bait: another promised experience for K to seek and measure herself against.

So drop it. ..or rather, relegate it to the background. The dropping of seeking, when it happens, is something we can extrapolate from.
Recognition may involve softening and excitement, or it may feel completely ordinary. Nothing “psychedelic” is required, and no bodily state proves anything.

What did the dangling produce right now—longing, irritation, suspicion? Was that response chosen, and is there anyone behind it? Without the promise of a special experience, what remains to be seen?

[whoknows]

I was trying to make the recognition feel embodied rather than merely intellectual

Well, I made good use of that today, of this specifically:

can you imagine that the recognition might have a distinct bodily component—a deep softening accompanied by waves of excitement? (or something)

My pointers for my afternoon sit:
- Stay with sense perceptions. Don’t grab a thought.
- It’s “stupidly simple.”
- Fall into “Ahhh . . . of course, THIS.” Relax into THIS.
- Let the body soften, be porous, receptive.

It felt apt and good to let the body soften.

What did the dangling produce right now—longing, irritation, suspicion?

If by "right now," you mean when I first read what you'd written: I appreciated the details of the description and, more fundamentally, the acknowledgment that awakening really is, or can be seen as, an "event" in the relative world and that I don't need to somehow let go of that idea, which I'm not sure I could. But I was a little confused by the fact that you would offer a description of what awakening might feel like. I think the confusion didn't have a lot of emotion in it. It was more just a cognitive puzzlement about this pedagogical strategy, given my apparent need to let go of constructing a self through seeking. So when I wrote, "Some confusion ('Why dangle that in front of me? Won’t that just stoke seeking, and isn’t that counterproductive?')," I was reporting on something that arose, but it didn't have a lot of oomph behind it.

Was that response chosen, and is there anyone behind it?

The response wasn't chosen; it just arose. (Then a little "effort" went into articulating it.)
And this feels like an answer just coming from thought, but: No, there was no one behind it.

Without the promise of a special experience, what remains to be seen?

Hmm . . . Gonna consider that further and return later.

[whoknows]

Without the promise of a special experience, what remains to be seen?

Hmm . . . Well . . .

(This seems like a trick question somehow. But I’m not sure what I mean by that.)

It feels like no-self still hasn’t been grokked. The way “I” perceive “me” and my relationship to “the rest of” reality seems basically unchanged. K still operates as if there’s an existing self “in here” looking at the world “out there.” I understand that the “sense of self” doesn’t need to totally vanish, but it seems like it hasn’t even really been disturbed or loosened up.

It feels like it still hasn’t been grokked that it’s all THIS. Of course, I’m not even sure what I mean by that exactly, but it’s something to do with realizing that what I’ve been looking for is and always has been right here — and that even not grokking it is THIS.

And it feels like it still hasn’t been grokked that awakeness is and always has been right here — that there’s no one who needs to “awaken,” that “awakening” is, if anything, just a dropping of something, or not even that but just seeing through an illusion.

I’m getting this weird feeling that I’m trying hard to defend the thesis that “I am not awake.” But why would I want to defend that? (And just this afternoon, I once again watched Angelo’s video deconstructing that idea.)

Well, okay, we’ve covered this before — why I’d be attached to the idea that “I am not awake.” It’s something to do with suffering. I’m tempted to go back in this thread to see what I said before, but I think I should probably try to sort this out afresh.

So maybe there’s a way in which “I” am still holding out hope that “awakening” will make life go the way I want it to? And recognizing that awakeness has always already been here would mean giving that up? But no, I don’t think I actually believe that awakening means nothing “bad” happens anymore. I think it means something more like that the “I” who judges things to be good and bad is seen to be a fiction and so all the “good” and “bad” stuff is perceived in a more spacious, less “self”-centered way, and the second-arrow of suffering doesn’t (so much or so often) get added on to the first arrow of pain.

So I guess “my” seeking is to get rid of (or greatly diminish) the second-arrow suffering and to experience life as less heavy and burdensome, and also just to see reality more clearly. And while I can see that things are already gradually changing, I am impatient and hold out hope for a quantum shift — a lot of change all at once — and this does not seem like an unreasonable or unrealistic hope. If that seeking or that hope is the painted line in the road that I don't seem to be able to cross, well, I have no clue what can be done about that, and I hope you have a clue!

(Something about this whole post feels kind of "off," but I don't know what.)