First post

[livewire]

Greetings,

At age 61 I am so tired of chasing my tail trying to become enlightened. I have tried numerous disciplines and honestly can't say I have gone beyond belief,and theory. No profound aha moment, no deep silence. I have been doing mantra meditation at least once a day for the past 6 years. Still no silence that i am aware of. I would love to once and for all really see a moment of reality. To really see the illusion of self. Can somebody help me in this pursuit?

Warmest regards,

Guy

[Finoh]

Hi Guy,

My name is Ian and I will be your guide.

There are a few ground rules, please respond to confirm:
1. You agree to post at least every day.
2. I will post questions, and you will answer them.
3. When you answer you answer 100% honestly,
4. When you do answer, you answer from your direct experience (felt senses and observed thoughts). Long winded analytical and philosophical answers are not needed and may even hinder progress.
5. Put aside all other teachings, philosophies and such for the remainder of this journey. Really put all your effort and attention in to seeing this reality, as it is. If you have a daily and essential meditation practice, it is fine to continue that.
6. Please learn to use the quote function, instructions are located in the link below this line:
http://liberationunleashed.com/nation/v ... ?f=4&t=660

Finally, if you wish to proceed give me a rant on why you are here, what your expectations are for being here, your hopes and desires. Leave out the leaping tall buildings in a single bound and being an unbelievable chick/man magnet we have a few of them already.

Cheers

Ian

[Finoh]

Hi Guy,

Where are you located, what city and time zone. I am in Sydney.

Cheers

Ian

[livewire]

I live in New York, eastern time zone. I agree to the ground rules. I am here to try and become a better person and to try and learn that I am not the drama of day to day life.

[livewire]

Ian,
Thank you for your reply and taking the time to try and help me.

[livewire]

Hi Guy,

Where are you located, what city and time zone. I am in Sydney.

Cheers

Ian

I am in New York

[Finoh]

Hi Guy,

What comes up for you when I say there is no "I", there never has been and there never will be. It is merely an illusion.

What would be your greatest fear to find out there was no "I". How would you function?

Well that should keep you awake in the wee small hours if you read this before bedtime.

Cheers

Ian

[livewire]

Hi Guy,

What comes up for you when I say there is no "I", there never has been and there never will be. It is merely an illusion.
What comes up is a hopeful lonely feeling. Hopeful that I will no longer have to deal with the BS of the I/me.
Lonely in that I am all alone in this process. No one can do it for me.
What would be your greatest fear to find out there was no "I". How would you function?
That I am totally alone... that's cold I suspect I would function on whatever level it took to survive
Well that should keep you awake in the wee small hours if you read this before bedtime.
Ian, Thanks for your help.
Guy
Cheers

Ian

[Finoh]

Hi Guy,

With the quote function if you are responding to a question you would have the question highlighted only and the answer underneath it. Doing this just makes it a lot easier for me and all the other guides that will be looking at your posts and my posts also.

What comes up is a hopeful lonely feeling. Hopeful that I will no longer have to deal with the BS of the I/me.

Feelings will arise, the problem is labelling them and then believing the label to be true. The BS of the 'I' or 'me' will still arise but this gradually lessons. If it does arise so what, they are merely thoughts and you are not your thoughts.

What would be your greatest fear to find out there was no "I". How would you function?
That I am totally alone... that's cold I suspect I would function on whatever level it took to survive

When you were little did you believe in Santa, Batman, Superman etc, they are the equivalent of the 'I' or 'me', they are not real. When you found out they were not real did your life continue, well that will be the same with the illusion of the 'I' gone.

What we are going to be doing from now on is looking at things from your own direct experience. I have posted a lengthy explanation below of what direct experience is and I want you to read it slowly a few times so you are very clear on it. At the end I will post a few questions for you to look at.

Just so that you clearly understand what I mean, here is an example:

Sit in a chair and close your eyes. Now describe to yourself what you KNOW in the moment, and only what you know. That means look ONLY at true and direct experience, and not any thought stories about the experience.
Do you experience sitting in a chair?
Do you experience sitting?
Do you experience having a body?

An incorrect answer would be. I feel my butt on the chair and hear the sound of birds in the back yard, because you've added the story of a person's butt on a chair, and the story of birds in the back yard, and you haven't even mentioned the running commentary of thought that is also going on all the time.

You have to ignore the thought stories and describe ONLY direct experience.

If you do, you will find that direct experience does not tell you that you are sitting in a chair. Direct experience would be that you would feel pressure on your butt, but without thought (including memory thoughts) telling any story, all you can say is that there is sensation which is interpreted by thought to be coming from your butt. So in actual fact, from direct experiential evidence, and without using thought stories, you can not say that you are sitting on a chair, and you can not even say that you have a butt.

So the correct answer would be that there is just sensation that feels like pressure but can't be located, there's blackness, there are chirping sounds appearing in this blackness, and there are thoughts appearing out of nowhere that are telling a story about the direct experience, and then fading away into nowhere again.

Do you see the major difference between the two versions? One is looking at the thought story about what is being experienced, and the other is reporting only thoughts that can be confirmed by direct experience.

It's this direct experience that you need to stay focused on during this investigation.

Now let's get onto a few more questions.

Probably the biggest thing that causes the sense of a "me" is the idea that there is a thinker of thoughts, and therefore a doer of doing.

If you look at thoughts, do you find that you are the thinker of them? Are you able to stop all thoughts whenever you like? Are you able to decide what the next thought will be? Are you able to decide not to ever have any unhappy thoughts? Close your eyes, take a look, and tell me where thoughts seem to come from - without using anything that you've been told about where thoughts come from. Imagine that you were never told any stories about how thoughts are produced.

Remember that we are looking for DIRECT experience, not a "thought story".

And remember that if you are NOT the thinker of thoughts then thoughts can not be relied upon for the truth, and they also can not be stopped. For that reason there needs to be some intelligent discernment between which thoughts can be confirmed as truth by direct experiential evidence, and which ones are telling stories that can not be verified by such direct experiential evidence.

I've asked you a lot of questions here. Please take your time and try to answer all of them as honestly and accurately as possible.

Cheers

Ian