The Gate

Hi Joshua, thank you for this. So here is the situation as I see it. This could maybe stay like this for decades; you see when you pay full attention, and you acknowledge the truth of what you see. Then you return to your habitual mode and you fantasize of something grander and you doubt. We could compare with an alcoholic that has recognized that drinking IS not the way and he knows it's true, and he knows soberness, but the habit of drinking and getting lost that way is so strong that he keeps doing it for the rest of life, and fantasizing about some better version of being sober. What I am noticing is you don't seem to be so passionate or capable of dedication about this so that you keep attending ongoingly until you can stand behind that there is no doubt (or no doubt worth giving energy and talking time as being potentially true). If it continues that way, why would things change?

Yesterday a fellow guide shared this inquiry video, I believe it sums up what you committed to ongoingly do (attend to the non-existence of separate self) but for the majority of time don't, as you said. There are some nice pointers to how selfing happens:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNwAVOYVMac

We seem to have a conundrum here. You seem get benefit from this guiding, more perspectives and seeing happens, and at the same time, it seems like it maybe now is part of your mode of "being on the path", creating a sense of path and comfort and dependency, that might get in the way. Not sure. What do you see?

With you with care, wishing for the best for you
Elad

Dear Elad:

Here’s part of what you said most recently:

“What I am noticing is you don't seem to be so passionate or capable of dedication about this so that you keep attending ongoingly until you can stand behind that there is no doubt (or no doubt worth giving energy and talking time as being potentially true). If it continues that way, why would things change?”

First of all, OUCH. As someone once said, the truth hurts.

If it, if my practice, continues that way, I think you are quite right: things will almost certainly not change. Which is exactly why I will not allow things to continue that way.

OK, more soon, after I’ve re-reviewed what you said in its entirety and have re-watched Scott Kiloby. Back shortly.

OK I have watched Scott again – I didn't really have much of a chance to watch him while I was at work today, because I had to work, and I couldn’t really sensibly afford to be seen watching Scott Kiloby videos at my desk.. But I watched him now more fully.

My reaction to the Scott video is that I find it tremendously helpful to have at hand the level of detail and demonstration he provides about what is called for here in the looking. It is possible that I have allowed myself too “easy” or un-diligent a time to this point, undergirded by what is essentially a back-and-forth conversation in which I report on how my practice has gone rather than actively practice RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU, AS I WRITE TO YOU.

Perhaps this bump in the road also points to some lack of diligence in myself to this point… which I hate to admit may not be completely without basis. It is true, though, that in saying yes to you in response to your queries about whether or not I have been able to find a self in any of the places that I have been looking… I was not speaking dishonestly. I haven't in fact been able to find a self in those places, but you are right, it is also true that my intensity and constancy of looking have not been “hotter than a bonfire” to this point either. As you did already point out earlier in this process, I must admit. My looking has been taking place in limited quantities, in side-moments of my days — yes, even after you emphasized the necessity to pursue it as constantly as possible. I did “up my game” when you recommended that I do so, but I have not yet done so to the extent that seems, more clearly than ever, to be a necessity for this process to be effective.

In summary: it appears you are advocating for more constant and more intense investigation on my part, and I agree that it very strongly appears to be needed here.

It may also deserve to be mentioned here that it has not always been so easy for me to know “how to look,” or what truly effective practice looks like, or in other words exactly how to practice optimally. I do have the strong feeling that I must look, and look, and look, and look more, and go deeper when there’s any sense that perhaps I have seen a self, and do exactly as Scott pointed out in that video in quite wonderful and granular detail. I haven't done all that much of such work yet, that is so. As a result, perhaps as should be expected, I cannot yet claim to have had the lived, direct experience of looking over and over and over again, and never finally finding a self despite really assiduous, constant, repeated practice. I do already suspect quite strongly that I won’t ever find a self in any of the thoughts or feelings or mixtures of the two that I will look at, inquire into, drill into, feel into… but that’s not the same as actually, actually, actually looking enough to have (perhaps) exhausted “Mr. Slippery,” who will doubt if given half an inch of space in which to do so. This video, it seems to me, is a very helpful articulation of what is needed.

Back to you for a moment:

“We seem to have a conundrum here. You seem get benefit from this guiding, more perspectives and seeing happens, and at the same time, it seems like it maybe now is part of your mode of "being on the path", creating a sense of path and comfort and dependency, that might get in the way. Not sure. What do you see?”

What I see is a little bit of laziness and evasiveness and maybe, it now occurs to me, a sneaky sort of resistance to the process that I didn’t perceive as maybe being resistance until just this moment. Notwithstanding that such evasiveness may crop up, I want to practice as effectively and successfully as I possibly can here. Yes, I have a job I need to do well in, and children I need to parent as well as I can, and a spouse I need to care for and support and love as well as I can, but I also trust that all of those aspects of my life will receive the attention they must have. Along with those priorities, I want to build and pursue as constant and effective a practice of inquiry as it is possible to do here, presuming as I will for the moment that the lack of that constancy has been the problem — at least the latest and most obvious problem to this point.

Whatever advice and feedback you may have to all of the above will be gratefully accepted, Elad. Perhaps you’ve given it already, but your sticking with me here, as I have mentioned previously, is truly appreciated. I will also re-watch the Scott video (and perhaps go on to Part 2 if you think it a good idea) so as to get greater clarity about the most effective way forward.

I lookf forward to hearing from you and to implementing your advice as thoroughly as I can manage to do so, and more so after that.

With thanks and best wishes from

Josh(ua)

Dear Joshua,

So my sense is that at this point it would be helpful that we make an appointment to pause the interaction until you can present the fruit of persistent attending, seeing the non existence of a separate self or doer, beyond doubt. Maybe we can appoint that 10 days from now (October 16th) we can touch space no matter what. Hopefully you will write me to share the seeing sooner.

Regarding Kiloby inquiry and watching more of his videos, follow your intuition. And be mindful that no method is neither necessary nor sufficient in and of itself, and that focusing on getting support and knowledge easily comes instead of just attending with your inherent capacity to see. And that is the core of the matter, even more so with all the knowledge, experience and know-how you all ready have. Maybe at this point you might also be supported by reading this book, Gateless Gatecrashers. It will not give new knowledge I think. Follow your intuition with that also.

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=572

I enjoy working with you and this suggestion is not for me, or out of limitation of care, commitment or patience with you. It is because the ball is on your side, and this needs to be clear. If you think something else might be more helpful let me know.

Warmly,
Elad

Here is a link to the book that works: https://www.liberationunleashed.com/boo ... ecrashers/

Dear Elad -

Thank you for today's note just as much as for every previous one, and also thank you for having come to this point right here with me. Everything you say makes sense to me, and I have the sense that it is a fine idea to do just as you suggest. I will surely return here no later than October 16 to check in with you. I also share your hope that my check-in will be sooner than that.

Thank you very much for pointing that book out to me, the “Gateless Gatecrashers” volume. I began reading it today, this morning at my office desk, directly after sitting to meditate. I don't want to get ahead of myself here (as I have sometimes said before with regard to other specific situations), but just reading Ilona’s introduction to the book (Elena’s too, but specifically Ilona’s) felt full of portent, totally recognizable, absolutely true, and wonderfully nervous-making!

I won't write very much more this evening, except to say thank you so very much for every bit of what this has been to this point. The potential of what it seems possible that this could in fact be, after what has certainly been more than half my life spent looking, and looking, and looking, feels like quite a lot is coming to a head here.

I will do my very best to look, rather than spend lots of time “processing” and “thinking,” for this next chapter.

I I look forward very much to rejoining you here before too very long, certainly not later than October 16th. Please take very good care and accept my sincere thanks for everything but this has been so far.

Signing off for now — very best wishes from your appreciative

Josh(ua)

Dear Elad -

Thank you for today's note just as much as for every previous one, and also thank you for having come to this point right here with me. Everything you say makes sense to me, and I have the sense that it is a fine idea to do just as you suggest. I will surely return here no later than October 16 to check in with you. I also share your hope that my check-in will be sooner than that.

Thank you very much for pointing that book out to me, the “Gateless Gatecrashers” volume. I began reading it today, this morning at my office desk, directly after sitting to meditate. I don't want to get ahead of myself here (as I have sometimes said before with regard to other specific situations), but just reading Ilona’s introduction to the book (Elena’s too, but specifically Ilona’s) felt full of portent, totally recognizable, absolutely true, and wonderfully nervous-making!

I won't write very much more this evening, except to say thank you so very much for every bit of what this has been to this point. The potential of what it seems possible that this could in fact be, after what has certainly been more than half my life spent looking, and looking, and looking, feels like quite a lot is coming to a head here.

I will do my very best to look, rather than spend lots of time “processing” and “thinking,” for this next chapter.

I I look forward very much to rejoining you here before too very long, certainly not later than October 16th. Please take very good care and accept my sincere thanks for everything but this has been so far.

Signing off for now — very best wishes from your appreciative

Josh(ua)

Thank you too and look forward to "see you again". With you in the spirit 💗💗

Dear Elad -

I have been looking forward to reconnecting with you for what feels like a very long time now.

Before I even get started addressing the subject and the work that have been the basis of our interaction, please allow me to begin here by saying that, although I don't know what you and your family may have directly experienced in this last, most recent chapter of life on earth — the one that began just hours after you and I paused our daily contact — I truly hope, with my whole heart, that you and everyone you care for is as well as can possibly be. I don't actually know, Elad, whether you and your family are Israeli, but I have suspected so ever since learning your name. Although (and as you already know) I and my family are Jewish, we have never made our home in Israel; we are Americans — both my grandfathers immigrated to the USA directly from what is today Ukraine at the beginning of the 20th century. Although there are Israelis who share my (uncommon) family name and geographic origin, none of the family I’ve grown up here knowing is Israeli. Although we here have been utterly sick from what just took place, we are not nearly so close to this disaster as any Israeli. Sickened though we have been, It is our Israeli friends here who have been the most devastated, the ones whose immediate families and lifelong friends lost mothers and fathers and children and brothers and sisters on 7 October. However awful it has been for us here to witness this catastrophe, it is obviously nothing like what our friends and their families have endured and are still enduring, and what I am afraid you may also have endured just now, dear Elad.

I apologize for not having written to you sooner about this, and I hope very much that all your family and dear ones are as OK as possible.

OK, so, now, please forgive me as I change topics and write to you more directly about the work in which you have been guiding and supporting me since August.

I am, candidly, deeply chagrined and ashamed to admit to you, Elad, that I have for some not-fully-fathomed reason not been able to dedicate myself to the work that is needed here on my own.

I just watched the Scott Kiloby video again tonight — I have not watched him for several days now — and I saw that his very detailed description of the looking that is needed was again helpful.

I have read quite a bit of both the “Gateless Gatecrashers” book you shared, as well as Ilona’s and Elena’s “Liberation Unleashed” text in the past ten days. I find quite a lot of those books to be very helpful, some stories/narratives of “gatecrashing” more so than others, all obviously pointing to what I have not yet been brave enough to “skydive” toward on my own to this point.

My experience of looking in the days before we paused, to the extent that I remember it accurately, is that I understood and agreed intellectually with the (shall we say), “very strong likelihood” that there is in fact no separate self that can be found when one actually does the work of looking for it. But to my chagrin, and as you saw, I found it very difficult to overcome this resistance to the kind of constant looking that appears to be needed in order to KNOW SO DIRECTLY FOR ONESELF. It may be that the reasons for my difficulty here are worth understanding better, but maybe not.

I don't know if we can establish the kind of accountability that I feel that I need here in the kind of once-daily check-in-via-writing that has been our mode of contact thus far. I don't want to shirk responsibility here; I just want to find a way to address the challenge in a way that will be effective. So far, I have failed.

I very much hope that you will not “fire me” now, and that we can continue this conversation in some way that you can find acceptable. It may be that all of the necessary work is mine to do alone. But what I can say at this point is that I have found it less helpful to be completely out of touch than to be connected via our daily back-and-forth. You pointed out that that might just be a comfort zone, and I would certainly like to take care not to abuse the privilege of your attention, but at the moment I have not found my way out of this challenge and very much hope that you will consider continuing the conversation with me.

Thank you for all your kindness to this point. Thank you for reading this now. Thank you for at least considering what might be best from here onward.

With thanks and very best wishes -- and looking forward to hearing from you again.

Josh(ua)

Dear Josh, thank you for the care and consideration with the situation in Israel. Yes it's a heartbreaking and very uncertain situation. My very closest are not amongst the dead and captured, but we all have close ones who have lost or died.

Shifting focus to this proces, regarding resistance, motivation, what that is, etc.: Outside of LU I work as a psychologist and the processes move fluidly between relational and emotional topics and nonduality. Some times it's most helpful, most honoring of heart. If you wish to look more together into everything in a space that is just for you and can move fluidly between nonduality and individuation and relationality, we can set up a session or more then one session of that kind in parallel with the writing here. If you wanna look into that option please write eladchone@hotmail.com

As for the correspondence here in LU, let's stay focused on no self. What in direct experience, not referring to past or future, expectations and comparisons and ideas, tells you that the seeing of no self is not there?

Dear Elad -

Thank you so much for your note. Thank you also for the offer of at least the possibility of expanding our work together to some degree if that would be helpful or useful. I am immediately intrigued, and at the same time not immediately certain what would be best. But the possibility of approaching things from multiple angles strikes me as potentially helpful. I actually just spent a bit more than two years working directly with a licensed psychologist who was also (though a bit less publicly) a nondual teacher and guide. I began that chapter and passed most of it fairly strongly convinced that I was not interested in doing psychotherapy at all; my conviction softened somewhat last spring, but I am feeling a bit steadier than I did during an unexpected crisis that took place in March/April, and my desire and ambition are again much more focused on doing whatever may be called for to realize, fully and truly and beyond doubt, the truth that there is no self in here. Nonetheless, I am willing to do whatever will be most effective in helping to clear everything, very much including me and my story, out of the way of seeing what is true - including therapeutic work if that is called for.

But your question immediately becomes relevant again: “What in direct experience, not referring to past or future, expectations and comparisons and ideas, tells you that the seeing of no self is not there?”

It helps very much for you to ask that question of me directly, here, as I sit here, and have to face it again. I don't know what it is that I am seeing here now. Am I seeing no self? I am sitting here feeling like myself, feeling the same way that I have felt previously and throughout my life. This way of being *feels* to me like there is a self, and that it is/I am sitting here, frustrated, somehow, not knowing how to look directly in the way that is needed to see, in the midst of this profusion of everything, that the truth is otherwise, that there is no self here. At the moment, I do not know that.

Let me repeat your question: “What in direct experience, not referring to past or future, expectations and comparisons and ideas, tells you that the seeing of no self is not there?”

As I sit here, without referring to the past or the future or to ideas or expectations or comparisons, I am just sitting here in my house, looking at various objects, sitting here within myself, not really sure what it is that I am seeing or not seeing other than external objects in the room, feeling feelings of frustration and cluelessness somehow, and somehow feeling that something is getting in the way of my useful and effective looking.

I somehow feel like I don't know how to look.

If I look to my right, with my physical eyes, I see a glass, mostly empty, with the residue of the water and the fizzy vitamin tablet that I dropped and dissolved into it and drank a few minutes ago.

If I look to my left, I see the table, my cell phone, a leather-bound journal with my earpod case on top of it, a chair with a backpack on it, and this computer screen directly in front of me, with the words miraculously typing themselves out on the screen as I speak to the machine.

Something is … at very least, there appears to be some tangled mess of thoughts and effort here. maybe about what it is that looking is, versus what it is that thinking is and that feeling is. I don't feel clear about much nor ready to assert much of anything, but I somehow want to continue trying to say that I feel tangled in my efforts here.

Maybe one answer to your question is: habitual feeling is here, and it is what tells me that the seeing of no self is not here. There's a habitual feeling, a “normal” feeling, which feels as if it has a self in it, “I think.”

I don't want to ask you appropriately for anything, Elad, including for help if neither you nor anyone can actually give it to me. I enjoyed being taken almost by the hand, by Scott Kiloby in that recent video, though. He walked me through the fine-grained process of looking as he was recommending it. I believe he said in the video that doing as he directs is something of a skill, and that through practice one could get better at it, through repetition or through continually returning to it. Somehow it feels like I rarely if ever have gotten enough “momentum” up in my looking to … to… take flight?

Or is that just another thought too?

Oy vey, Elad. I don’t know how profitable it was to take those 10 days away from our discussion. Thank you, sincerely, for rejoining me here now. I feel like I need to start over from scratch.

I look forward to hearing from you again.

I am very glad, by the way, to hear that your very closest were not among the most grievously affected just now, even as I weep for so many who were.

Please keep well. I look forward, as mentioned, to continuing this work with you. Thank you again.

Best wishes from
Josh(ua)

Without all these thoughts about method and all the many words, without comparing and evaluating, how do you know that you "feel" as you and you "feel" it's not it.

There is sensation.

Without comparative and evaluative thinking, useless here, without beliefs, what do you know?

Greetings Elad -

“Without all these thoughts about method and all the many words, without comparing and evaluating, how do you know that you "feel" as you and you "feel" it's not it.

There is sensation.

Without comparative and evaluative thinking, useless here, without beliefs, what do you know?”

Without comparative and evaluative thinking, what do I know?

That I am immediately at sea, lost-feeling, ‘just here’ maybe, stripped of… I'm not quite sure what to call those things, or if it matters much at all if I come up with the best name for them.

I have had the feeling today, Elad, that I am quite profoundly addicted to “comparative and evaluative thinking.” I don't know for 100% sure that I am “correct about that”, or that this talking about it is not more of the same… but it is true that I have felt for quite a long while, that it’s almost like some kind of spell needs to be broken here, some profound kind of addiction needs to be overcome, or let go, or be dropped somehow. And that this particular kind of addiction, to “comparative and evaluative thinking,” has been and trained into my habitual way of living from the very beginning of this life on earth. It and “I” seem to be linked.

There is sensation. Without beliefs, what do I know?

I know that I can see the wall in front of me here in my bedroom, and that I don't have to make any effort at all to speak of it in English words. I know that there's a piece of paper taped to the wall in front of me – actually several pieces of paper of different significances that I have saved and put on the wall beside my bed here in my bedroom. There's a lamp sitting illuminated on the corner of this desk. There's a strange lost feeling, a a feeling of lostness, as I somehow try to edge toward a completely… what feels like a completely unknown place, right here somehow.

Not to be too cute to hear, or to speak about things in ways that I don't truly feel that I have “earned” the right to speak of this way… but it begins to strike me that if comparative and evaluative thinking are not permitted to participate, are not consulted, then the only things I know are what is seen here, and heard here, and smelled here, and felt here, and so on. I see the colorful birthday card my daugheter made for me taped to the wall above me here.

All my studies come echoing back through my head, and then I also want to reject them or block them, so as to try to follow your lead here. One of those studies echoes Eckhart Tolle’s voice talking about the need for “the renunciation of thought.”

I sort of don't know how to proceed here, Elad. It feels like I am lost in a maze.

Thank you for rejoining this conversation with me. Am I a hopeless case? Am I the most lost of all the lost seekers you’ve worked with or encountered? (More fearful, complicated, evaluative thinking right there, I suppose.)

More breadcrumbs please. I look forward to taking the next baby step, and the one after that.

Thank you again, Elad. I look forward to hearing from you again.

With sincere thanks from
Josh(ua)

You keep thinking about the Joshua character, it's more of the same. "Lost" is also just s word. You are not addicted, you are not. Addiction is. Now without thinking, see that in direct experience there is no Josh.

You keep thinking about the Joshua character, it's more of the same. "Lost" is also just s word. You are not addicted, you are not. Addiction is. Now without thinking, see that in direct experience there is no Josh.

You keep thinking about the Joshua character, it's more of the same. "Lost" is also just s word. You are not addicted, you are not. Addiction is. Now without thinking, see that in direct experience there is no Josh.

You keep thinking about the Joshua character, it's more of the same. "Lost" is also just s word. You are not addicted, you are not. Addiction is. Now without thinking, see that in direct experience there is no Josh.