The Gate

LU is focused guiding for seeing there is no real, inherent 'self' - what do you understand by this?
In theory the self is a compound of sensory information, feelings, emotions and thoughts, that is wrapped up in a thought that labels the compound as "I". Then the compoundness is forgotten. In experience it is s strange mixture or overlay between an observer position and sensory-emotion-feel. But there confusion starts.

What are you looking for at LU?
I was here 3 years ago after a very significant experience I had. I wanted to commit, but many things held me back then. Today I am quite desperate. After a thorough inner high, which lasted for almost a year I dropped into a depressive period. I came to realize that I am stuck in a strange state between periods of being in an observer-like position, periods of totally bound in an I-state (normal) and glimpses of something like an overlay, a lofty wide angle perception, a shadow of my experience I had which all of this got started. In 2016 I expected to have massive problems with the (intellectual) implication of no-self in regards to ethics and capabilities to love. Kind of: What for then? Whats the sense of life. That is all gone today. I am ready to go, I want to break through.

I am looking for
- Truth
- A non bullshit way to sort things out for myself without belief into somebody else's promises
- Trust in my experiences
- a verification of supposedly no-self experiences

What do you expect from a guided conversation?
I expect to commit to practice into Looking and to be cut off when I start to intellectualize everything. I need a guide who can do this. I expect to being called out when I want to wiggle myself out of things. (that is actually one of the orchestrated voice-patterns, "I saying to myself: "Zeno you have to do this or that")
I need desperatley somebody with me in this whole mess which can point out gaps and give hints. Lastly I want to either affirm or stabilize a liberated view or if all what happened is still bullshit, to get there.

What is your experience in terms of spiritual practices, seeking and inquiry?
In a sense I am a specialist of thoughts. This attitude of having superior knowledge was an osbtacle for most of my 40 years of life to address questions of spirituality.
But there was always a longing to god, the big Other or whatever. The first cracks in my thought driven structure appeared when I started to discover that I have a body with sensations with the help of martial arts training.
Meanwhile I studied Buddhist theory, but could never subscribe to a teacher or guru or whatever. I was very hesitant to start meditation. I understood that practice is important and theory will not help, but I guess there is fear of loosing something, a certain naivety - or maybe a certain sense of life?
After my experience I had some changes too. I had a very thorough experience with a past life regression that eradicated a lot of my fear of death (lost fear of heights, spider phobia as well etc.). But this was just a partial success. I also did a lot of psychotherapy/body therapy that involves looking inside and discern certain sense/feel/emotional complexes and habits and dissolve them. Many did not come back.
I read almost 3 years feverishly through tons and tons of books and started and later stopped meditation but without having a teacher or a group (symptoms got worse). I stopped meditation (in total maybe 100 hours) as I had strange symptoms and got frightened to go further without a guide.

On a scale from 1 to 10, how willing are you to question any currently held beliefs about 'self?
11

Hi Zeno
My name is Sioned and I can guide you if you'd like that.
I'm not sure from what you write whether you have already done the LU process - can you let me know?
And what happened if you did?
x

Hi Sioned, thanks so much to offer guiding me! I am really really thankful.

Yes I have been here before and registered, but since I only entered a 4 from 10 back then, to the question of how serious it is for me to go through the process, I had a brief conversation with Robin and was convinced that it is yet not the time. Mostly it was due to a fear that I will loose something. I needed to convince myself that I do not compromise ethics and love (universal). That took a while, but the fear has almost gone.

However, I read the guides here and did some exercises and more than once, strange things occured in perception. But never it is stable and It is hard to know what is what. Sometimes it ends in a quiet abiding, sometimes in an observerlike interpreter, sometimes I feel like i double or triple (like in a mirror cabinet), most times it lasts for short time and then I merge back to the usual centered head position, looking out and beeing me and do stuff like the last 47 years.

Ok, thanks for clarifying that.
Have you read the introductory info?

Ok, thanks for clarifying that.
Have you read the introductory info?

I read gateless gatecrashers back the maybe rwo times but not recently. I read https://www.liberationunleashed.com/about/faq/ and some other things of what to expect and what this forum is not about. Is that what you mean by introductory info?

Yes, that's it.
Let's look at hopes and fears next. What are your expectations of this work?

I guess it is mostly about insights, what exactly it is that I am experiencing when I have glimpses of some other perspective, that might operate without the self. I guess the glimpse characteristic makes clear that there are still a lot of doubts. I would say: both about subjective and objective bias. Objective: I am a phd trained physicist. Itrained a lot to defend the objective characteristic of the world. When objectivity blends into the subjective, some rigidity of the material side is lost and that infuses resistance in me (I am not talking theory here but perception through the senses). Subjective: there seem to be more than one subjective layer of perception. Took me e.g a long time to realize that thinking is not only talk, but also imagining. now it is so obvious, but for me it was not for almpst 2 years after I discovered the inner talk thing going on. It seems tricky to be sure that my mind is not actually still deceiving me about a supposedly no-self experience.
So I expect to loose doubts, to clarify what Is experienced when looking and if These glimpses are, what liberation is about, to get more stable in it. Even the glimpses made me so much more relaxed and less reactive to irritation without loosing compassion.
Besides, although no spirituality is necessary (faq), this is also a spiritual question for me and clarity with seeing through the self compound would be very helpful!

Thanks!

Ok, lets explore that further...
Say this aloud to yourself three times:
There is no separate self at all in reality. No agent that is in charge, no manager, no watcher, no owner of life; all there is is life flowing freely as one movement.

Watch, wait, notice, write- what comes up?
Let me know what you find
x

Ok. I did that a couple of times over my day. In the beginning there was an intellectual reaction within thought that resulted in a constricted body sensation in the upper breast area. Like revulsion or disgust does, but less strong. The intellectual issue is that if there is no actor, what happens to ethics? Who is responsible and what happens to responsibility? if there is no actor, then there is no intention and no free will, hence what happens to good and bad and all that? That is in a sense unacceptable, really totally unacceptable. Look, I am German and there was the holocaust. Does holocaust „flow freely as one movemt“? Really that was my thought (inner voice was seen as the voice thing when thinking that). And that makes me revolt. Yeah maybe it is more like when rebelling, like in teenager times, that feeling of a very strong rightousness that centers every perception and thinking. Like stomping a foot (innerly) to make a point.

But then there is that switch to a different perspective, that happened more often after repeating the sentence and later in the day. Very Relaxed. Mostly during the Part about free flowing. View becomes more wide angeled, and the view field broadens. Visual depth is also slightly enhance, it is as if there is both a separation from immersion in reality and at the same moment a full drop into it, like a complete blend over. Maybe it is a fast switching. The sense of an observer and no observer seems to oscillate rapidly. Really hard to describe, it is all mostly visual. But tthe inner voice stops for awhile and therefore the critical voice is incapable to analyse. No imagery involved as well. Therefore the revulsion Or revolt feeling/emotion cannot come up and is not there until thought in form of inner voice comes back and comments on the absurdity and the huge problem of there beeing no actor.

Then back to normal. Hmm, stuck.

Hi Zeno
Thanks for exploring that. There's a mix of noticing direct experience and thoughts there, isn't there? In this work, I am only interesting in your direct experiences - that is, what you experience through the senses. Thinking won't help. I'll be steering you back to this over and over. It's simple, in essence, but it can be hard to get the hang of initially, particularly if you're very much a thinking type (as I suspect you are).

Putting it another way - it is important to realize that looking and thinking are not the same.
For example, if I asked you to describe what is behind your back right now, you can answer from memory- thinking, or you can turn the head around and see, then describe what is there as you see it. In this work you need to look in your experience and forget all you know, all you think is true, all you heard or read. Trust your direct experience.
Make sense so far?
When I put something in bold, it's something I want you to respond to
Sioned

Yes it makes sense. But :) there is this voice pattern thinking and this imaginative thinking. And there seems to be another deeper layer of thinking. E.g. when I see a war movie It hurts to see other people suffering, it is a visceral reaction, but it is interpretive, isn't it? Is that also thinking? I guess I do not get really what thinking is except the analytical voice thing, that I can see and sometimes stops.

What makes sense though is in general to trust the primary sensual evidence, without abstract layers.

Good.
So back to the sentence your repeated to yourself... Try it once more. Does any fear arise?

Definitely yes. A panicked sensation, not much but there (neck area, throat, inner almost back heart). Like when standning in safe distance but still close to a cliff. A more head centered alertness is also there.

Strangely also sadness.