The Gate

awesome, thank you!
i am chewing on it, or it's chewing me...
will post reply tomorrow.

good morning annie,

so here i go:

Hearing > identifying > labelling - yes?

yes

If the sound is the imaginary voice of the person known as xyz, do you say 'that is my voice'? No, you say 'it is xyz's voice. But it's not actually their voice because it only exists in imagination, it's just mental activity. It isn't a real sound. So when 'you' hear the sound of 'your' voice in 'your' head, is that voice any more real than the imagined voice of xyz? Or is it all mental activity, the mind giving labels to what is experienced?

whether my voice or someone elses voice shows up in my mind (imagination/thinking), it is not a physical voice, not an actual voice being heard. it is imagination. mental activity. yes.

if someone was born into a society without language, without names being given, without the concept of 'I' and 'you', do you feel they too would live like animals, and trees, and roses?

i cannot imagine that scenario and i would not know how that would feel.

Just naturally and without suffering?

I believe animals suffer. it very much seems that way to me. i can see it and feel it. of course i will never know exactly how an other feels. however it does not take language to communicate suffering. i can feel other beings. how much of that is projection. i don't know.

this is where i always get confused. because actually there is no other.

i often wondered with a beloved, who's love it was i was feeling. was it my love for them or their love for me? when i felt that love was not as openly flowing as i felt there was a potential for it, was my heart closed or theirs? sometimes it seemed that i could distinguish, whether it was me that was closed and could not let their love in or them closed, not being able to open to my love. and other times i pondered it could just as well always be exactly the same, exactly resonant, the distinguishment made in my mind.

there is a huge difference when there is just me loving someone and when that love is not returned, or not in the same depth or when it's returned and it just flows open.

this is one of the areas that just came up through this investigation that have always puzzled and cofused me and which i still have no clear understanding of.

Pain is an inevitable part of life, but suffering is caused when we judge the pain, yes?

I can not fully concur. when it comes to physical pain or even being trapped in a small cell, which would not inflict physical pain, this would naturally cause animals and humans to suffer, because it works against a natural physical need. there are torture methods that do not inflict physical pain and yet they are tormenting, such as holding someone captive in a room and playing the same song over and over (i saw that in a movie once). these are just a few examples that spring to mind, which seem to me would cause suffering in anyone even when there was no judgement of it. but perhaps i am just not fully getting what you exactly mean with the word "judge" in the above statement.

byron katie also keeps saying that pain only exists in the mind and when it is felt it is already on it's way out. in total surrender there where no pain. i just cannot imagine this. especially when i am in physical pain, or when i imagine some of the things that happen to people on this planet, i find this statement unrealistic. at the same time, i believe katie knows exactly what she is talking about and she is one of the most compassionate people i have come across.

so this is a statement i cannot concur with and am not clear on. it would have to be that i could agree from my own experience and from observing and that i cannot.

i know to a certain degree this is the case with emotional pain. however there are limits to what this body-mind is capable. at a certain volume, i would break and suffer, eventhough i know that ultimately this is a dream. yet the actual perception, even when it's an illusion, overrides mental knowing.

the scene in the movie "the matrix" very well portaits this :

when morpheus is captured and tortured (i think through sound and vibrations), he knows his body is lying safe on a table in reality and his experience is happening in his mind (that is a knowing, yet not his experience). what he percieves, he percieves as real. as the pain becomes unbearable the reality he finds himself in is so convincing and becomes real to him. he begins to believe in it, although it is just a dream (computer programm) in his mind. if he died in the dream, his body on the table would die also. this is the intention of the agents in the programm, because morpheus knows he is in a programm, he knows it's not real and the agents want to get him to succumb to it as reality. his awareness of truth breaks at a certain point when the pain is too much to handle.

thought just arises, thinking happens. How can an electrical impulse in a brain be 'owned' by anyone?

that is a good point.

Can a cloud be owned? Can a raindrop be owned?

yes, does the sky own the clouds? does the planet own the clouds? does the universe own the clouds?
this seems clear that there is no ownership here.

Remember, the mind wants to identify and label experiences. The label it gives is 'my'. Just a word.

'my' is a word, but what does it point to? does it point to a real existing something ? such as the word 'cup' points to an object in a certain shape with a certain function, it points to something.

a word can point either to an actual object, something in physical matter or to an image, an idea, a concept, something in non physical, in mental.

what does the word 'my' point to?

for once it points to everything that is physical and non-physical to this body. like that leaf belongs to that tree and this leaf to this one. so it must not be that 'my' points to a seperate entity as much as it also can be used for identifying a location of form in space.

also 'my' or 'mine' points to every perception i percieve. 'my' thoughts, because that thought showed up in my perception and not in john's. that trees leaf.

the real question is: who is I?

Look at a cup, really look at it - in looking, can 'myness' be seen? Colour can be seen, shape can be seen, texture can be felt, but can 'myness' be seen or touched? Where does the 'my cup' exist?

nice one.

the cup i am looking at isn't mine, but it doesn't matter. when i just look at it with a still mind, all i see is the cup. who it belongs to, the cup's story, appears in thinking.

a thought cannot think the next thought into existence. Just as one cloud doesn't make the next cloud appear.

who or what makes clouds? there is no creator, because there is no source, because there is no ultimate form, because the universe is infinite. whenever i find a source, i must ask: "and where did it come from?" "and who or what created it", ad infinitum. i am sorry annie if i repeat understandings over and over with different words. somehow i need to really get and remember this. like my tennis teacher would say: "liv, finish your move".

that also means when we scientifically explain how clouds get created or appear, or anything for that matter, this is part of the story of that form and since there is no beginning and no end, just endless transformation....an explanation can never be whole and complete it seems.

They just appear and disappear. Same with thoughts, they appear from nowhere and disappear to nowhere. No doer, no thinker, just thinking happening.

happening happening.

So where does the 'I' come into this, you ask? Remember, the mind wants to put a label, a name to everything. You did some experiments in seeing and hearing etc - you noticed that if what was seen or heard was familiar, then no thoughts arose, but if something wasn't familiar, the mind is saying 'what is that? and is giving it a name.

yes, and the body can react to a thought, even when thoughts are not describing reality as it is.

just the other day, i was outside and of a sudden there was a movement caught in the corner of my eye, as i was in heavy thinking process, i was not paying as much attention to the actual objects around me. the mind could not immedeately identify what that movement was, after an instant offered "huge spider" and my whole body jerked back in a scare. all this just happened automatically and it was directly clear to me that it could not have been and was not a spider. but it was interesting to whitness this mind-body-reaction-process consciously.

Notice how this happens with movement also - if the body is thirsty, and gets up to fetch a drink, at what point does the 'I' thought arise? If the body needs to use the toilet, and gets up to go, at what point does the 'I thought arise?

i will observe this. i can already say, from my experience...i just reached for a glass of water and drank before i came to this sentence..that no 'i' thought arises. i just get up or reach when the urge comes. those movements just happen automatically.

mental processes that happen, automatically, no volition, no doer.

if you investigate, 'you' only exist as the content of a thought.

'You' are a story,

make believe.

The body is real,

seeing, hearing, all the other senses

and the thoughts and feelings are real,

but 'you' aren't real.

thoughts are real, but 'I' am not real because 'I' only exists as a content of a thought ?

i will contemplate on this one.

i just got an image, which might clarify this by example:

a cloud is real. each cloud a unique shape. lets say i can clearly see a dolphin in the cloud's shape. i still know it's a cloud. i don't go believing: "that is a real dolphin up there". I know it's a cloud that looks like a dolphin to me. very different from a real dolphin.

even when a thought is pointing to a solid object that is in my present perception; what is real is 1) the thought (specifically: a thought pointing to an actual object. 2) the object. however the object as a thought is not real. this is an image of the real thing, imagination.

'I' is not an object, as these investigations logically concluded that 'I' am not the body. nor could it be proven that 'I' am the mind (mental activity).

so the thought 'I' is real. it appears constantly in the mind. but what does the thought point to? does it point to something real?

i will contemplate on this first, before i start writing. i will take a break on this one....this is good!

Hi liv,

Good observations throughout! And very thoroughly investigated :)

My aim is to guide you to see through the illusion of a self, so I'm going to stick to pointing you where to look at your direct experience. So I won't respond to the more philosophical questions - once the illusion of self is seen through, many of those questions fall away, and if they are still there, we have after gate support groups to discuss those in.

I look forward to your answers on the last point. Just one clarification, a thought IS real, it happens. But the 'I' only exists as the subject of a thought, it is not real, just a name, a label. If you think about Batman or Tinkerbell or Santa Claus, the thought is a real happening, but Batman is not real. Is 'I' real? Or just an imaginary character?

with love
annie

thank you annie,

My aim is to guide you to see through the illusion of a self, so I'm going to stick to pointing you where to look at your direct experience.

i would not expect you to do otherwise.

So I won't respond to the more philosophical questions -

yes, i understand. at the same time unless you tell me otherwise, my experience is to let it flow, when it does, the way it does. when there is a response to something you wrote or something that came forth in my mind through investigating, i do not write this with an intention of arguing a case. i do not write it so much for you as for me to get clear and perhaps you can see how my mind is wired and recognize what the mind is doing and point it out to me, or bring me back on track. just like you always have. i enjoy your answers, they are all helpful. such as:

once the illusion of self is seen through, many of those questions fall away,

i can imagine that, it makes sense.

and if they are still there, we have after gate support groups to discuss those in.

this is nice to know also :)

back to the observation:

you see a human body talking, moving etc and you believe, because everyone has been taught this, that inside that body sits a little entity called a self. But when you really look for it, where is it? what is it?

yes, that is a good point. i used think of the soul being the true self, and that soul's are all pure love and come into human bodies to experience contrast of good and evil, right and wrong etc. in order for them to grow, or have experience in generell. in that if darkness is not experienced, one can not experience light either and since everything is light, there would be no experience of self. that darkness was forgetting who one was and in that forgetting of love there was unconsciousness and fear, which is the root of darkness. this could still be a reality. this could still be part of the story out of the perspective of a soul.

but it does not matter to me anymore whether it is so or not, because this is just a deeper layer of story and story is endless and infinite, like two mirrors facing eachother and the story cannot touch the truth of who or what i am, because the story lives in the realm of form.

if i took myself to be a soul, i would still have to ask the same question: "who or what am "I"?" as soon as there is identification there is story, there is suffering. this is all about seeing illusion. as truth cannot be seen but presumably intimately known as self, it is all about seeing the illusion my mind has been entranced and spellbound by; that, that which i am identified as, cannot be real. if it where real, that would make me mortal. but energy does not die, it transforms. if so that would make me a seperate entity, however no seperation can ever be found, as there is no such thing as solid matter. solid matter is an impression from our perspective, which is always relative. when investigated, solid matter is seen to be made of space...or no-thing.

When you say that you can locate a me, where exactly is it? Describe its location. And it's not the feeling of being alive, that's just a feeling.

what is a self?

all my perceptions. in order to percieve there must be consciousness, i must be conscious. perceptions are going on in my body by physical forms in my body, e.g. cells, organs pecieve, even when i am not conscious (perhaps asleep or in a coma). for there to be an 'I' there must be an active framework of mind conditioning, which presumes the idea of 'me' as being all my memory, all my thoughts and all my perceptions, within which my consciousness experiences itself. this conditioning is a presumption that is unconsciously taken on from our culture it seems.

where is the self?, does 'me' have a location in my body?

it is not a form itself, it comes in form of thought, it's a humongeous cluster of thought, that seems to function as a framwork to what is percieved. it has no location other than perhaps an electrical current in the brain...? but that electrical current is not what i call 'I' or 'me'.

so tired now, must go sleep.
will continue tomorrow.
good night :)

Hi liv,

It's just fine with me if you find it works best for you to write in a flow. :)

What I'd ask you to do now for your own clarity is to go through the last 13 posts carefully, back to Oct 8th, and to summarise what you have observed in your direct experience. Strip out all the questions and the stories, and just write a list of what you can see from your direct observations only is true. If there's an assumption or a presumption, check it out in direct experience, question it not as a mental question but can it be directly seen, heard, touched, smelled, felt? For instance, you wrote 'I must be conscious'. Is that true in direct experience? Check out these assumptions.

with love
annie :)



Then we'll move forward from there.

great idea,
i'm on it...