Stuck in the mud

[DianeSt]

Hi Perry

So where is self to be found now?

The self is still wrapped up in the belief that the fear, which I am feeling most of the time is driven by self. This is what I am thinking right now. But I know that thoughts are just thoughts, that I can't control the thoughts because they just arise. It is the unpleasant physical sensations alongside the thoughts of not being able to cope and then feeling sad and upset. But self is a belief supported by fear.

Question: 'If I can't control thoughts, feelings or anything because there is no self, why do I feel so miserable and anxious'?

I would like to ask you a question which might help me.
"What is positive about not having a self?

Best wishes
Diane

[perrym]

Hi Diane,

There is a lot wrapped up in your short post... I would like to touch on all three areas, because they all seem important, although this means rather a longer reply than normal...

The self is still wrapped up in the belief that the fear, which I am feeling most of the time is driven by self. This is what I am thinking right now. But I know that thoughts are just thoughts, that I can't control the thoughts because they just arise. It is the unpleasant physical sensations alongside the thoughts of not being able to cope and then feeling sad and upset. But self is a belief supported by fear.

Normally I would focus in on this section, for example, to look into exactly what you mean by "self is a belief supported by fear" ... however, I sense that we might need to focus a bit on the other two sections of your reply before we can return wholeheartedly to this line of enquiry.

Question: 'If I can't control thoughts, feelings or anything because there is no self, why do I feel so miserable and anxious'?

This, and your question below, seem to be connected, and point to assumptions and expectations that we probably do need to take time out to look into. Perhaps we do need to look into how you expect these to be connected (ie so self and miserable/anxious feelings)?

I would also like to reflect back the question to you in another way - this might seem just pedantic at first, but actually it is critical... What is the "I" that cannot control thoughts, feelings or anything else? The implication in the question is that all these thoughts, feelings and so on are going on, like a turbulent river, and "I" is a ping-pong ball getting carried along, unable to control anything. Is this in the back of your mind?

That is a scary and unpleasant image, to be sure! However, it does not represent what it is like to see through the illusion of self... This image is of "I" realising that it is out of control, or possibly even of "I" losing control that it once had. However, the whole notion of control is still rooted in the belief that there is an "I" separate from experience that can exercise (or lose) control over experience. When the illusion of "I" is dropped, there is neither control nor lack of control.

I realise that my just stating this does not help you realise anything, which is why I consider this to be a diversion from the guiding ... however, it can be important to address both unrealistically negative as well as unrealistically positive expectations, since the negative ones can bring up resistance to the whole process.

I would like to ask you a question which might help me.
"What is positive about not having a self?"

It's an interesting question, and we may benefit from discussing this sort of question as part of the broader "setting the scene" for the enquiry... however, right now, I'm going to be really annoying and question and question!

In a way, I can only make sense of the question if both options were possible, like "what is positive about regular meditation?". This is something that we can meaningfully ask because we can compare the two possibilities.

However, is there any choice about having a self or not?

We are not trying to get rid of a self, but to discover what is actually the case. If there really is no self to be found outside of thought/imagination, then that is just the fact of the matter, it is neither positive nor negative, it is just how things are. There is no "having a self" option to compare with.

How about an alternative question:

"What is positive about seeing through the illusion of self?"

Maybe this is what you intended to ask? At least this is a question that can be answered - it is something of a diversion along our journey, but you might find it helpful?

Best wishes,

Perry

[DianeSt]

Hi Perry

The implication in the question is that all these thoughts, feelings and so on are going on, like a turbulent river, and "I" is a ping-pong ball getting carried along, unable to control anything. Is this in the back of your mind?

You are right that this is exactly what it feels like and it scares me. My believing that there is an ‘I’ separate from experience that can exercise (or lose) control over experience feels like a ping-pong ball out of control.

This is as far as I have got after an hour of reading and re-reading your post, an although I have only managed to write 4 lines I do think it important for me to understand this and so am spending time on it.

What is positive about seeing through the illusion of self

I wish I had the answer but I don’t know because I haven’t seen through the illusion. “So what is the belief in a ‘self’ doing to make me want to see through it?” I want to really know if ‘self’ is an illusion or not and my gut feeling now is its not real. Yet the belief is still lingering.

Best wishes
Diane

[perrym]

Hi Diane,

You are right that this is exactly what it feels like and it scares me. My believing that there is an ‘I’ separate from experience that can exercise (or lose) control over experience feels like a ping-pong ball out of control.

OK, it's good to have this out in the open!

It is indeed a scary image, but fortunately, it is no more real than a fantasy or nightmare.

If you told a child that Santa Claus did not really exist, they might resist the knowledge, fearing that if they accept the idea, then there would be no more Christmas presents.... They cannot distinguish "he has never existed" from "we are getting rid of him" - they just experience the threat of Santa Claus being taken away. If Santa Claus goes away, then there will be no presents, and so they fear and resist the idea.

Similarly when we talk of self and no-self, it is very hard at first to distinguish between "there is not now, nor has there ever been, a self", and "you must get rid of your self". Emotionally, they might feel like the same thing - Santa Claus is being taken away.

Likewise, it is very hard at first to distinguish "there is not now, nor has there ever been, any self in control of thoughts and feelings" from "you are going to give up control over thoughts and feelings".

However, these are very, very different propositions!

You cannot possibly lose or give up what was never there.

If you are still haunted by the ping-pong ball image, we can come back to it, but you might already be able to see how it is flawed, how it cannot be an accurate depiction of how things are, based on some of the work we have done earlier. For example, is there really any separation, at the time a thought is happening, between the 'thought' and 'thinker'? The moment a thought stops, another thought might arise in reaction to it, but by then, the first thought is just a memory.... If so, is there really a ping-pong ball of awareness floating separate from the river, or just a river that includes awareness?

Another scary aspect of the ping-pong ball image is the complete impotent passivity of the ping-pong ball. Does this correspond with your experience? Does the presence of awareness make any difference to the course of experience? If so, does this always require an explicit sense that "I am controlling and changing this", or can awareness sometimes be fully integrated into the flow of experience?

What is positive about seeing through the illusion of self

I wish I had the answer but I don’t know because I haven’t seen through the illusion.

Sorry, I could have been clearer here - I was offering to answer this for you if you felt is was important to you to have an answer at this stage. I was not asking you to answer it, for exactly the reason you state!

my gut feeling now is ['self' is] not real

That's really good news! Perhaps a suspicion is dawning, but there is still more to do to become really clear about it all.

Yet the belief is still lingering.

Following your gut feeling that 'self' is not real, can you interrogate this belief?

What would be the most convincing way to express this belief?

How would your gut feeling respond to that?

Very best wishes,

Perry

[DianeSt]

Hi Perry

What is positive about seeing through the illusion of self
I was offering to answer this for you if you felt is was important to you to have an answer at this stage.

I think it would help if you would answer this? It might help a thought which I keep coming back to, which is “what is it about the self that isn’t helpful” and I don’t have an answer!

Following your gut feeling that ‘self’ is not real, can you interrogate this belief?

I know that hearing is just hearing because of the experience I described earlier when I heard a noise outside and I thought “of course hearing is just hearing” and I felt joy. There was no sense of ‘self’ in that experience it was just sound arising and hearing occurring. I didn’t hear the sound in the ear, I just heard it. Similarly with thoughts. I was in the kitchen having problems concentrating while trying to make breakfast and feeling anxious and worried. Thoughts were going round and round and I suddenly thought “thoughts are just there I can’t control them or stop them, they are just arising”. There was no ‘self’ doing this. Thoughts did there own thing. Today, I was noticing my body walking. As I walked my body new what to do, but the belief was that ‘self’ was making it happen because I needed an explanation of how walking happens. But I don’t need an explanation, I could just let walking be walking. Feelings arise particularly fear and sadness and I look for a ‘self’ to explain and monitor them. The belief that there has to be a ‘self’ monitoring the feeling, is so I have a sense of control. But I can’t control the feelings they too just come and go. The sense of ‘presence’ that I thought was ‘self’ was not a ‘self’ but an awarenesss of the flow of experience.

Then there are the expectations of wanting to know before I know. Feeling I should know by now. These just get in the way. And lastly the nagging thoughts of “is it so bad to have a ‘self’”? But that is just a thought, but it is persistent and causes doubt.

Best wishes
Diane

[perrym]

Hi Diane,

Thanks for that really thorough review - it really helps to sum everything up like that sometimes.

You've come such a long way already, you've made so many important observations... I really admire how you're sticking at it and, bit by bit, noticing more and more about the truth of what is really going on in experience.

I particularly appreciated your observations about how walking just happens, yet there is an urge to 'explain', which you also recognise not really to be necessary.

This is a really important observation because you are witnessing the way that 'stories' are conjured up, stories about "I", stories which are completely made up, yet which can be so beguiling. Seeing this going on, you are witnessing the birth of the illusion of self, the point at which 'self' is imagined to exist in order to explain what is going on, just as Santa Claus is imagined to exist to explain all those presents!

I'd like to pick up on one thing, which I've mentioned before, but which is so important to keep in mind that I make no apology for coming back to it again.... It concerns our goal, what we are actually here to do.

Are we trying to get rid of self?
Are we trying to get rid of the sense of self?

What are we trying to do here?

I am picking up on a few things you wrote, like:

“what is it about the self that isn’t helpful”

There was no sense of ‘self’ in that experience

“is it so bad to have a ‘self’”

These sound to me like they arise from an assumption that we are trying to get rid of a self, or at least get rid of a sense of self....

This is absolutely critical, but I appreciate that it may seem slippery at first .... we are trying to establish whether any 'self' actually exists, not to try to get rid of anything that we know to exist.

We are not even trying to get rid of the 'sense of self', just to recognise exactly what this sense is. Do you remember the rainbow metaphor? Even once the illusion is first understood, it remains visible.... there is no need to get rid of the 'sense of self', just to recognise what it really is in direct experience.

I'm very happy to come onto "What is positive about seeing through the illusion of self", but first I'd like to check out how you think and feel about what I have written above - has there been any confusion about this up to now? Are you clear about it now? Or is it just baffling :-)

best wishes,

Perry

[DianeSt]

Hi Perry

Are we trying to get rid of self?
Are we trying to get rid of the sense of self?

Although I thought I had understood that I am not trying to get rid of the ‘sense of self’, I haven’t taken this on as fully as I thought. I realise that when I think to myself “there is no self” I am actually still thinking in terms of there once was a ‘self’. When I said “there was no sense of ‘self’ in that experience”, I can see now that ‘no sense of self’ implies that there was or is still a belief that the ‘self’ or ‘sense of self’ still exists, even though it wasn’t present in that experience, rather than there never was a ‘self’ in the first place. I have been describing experiences without ‘self’ believing that there was no ‘self’ present, whilst actually still believing that ‘a sense of self’ was still hanging around somewhere. As opposed to seeing that there never has been a ‘self’ in the first place. I can feel this is still a little slippery, that I am looking for an absence of ‘self’ rather than an illusion of ‘self’.

I hope this makes some sense as it was quite difficult to write about.

Best wishes
Diane

[perrym]

Hi Diane,

I can feel this is still a little slippery

Isn't it just?!

I think you've got the right idea again now, but it is easy to drift back into old assumptions....

So just to reiterate:

• we are just looking to find out what is and is not the case (and to compare what we find with our beliefs)
• the 'sense of self' is not a problem to be got rid of - it is what it is, we just need to look into it and see what it is
• we are not trying to get rid of 'self', just to see if there really is one!

We'll get back to the enquiry more formally soon, but let's look at your question which I rephrased as:

What is positive about seeing through the illusion of self?

There is a danger here of just setting up more expectations which will get in the way later, and normally I wouldn't dwell much on questions like this that do not directly advance the enquiry. However, if you are finding it all rather exhausting, and feel that you need some encouragement that this is really worth pursuing, then perhaps this is worth going into...

Of course, to do this, we will have to assume, for the sake of argument, that 'self' really is an illusion, a false belief, something that has no existence other than as a figment of thought and imagination .... this is something you are well on your way to proving for yourself, but as this is still not your experience, you'll have to go along with the assumption for the moment....

Believing that 'self' is something, when really it is nothing at all, makes life much more complicated and exhausting than it needs to be. So many stories about this fictional self, about threats to this fictional self, about what this self is and is not, what it can and cannot do, what it is guilty of and to blame for .... all of these stories are taken terribly seriously, they use up energy, and they make it harder or even impossible to see what really IS going on in any situation.

And it is not just the story of "I", after all, nobody else has a self either, so many of the stories we tell ourselves about other people are also flawed. For example, a judgemental attitude towards someone is probably held up by imagining that their separate self freely chose to behave badly.

So typically, a while after decisively seeing through the illusion of self (note: rarely immediately after, it takes time and work to assimilate), there is a greater simplicity and harmony to life. There is also, for Buddhists, a much deeper appreciation of what the Buddha was talking about, and Buddhists often report that they have actually understood the Dharma properly for the first time.

Hope this helps,

Perry

[perrym]

.... there is an another way of looking at the difference between 'getting rid of self' vs 'discovering there is no self'....

When the sense of self slips away, this is a temporary mental state.
When the illusion of self is seen through, this is a new kind of knowledge and understanding.

We are not trying to create and sustain a particular mental state, but to know and understand something about how things really are in experience.

Santa Claus provides a useful analogy:

Imagining a world without Santa Clause is a mental state (an unstable one for someone who still believes in him)
Realising that he has only ever existed as a fictional character is a new kind of knowledge and understanding

Having had this realisation, one can actually still see images of Santa Claus, and discuss him as a fictional character, without getting confused (just as the 'sense of self' may still remain, as a set of sensations, even after seeing that 'self' is a fictional character)

[DianeSt]

Hi Perry

Thank you so much for your detailed posts and I appreciate the time you have taken with this. It really has been a big help and keeps me focused and that I can go back and read them again.

I just want to clarify the aspect you referred to as “the sense of self which may still remain, as a set of sensations, even after seeing through the illusion of self”. I have used the term ‘sense of self’ when I am aware of experience, most of all fear, when the sensations are at their strongest. Is this what you mean by ‘sense of self’, because you also said “when the sense of self slips away, this is a temporary mental state”? Could you just explain this again?

Thank you so much.

Best wishes
Diane

[perrym]

Hi Diane,

I just want to clarify the aspect you referred to as “the sense of self which may still remain, as a set of sensations, even after seeing through the illusion of self”. I have used the term ‘sense of self’ when I am aware of experience, most of all fear, when the sensations are at their strongest. Is this what you mean by ‘sense of self’, because you also said “when the sense of self slips away, this is a temporary mental state”? Could you just explain this again?

Good point, we are not necessarily using terms in the same way.

It is so tricky to really define these terms, but when I use the term 'sense of self', I am referring to the sensations that we would normally label "me" as opposed to "other" during those times when experience appears strongly split between self and other. If someone were to report that "suddenly I became very self-conscious", I would call all the sensations that suddenly came into awareness "sense of self".

One of the most interesting aspects of 'sense of self' is a subtle feeling-tone that we consider to be uniquely 'me'... like a sort of unique band of perfume that defines 'my style'. When I bring someone I know well to mind, I have a sense of their unique feeling-tone, or energy, too. It is rather subtle, but is an important part of 'sense of self' because, although it is fundamentally nothing more than another feeling, it is a feeling that we are likely to identify as being 'self', at least until we identify it for what it is in direct experience. I wonder if this is something you recognise?

The sensations that make up this kind of 'sense of self' do come and go - when deeply absorbed in some activity, this sense of self may ebb away completely, for example. This is what I described as a temporary mental state, which is certainly very pleasant, but is not the goal of our enquiry. The only way it is somewhat relevant to our enquiry is that it does at least show us that these sensations that make up 'sense of self' do come and go, and so they cannot actually BE 'self', because whatever 'self' is (if it anything real at all) it should not be something that comes and goes!

Does that make sense?

Hopefully, after that little interlude, we can return to our investigation head-on!

Best wishes,

Perry

[DianeSt]

Hi Perry

Hopefully, after that little interlude, we can return to our investigation head-on!

Ready to return head on!

Best wishes
Diane

[perrym]

Hi Diane,

Jolly good, chocks away then!

I have been doing a lot of 'telling' rather than 'asking' over the last few days, so I have somewhat lost track of where you are really at right now, so let's come back right to the beginning again....

What is "my self"?

Is it possible that it is nothing more than a figure of speech, a fictional character in the stories we tell, or is it something real?

If it turned out never to have existed, would that change anything?

Best wishes,

Perry

[DianeSt]

Hi Perry

What is "my self"?
Is it possible that it is nothing more than a figure of speech, a fictional character in the stories we tell, or is it something real?
If it turned out never to have existed, would that change anything?

Yesterday after a difficult interaction with someone I felt ‘my self’ was all encompassing. At first I was irritated by what was said to me and then upset. I felt hurt and wanted to withdraw and the whole experience was very uncomfortable. I tried to see where the ‘self’ was in all this. But I couldn’t really find it, but I certainly felt I was protecting something which was the ‘self’ because it was so hard to move on. So it involved thoughts, feelings, reactions, a bad mood and the difficulty of not being able to let it all go. Even when I asked myself where is the ‘self’ and not finding it, it still felt that a ‘self’ was trying to protect itself. Even when I tried letting all this just be, with a belief that the ‘self’ was a just a belief, something was still doggedly holding on.

These thoughts, emotions, reactions and beliefs are nothing more than a whole mix of bad weather. The ‘self’ is something I create out of experience as a way to explain to myself what is happening, in the belief that that will gives me some control. I have yet to see that it doesn’t give me any control.

Best wishes
Diane

[perrym]

Hi Diane,

Yesterday after a difficult interaction with someone I felt ‘my self’ was all encompassing. At first I was irritated by what was said to me and then upset. I felt hurt and wanted to withdraw and the whole experience was very uncomfortable. I tried to see where the ‘self’ was in all this. But I couldn’t really find it

Hey, nice work remembering to investigate even in the midst of such a difficult time.

The ‘self’ is something I create out of experience as a way to explain to myself what is happening, in the belief that that will gives me some control. I have yet to see that it doesn’t give me any control.

What is it, in terms of direct experience, that you "create out of experience"?
How does this give control?

That might be enough for now, but if you do still have the time and energy, it would be really good to get onto this:

it still felt that a ‘self’ was trying to protect itself. Even when I tried letting all this just be, with a belief that the ‘self’ was a just a belief, something was still doggedly holding on.

This is a very good place to work, though you may need to find a way to reconnect with the experience during the time you set aside for investigation.

I know this is an area we began looking into a week or two ago, but rather than trying to jump back in where we left off, let's work out way through again.

So, assuming this is something you can access right now (if necessary, by recalling exactly how it came to arise last time - this will normally bring it back into being)....

What is going on in direct experience during this 'protection'?
What are the physical sensations?
What feelings are present?
What thoughts support all this?
Are there any 'stories' running? If so, what are they?
Do any of these stories indicate what is being protected, and how the protection could work?


Best wishes,

Perry