Hi Floris i do suffer with dyslexia, so long questions i might read wrong. i try again.
Could you imagine that tonight you're going to bed and dream that you're a woman in that dream. I say woman, because I've imaged you identify as a man, and want to create a little contrast. Please imagine what that could look like for a second. Try to imagine it very vividly, like a first-person view (so it's not like you see the backside of the body, but rather that you're looking through the eyes) and just like it is happening in your real time/present time. No need to spend a lot of time at it, just a moment will do. Okay, so when you've imaged that, you can proceed reading. I asked you to imagine this, because in our language we often say things like 'I am this, I am that, etc.' and I would like you to get an idea of what 'being something' in our language actually refers to. What experiences did you imagining being there, in order that you'd say 'I'm a woman'? I can imagine you could have imagined feeling a little different, that there might be a different self-image and thoughts of a past, maybe the voice would be more feminine sounding than usual, maybe you sometimes see a womanhand or so in your visual field. Frankly, I could imagine that the self-image/past thoughts actually contributed most to the idea/sense of being a woman, what do you think? In any case, of whatever you imaged, or could imagine, you might agree that of all the things you imaged to create a woman in your imagination, could be called like a sort of 'womanness'. But.. was there an actual woman there? Did the things you associate with 'being a woman', the womanness, constitute an actual entity that could be called a woman? Perhaps you agree that that is not true, because you could for example change the dream so that you'd now refer to it as being a horse or so, and no actual woman died there. There might have been what we call womanness, but not an actual woman, right? So we may use language to say things like 'I was a woman in my dream', and it is fine to keep this use of language going, but it's not the truth of the matter, right? Okay, so why this exercise, why is this significant? Well, because isn't what you're experiencing right now, what people sometimes refer to as reality, or waking life, not just the same situation as the dream? I asked you to imagine that you were dreaming, and frankly of course you weren't even really dreaming, but I could just have well asked if you could imagine that your experience right now was just transforming like you're becoming a woman. The experience is the same either way, either if you call it dream or waking life or whatever. So.. now in your present experience there might be a voice, certain feelings, thoughts, perceptions that you might associated with being a man, and even more so with being a biological entity, a self, a person, a you, but not an actual entity as such, is there? Perhaps we could say there is a sort of Paulness to the experience, but without an actual Paul?
But was there an actual woman there.
no there was no women there it was my imagination.
Is there a sort of Paulness to the experience, but without an actual Paul.
You could say that, but Paul is was always in the back ground due to the power of the mind not letting go of the body and self.
i hope this is better. i did struggle a bit to pick out the questions out of one big question. if it helps to give you a better picture of me. Paul is a 50 year old male who been meditating for about 6 years and practice vipassana meditation. through vipassana meditation Paul has unprogrammed a lot of information which was put in his mind and knows is not true. Paul is looking for a conscious shift in the mind to see no self. I know Paul is a male because thats a physical side but beyond the physical i know that conscious has no sex type.
thanking you Paul