The Gate

A self is an internal entity separate from everything 'else', enlightenment teaches that no such entity exist and is an illusion created by the ego mind which contracts universal mind on the 'physical organism'. This illusory state of consciousness creates the illusion that there is a separate thinker/ knower.

If you wish to proceed (with me), then please learn to use the quote function: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=660. I'm confident that we can clear things up and look forward seeing your reply.

Wishing you well,
Floris

Hi Floris

Thanks for your reply and your help, I'm quite confident that I can use the quote function and look forward to this self enquiry with you.

Kind regards

Chives

Thanks for your reply and your help, I'm quite confident that I can use the quote function and look forward to this self enquiry with you.

A self is an internal entity separate from everything 'else'

Okay, I think this is a good starting point. So if could take a moment, sit down, relax, close your eyes and take a look at if you can find this internal entity separate from everything else, than what do you find? And what do you make of that (your findings

This internal entity is not a thing I can see or touch like I can see and touch the (body/ objects etc), its a sense of being separate.

I can't feel inside of things in my surroundings therefore Identification is matched with the body because of bodily sensations and because there is private thoughts and emotions that other humans dont have access to.

There is also a story that this internal world of perception, feeling and thinking belongs to an individual that was born and has a family and a life history and personal attributes etc.

Is this sense of being separate a person/separate entity, or an indication that there is one, or is it just a sense/feeling? Please give me your thought

okay good. (Just to be clear, I'm just going to talk about your experience now.) And what if, just for the sake of getting a different perspective on that we take a bit of a small step back, and say what you experience are thoughts, sensations, sights, sounds, smells, tastes. Agreed, yes? The surroundings you experience, are pretty much either sights, or sounds, yes? So now, do other humans have access to your sights or sounds, or they have their own sights and sounds? So with this in mind, could you rethink what you wrote and write about it again (like another version/try of what you already wrote here)?

Wow, really love it how accurately you define/describe the assumptions about what it's like to be a self. And can you find any evidence or anything that suggests that feeling and thinking belongs to an individual that was born, personal attributes and all that? And again, can you find anything that these feelings and thoughts should/would then belong to (for example the individual)?

It feels like an indication as there is reference to me. Everyone that I know or get to know refers to this body as chives therefore this mind as no other way of thinking of the body other than being chives and how they relate to it. I don't know how others relate to the world, but I know how this organism does.

Others don't have access to these thoughts as noone reacts to anything i think or imagine, If someone asks me about an experience its because they didnt experience it themselves, since I can only experience things from this body. I would say other people have their own internal experiences as they also tell me about whats going on in their mind and tell me about their experiences that I haven't experienced.

Everybody in my environment confirmed that I was separate they gave me a name and treated me a certain way based on how I turned out, If i was sensitive they would be nicer to me or bully me depending on how they wanted to relate to me. I feel that I was born because their comes a point in my past where I can't go any further back

Yes, understood. What I wanted to get at is, that you said in a prior message that you have your own experiences such as sensations and thoughts that others don't have access to. My point there was that others actually also don't have access to your sights and sounds either. I imagine you must be what we could call 'sitting in a room' right now, and so if you look around there, you might have the idea that others also experience that room. However, what you refer to as that room is just what you're seeing. People might externalize what they're seeing as it's something that exists independed of them, but that's actually not quite accurate. And what you're seeing, that part of your experience, others don't see (they don't see your experience). So actually everything you're experiencing is a private experience, so to speak. You get what I mean?

Okay, thank you. I'd like to ask you to do this question again, and now confirm it with your own experience. For example, can you find any experience, can you pinpoint any experience, and say 'this thing right here, is the individual'

That is very true You could say my own phenomenal experience is my own private universe, but I see others that look similar to me and they also intersect my universe as they can see what i see and hear what I hear externally, or if they touch something I touch they can also report the same sensation. I would say their universe runs parallel to mine and can experience the same phenomena when they clash, although it might be experienced slightly differently depending on the conditions of their phenomenal bubble or universe, for example colour blind people have limited shades of colour that I dont have because their universe is different but, we both have an experience that is similar enough that we can cross reference our realities to define an objective one

I can't seem to refer to myself without referring to a story, pain is arising therefore I want this experience to be different, pleasure is arising therefore I want this to continue. I think about my experience and how it relates to my organism what this means for the organism is it good or bad, do i need to improve or do something differently. Since I am this way i have to behave this way to compensate for that. I'm not good enough because I did this, I'm a bad person because i did this etc.

And how has it come to be that these thoughts or beliefs about being able to be either a good or bad person come from? Could it be because of other peoples judgements, that probably begun in childhood by parents?

You say that you can't refer to yourself without referring to a story. Is it true that what you think you are IS that story? And are there feelings, that might have a sort 'me-ness' feel in the body, related to these stories? And is that story actually you, or is that story actually not more you than any other story in your mind?

I don't feel like i am the content of the story but the one that it is attributed to and living it, I'm on a timeline and things happen to this organism and this organism achieves and attains and behaves in a certain way. This story isnt fixed if i talk through my problems with friends or family or a therapist, they can recontextualise it and a different narrative is told.

This story is a survival strategy if i let go of it then something awful could happen, I could repeat some of the selfish things ive done that I feel bad about.

If I feel guilty its because maybe i acted selfishly or inappropriately. If i'm angry its because i was mistreated. If im sad its because my relationships with others haven't worked out.

Without a story I don't know what decision would be made, would this organism be able to keep itself safe? would it end up homeless because I didn't listen to the story as to how to behave. This organism could even become hitler. The story is safety, its anticipating whats coming next. This story is who I am and how I navigate life, at least thats how it appears.

Okay. If I make ask you to do a little exercise: please take a moment and sit or lay down quitely and close your eyes. Then, ask yourself or investigate, if there is anything there that could be called an organism, or something that indicates that there is such an organism. I understand, of course, there might be thoughts and/or assumptions, that may talk about an organism. But if you, just for now, would just check this with your own experience, than what do you find and also what do you think about your findings? For example, maybe the attention goes towards the space where sensations abide, and thoughts may come up about there being a body there, but what is actually experientially found? I might give my thoughts on that, but first would like to hear your interpretation.

I would agree that sometimes we make choices and then afterwards look back and don't like what we did. Then we may want to do it different, and be for example a little more kind next time. I would think that when you let go of identifying with a story that is weighing you down, you would actually feel much better, and then feel much freer to express yourself in a way that resonates with your 'natural state', and you wouldn't really or maybe not at all do things that would feel not right to you. 'right' and 'wrong' are judgements from the mind, and I would suggest you don't need those in order to be kind, caring, etc.

These statements say that the way you feel is caused by outside situations. Does it resonate when I say that what you feel isn't caused by outside situations but rather by the way you think about it/see the situation, and that you can choose the way you think/relate to the situation and thus control the way you feel?

Or maybe Hitler did the things he did, because of all the stories he had spinning in his mind? Did you ever see a baby (no stories there) that expressed a lot of anger or violence? I would suggest to not worry about not identifying so much with the story. This isn't about vanishing your memories, but rather to get a little distance from it. Don't you think that would feel lighter?

The identity of being an organism exists within thought, when I dream the mind dissolves and there is no thought of being a human just dream appearances. The bodily sensations aren't me but, the mind says they belong to me, i'm feeling them. The mind creates the sense of being a permanent organism by remembering the past and trying to predict the future.

It is definitely story telling that would make me more likely to be angry or violent, but even with angry thoughts when it comes to facing the issue the mind gives up on the aggressive option. I guess the mind just likes imagining scenarios just in case the worst case scenario happens, its rehearsal. I live in an imaginary future and past.

Its definitely a choice, and I know it makes me miserable and dysfunctional to a degree and that my mind would be peaceful if i let go of it, but the hard part is unwiring all of the positions that have been given to me by society and peers.

Indeed, the mind does not like not knowing though , these judgements and stories hold my reality together. Taking a leap of faith and trusting reality would free me from being this restricted person that only filters how to behave through a narrative. I'd say the narrative does more harm than good, what does the mind know about such matters?

Great. You say thoughts say the sensations belong to you, because you feel them. Could that actually be just as arbitrary as seeing sounds belong to you, because you're hearing them?
Just to make sure this is clear here is a sort of exercise. Could you imagine that you're dreaming and being, the opposite sex, a woman, in that dream. I say woman, because (I'm actually not sure) I've imagined you're a man. After you've imagined shortly on what that experience would be like, my question is: what does that mean, being a woman? What experiences are you imagining being there, in order that we say 'I'm a woman'? I can imagine you'd imagine feeling a little different, that there might be a different self-image, maybe the voice would be different, maybe you sometimes see a womanhand or so in your visual field. These are things we associate with being a woman, right. But is there an actual woman there, is any of these things you're imagining with womanness an actual woman entity, or do these experiences associated with womanness combine to create an actual entity? That would mean that certain experiences combines are an actual entity. And isn't what you're experiencing right now, not just the same. There might be a voice, certain feelings, thoughts, perceptions that are associated with being a Chives/person/entity, but not an actual entity as such?

Yes. The mind can prefer clinging to negative or false ideas, just because .. heck, I don't even really know why. Some thoughts can come up when thinking about releasing such clingings, that suggest it's safer to stay clinging. But when thinking about that, that doesn't actually make much sense, would you agree?

Yes, it can definitely take a while, but it can also be experienced as quite exciting to notice more and more assumptions and thoughts arise that don't really resonate. Just noticing can be enough to release it, and sometimes choosing a thought that feels better than the one that previously came up can go a long way too. But you've already been releasing some conditioning in our talk I would say, and that went quite easily.

I think that sounds good. Could it be that you would experience yourself as nothing in particular without those stories? Perhaps that would feel quite pleasant and free?