The Gate

LU is focused guiding for seeing there is no real, inherent 'self' - what do you understand by this?
Becoming clear about that any experience of self is dependent on conditions, essential amongst them, identification with certain thought processes. Becoming free from the suffering that comes from clinging to self centered thinking.

What are you looking for at LU?
Freedom from suffering entailed in identification with/belief in separate self. Not looking for freedom from pain or freedom from emotions, but freedom from the suffering that comes with self-centered/ego identified living, essentially in the forms of self centered greed, aversion and ignorance.

What do you expect from a guided conversation?
I hope for help to let go of self-centered, greed, aversion and ignorance centered living, through a clear seeing through the selfing-illusions that maintain these. I want to see if a guide who works with the fetter model here, can support me in seeing through thought-identification and to live more in touch with reality.

What is your experience in terms of spiritual practices, seeking and inquiry?
I have much practice behind me. I am a clinical psychologist, who works with mindfulness and mindfulness informed experiential dynamic therapy. I have practice background in the traditions of Japanese Zen, Thai forrest Theravada tradition and more.

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

Hi,

We don't guide the Ten Fetters here, only point to seeing no self. Usually, Fetter 2, Doubt and Fetter 3, Rites & Rituals fall at the same time. Once that happens, we can invite you to a group that works with the rest of the Fetters.

Hi Anastacia, thanks. Was told by someone who knows the community that some guides work with the fetter model and that I could express in my opening that I hope for one of those.
When a guide invites me to start the work I will take it from there.

Hi,

We don't guide the Ten Fetters here, only point to seeing no self. Usually, Fetter 2, Doubt and Fetter 3, Rites & Rituals fall at the same time. Once that happens, we can invite you to a group that works with the rest of the Fetters.

More context: I am 42. At age 17 I saw that any conception-bound sense of I or anything else is not reality itself. This was a great liberation and changed my life. It was clearly a return to deeper truth, beyond mind conceptions. Months later difficulty related to selfing, clinging and aversion came back, but it was always seen differently, even without that being conceptualized, kinda like habit patterns out of control. When I look I do not see any separate or independent self. There is a sense of I in the ordinary state. however, it is not seen as an independent separate self. When I look into what that is, it is essentially an open-ended sense of caring-awareness responsiivity without baunderies, not limited to or identified with conceptions. No experience or conception is trusted to be final. I do not find an independent let alone conceptual doer or chooser. There is a sense of not knowing the ultimate nature of anything, and that there is an ongoing process of learning to understand and live in harmony with movements of mind, emotion, life, etc. There is an ongoing forgetting and remembering mindfulness/non-identification. There is still a lot of investment in dreams and wonderings about self and future; there is definitly an orienting towards truth and a wish for more healing, happiness and clarity to come, etc. I have not excluded the possibility of the existence a soul, which is something not equal to the conceptual person. There is still a wish to maximize understanding and safety for the person and the personal. As a clinical psychologist by profession there is a process of clarifying the relation between seeing through illusions of self and healing through non-resistant acknowledgement of and compassionate understanding for what conventionally are called the personal patterns. I am hoping a process with a guide here can make the liberation, wisdom and care in seeing reality more thorough. I will work with the guide who chooses to work with me.

Hi Elad,
and welcome to Liberation Unleashed, glad you make it here.
I'm Luchana and I can walk with you if you want?

Thank you for your patience waiting for a guide and for clarifications and the beautiful description of your experience.
As Stacy mentioned above - in this forum we are guiding to see experientially and not only intellectually that there is no inherent, separate self, I, me in any form or shape. I understand that you are keen to so called fetters, honestly I'm not so much into that. "Fetters" are a map, a concept, and like ALL other concepts and maps they are just a helpful tool, nothing more.
I am kindly inviting you to relax and trust the process for it is already started.

So can you tell me what is the direct experience of the self when you looked at it directly right now?

And where is its precious location?

Sending love,
Luchana

Dear Luchana,

Thank you for this message and for walking with me, I would really like that. I agree with you about models being at best helpful tools, and the main thing I am interested in, is direct truth and clarity.

When I look into what the self is, right now, I find tactile and visual perceptions conventionally associated with me, and thoughts conventionally associated with me. None of these are inherently a permanent or independent self, none of these are inherently me or mine. I do not find any clearly boundraded location for myself. I see the conventional sense of locating/identifying me with bodily sensations, visual experience of me in relation to the room, thoughts about Elad and so forth, but this is not a singular exact location, or an ultimately self-existing me. When I look for "what is the unchanging experiencer across experiences", I do not find anything. I can get in touch with a sense open-ended preverbal knowing-caring, but it doesn't have a location or boundaries, or is inherently a separate me. I also cannot find a clearly seperate initiator of actions or a chooser of choices, all though the experience/conviction that there is one, is operating most of the time.

Where does this leave me? With a sense that if I am really honest I do not know what I am or what reality is, beyond understandings that are useful on the relative/conventional level. There is a peace that comes with not believing my thoughts to be reality itself. I wouldn't say for me this means that there is no I or no self, but rather that experience of I is dependent and changing (including dependent on thoughts) rather then independent, stable and self-existing.

I wonder if there is something I can clarify further here. These things opened for me at age 17 after a period of deep looking into the nature of reality on my own, culminating in liberating realization that reality is beyond all thought and definitions. After a period of some months of contentment and appreciation, patterns of self-clinging returned. There has been a process ever since.

On a practical level, I still find that a lot of my thinking and actions are centered on navigating and understanding myself and my life in the most helpful way, and that the experience/conviction in myself as a separate self and actor is still there most of the time, not as something rationally believed to be an ultimate or verifiable truth, but still emotionally held. Maybe can be compared to, that you can rationally know your kids are not more important than other peoples kids, but to you they emotionally are (I don't have kids, just an analogy).

I look forward to hear from you! Warmly,
Elad

Hi Elad,
and welcome to Liberation Unleashed, glad you make it here.
I'm Luchana and I can walk with you if you want?

Thank you for your patience waiting for a guide and for clarifications and the beautiful description of your experience.
As Stacy mentioned above - in this forum we are guiding to see experientially and not only intellectually that there is no inherent, separate self, I, me in any form or shape. I understand that you are keen to so called fetters, honestly I'm not so much into that. "Fetters" are a map, a concept, and like ALL other concepts and maps they are just a helpful tool, nothing more.
I am kindly inviting you to relax and trust the process for it is already started.

So can you tell me what is the direct experience of the self when you looked at it directly right now?

And where is its precious location?

Sending love,
Luchana

I want to add this: In 2012 during a Tibetan Buddhist retreat there was another strong moment. The teacher was doing unfindabilty inquiry, I.e. demonstrating that he cannot truly find the I anywhere in the mind or the body. At one particular moment it clicked for me, that he (I.e. the teacher I imagined) could not be found in the body. I started roaring with laughter, with the relief and sense that almost all the struggle and pain in life is based on a misunderstanding, so strong it looked like both the teacher and other people got afraid. I collected myself, and there was a feeling of gratitude for the teachings of no-self. Yet, I believe that almost instantly that was reframed as an experience I had, and the clarity of the moment was soon lost. I tried to talk about it with the teacher, weeks later, but the clarity didn't fully (re-)establish. So if I am fully honest it seems like that all though there have been these experiences of (1) reality NOT EQUAL any thoughts about reality, (2) imagined self NOT EQUAL the actual body and mind - and experience of liberation in these have been tasted a lot of times, I do not live most of the time with clear experience of this. Espceially not with (2), the one about no-self. I still live most of the time as if body and mind is me. And I do not have confidence in what all this means and what kind of liberation in day to day life it can really entail.

As I look at the hands writing, it makes sense to say its just hand's writing, not the imagination of I/Elad and that these thoughts/sentences forming right now are just thoughts and sentences forming right now, not what I imagine as I or Elad. The hands and thoughts are part of the total whole experience, that does not have a separate self driving it. I will keep looking into what is really there in simple experience (thoughts, sensations, feelings) and the difference between that and the imagination of me being the person who is doing all that. See if it can become clear that it is not the same and that the me is only an imagination.

Appreciate you taking the time to read and support this process. Goodnight.

Hi Elad,
and welcome to Liberation Unleashed, glad you make it here.
I'm Luchana and I can walk with you if you want?

Thank you for your patience waiting for a guide and for clarifications and the beautiful description of your experience.
As Stacy mentioned above - in this forum we are guiding to see experientially and not only intellectually that there is no inherent, separate self, I, me in any form or shape. I understand that you are keen to so called fetters, honestly I'm not so much into that. "Fetters" are a map, a concept, and like ALL other concepts and maps they are just a helpful tool, nothing more.
I am kindly inviting you to relax and trust the process for it is already started.

So can you tell me what is the direct experience of the self when you looked at it directly right now?

And where is its precious location?

Sending love,
Luchana

Hi Elad,
thank you for your replies. I'm so touched by your honesty openness and willingness.

I read carefully both of your messages and here is where I would like to focus as a beginning

I want to add this: In 2012 during a Tibetan Buddhist retreat there was another strong moment. The teacher was doing unfindabilty inquiry, I.e. demonstrating that he cannot truly find the I anywhere in the mind or the body. At one particular moment it clicked for me, that he (I.e. the teacher I imagined) could not be found in the body. I started roaring with laughter, with the relief and sense that almost all the struggle and pain in life is based on a misunderstanding, so strong it looked like both the teacher and other people got afraid

and

I wonder if there is something I can clarify further here. These things opened for me at age 17 after a period of deep looking into the nature of reality on my own, culminating in liberating realization that reality is beyond all thought and definitions. After a period of some months of contentment and appreciation, patterns of self-clinging returned. There has been a process ever since.

These are beautiful experiences and like all other beautiful experience they came and then leave. What we are looking for is not an experience, nor a state to abide in. States are subject to change, inevitably. What we are looking is very simple - there is no separate entity which thinks, decides, chooses and control life.

And of course when experience is pleasant we are so much drown to It, we don't want to let go that and we compare everything which is happening here now with that experience and what happens - it never matches it.

So clinging to past experiences is a tough work, because we can't see freshly what is here now in this very moment. And the simple truth is that what is here now in this very moment is everything. without the belief that I am separate from that.

How does it feel to read this? Is there any resistance?

On a practical level, I still find that a lot of my thinking and actions are centered on navigating and understanding myself and my life in the most helpful way, and that the experience/conviction in myself as a separate self and actor is still there most of the time, not as something rationally believed to be an ultimate or verifiable truth, but still emotionally held. Maybe can be compared to, that you can rationally know your kids are not more important than other peoples kids, but to you they emotionally are (I don't have kids, just an analogy).

All right.


Tell me what are you doing precisely in order to think?

How do you make a thought into existence?

Appreciate you taking the time to read and support this process. Goodnight.

You are most welcome. It is a joy really.

Sending love,
Luchana

ps. Thursday 11th of May there will be a zoom meeting and if there is an impulse to join let me know. I will send you details via mail.

Thank you so much for your kind answer Luchana. Here is my answer to your questions:

1) How do I feel reading "here and now is everything there is, without the belief in a separate self" and do I feel resistance? Maybe a little discomfort, a little resistance. I derive comfort from imagining a bright(er) future, and also sometimes find benefit in looking at memories. At the same time I know past and future are only experienced now, and are part of the now. So logically I know there is no contradiction, no contradiction between now is everything and imagining brighter future and learning from memories and etc. Alongside all this there is a wish first and foremost to be alligned with truth. I am willing to let go of any untruths. So another answer would be that reading that I do not feel very much and it doesn't clearly change anything. I agree with it.

2) What do I do to think? How do I create a thought? In direct experience here and now I do not create thoughts and do not do something to think. Thinking happens alongside all other experiencing. When I am engaged in solving a problem or attending to something, it feels as if I am doing it. But if I stop for a moment and look without thinking where thinking comes from, it is a process that happens by itself.

3) I am not sure you asked - but its closed to your first question: I do feel some resistance at the thought that I do not exist as a separate person who can choose and act. There is some kind of enjoyment in the sense of being independent and capable of choosing and creating. Even though I don't hold it as being the case. I hold the position of not knowing and engaging shifting experiences pragmatically - what seems to work and help. At the same time I want to know and align with truth, I am willing to face whatever it takes to be clearly aligned with truth and love.

Did I respond to all your questions? I do not want to avoid anything and also here to face whatever blindspots and resistances I might have.

Again, much appreciation for you walking with me.

Hi Elad,
thank you for your replies. I'm so touched by your honesty openness and willingness.

I read carefully both of your messages and here is where I would like to focus as a beginning

I want to add this: In 2012 during a Tibetan Buddhist retreat there was another strong moment. The teacher was doing unfindabilty inquiry, I.e. demonstrating that he cannot truly find the I anywhere in the mind or the body. At one particular moment it clicked for me, that he (I.e. the teacher I imagined) could not be found in the body. I started roaring with laughter, with the relief and sense that almost all the struggle and pain in life is based on a misunderstanding, so strong it looked like both the teacher and other people got afraid

and

I wonder if there is something I can clarify further here. These things opened for me at age 17 after a period of deep looking into the nature of reality on my own, culminating in liberating realization that reality is beyond all thought and definitions. After a period of some months of contentment and appreciation, patterns of self-clinging returned. There has been a process ever since.

These are beautiful experiences and like all other beautiful experience they came and then leave. What we are looking for is not an experience, nor a state to abide in. States are subject to change, inevitably. What we are looking is very simple - there is no separate entity which thinks, decides, chooses and control life.

And of course when experience is pleasant we are so much drown to It, we don't want to let go that and we compare everything which is happening here now with that experience and what happens - it never matches it.

So clinging to past experiences is a tough work, because we can't see freshly what is here now in this very moment. And the simple truth is that what is here now in this very moment is everything. without the belief that I am separate from that.

How does it feel to read this? Is there any resistance?

On a practical level, I still find that a lot of my thinking and actions are centered on navigating and understanding myself and my life in the most helpful way, and that the experience/conviction in myself as a separate self and actor is still there most of the time, not as something rationally believed to be an ultimate or verifiable truth, but still emotionally held. Maybe can be compared to, that you can rationally know your kids are not more important than other peoples kids, but to you they emotionally are (I don't have kids, just an analogy).

All right.


Tell me what are you doing precisely in order to think?

How do you make a thought into existence?

Appreciate you taking the time to read and support this process. Goodnight.

You are most welcome. It is a joy really.

Sending love,
Luchana

ps. Thursday 11th of May there will be a zoom meeting and if there is an impulse to join let me know. I will send you details via mail.

"What we are looking is very simple - there is no separate entity which thinks, decides, chooses and control life."

To be completely honest, I do not have a clear experience of a separate entity thinking and choosing and etc. It's not even fully clear to me to what degree I have or don't have a conviction that a seperate entitiy exists. Here are some things that do seem clear to me:

1) That I have special investment in Elad, in comparison with most other phenomena

2) That in direct experience I find nothing independent and absolutely separate

3) That when looking for "what is not changing across experience" I connect to a sense of open-(capacity-for)-caring-knowing without boundaries and form, which in a sense can feel like "the innermost me", but logically there is no reason to call it me.

4) That the "storying" of Elad clearly serves many purposes, and also that the storying can be more or less functional and realistic in the relative sense. That is part of the difference between certain type of psychotic or disturbed persons and a psychologically healthy person.

Hi Elad,
thank you for your replies. I'm so touched by your honesty openness and willingness.

I read carefully both of your messages and here is where I would like to focus as a beginning

I want to add this: In 2012 during a Tibetan Buddhist retreat there was another strong moment. The teacher was doing unfindabilty inquiry, I.e. demonstrating that he cannot truly find the I anywhere in the mind or the body. At one particular moment it clicked for me, that he (I.e. the teacher I imagined) could not be found in the body. I started roaring with laughter, with the relief and sense that almost all the struggle and pain in life is based on a misunderstanding, so strong it looked like both the teacher and other people got afraid

and

I wonder if there is something I can clarify further here. These things opened for me at age 17 after a period of deep looking into the nature of reality on my own, culminating in liberating realization that reality is beyond all thought and definitions. After a period of some months of contentment and appreciation, patterns of self-clinging returned. There has been a process ever since.

These are beautiful experiences and like all other beautiful experience they came and then leave. What we are looking for is not an experience, nor a state to abide in. States are subject to change, inevitably. What we are looking is very simple - there is no separate entity which thinks, decides, chooses and control life.

And of course when experience is pleasant we are so much drown to It, we don't want to let go that and we compare everything which is happening here now with that experience and what happens - it never matches it.

So clinging to past experiences is a tough work, because we can't see freshly what is here now in this very moment. And the simple truth is that what is here now in this very moment is everything. without the belief that I am separate from that.

How does it feel to read this? Is there any resistance?

On a practical level, I still find that a lot of my thinking and actions are centered on navigating and understanding myself and my life in the most helpful way, and that the experience/conviction in myself as a separate self and actor is still there most of the time, not as something rationally believed to be an ultimate or verifiable truth, but still emotionally held. Maybe can be compared to, that you can rationally know your kids are not more important than other peoples kids, but to you they emotionally are (I don't have kids, just an analogy).

All right.


Tell me what are you doing precisely in order to think?

How do you make a thought into existence?

Appreciate you taking the time to read and support this process. Goodnight.

You are most welcome. It is a joy really.

Sending love,
Luchana

ps. Thursday 11th of May there will be a zoom meeting and if there is an impulse to join let me know. I will send you details via mail.

[/quote]

Let me know if I am writing too much. Here is a little more that comes to me:

I can see in direct experience that "I" is a thought. And - and here I seem to disagree with some of what is written in Gate Crashers, but not disagree with Buddha Dharma - seems to me everything else then direct reality is a thought. A chair or a hand is also a thought. Maybe even the sense perceptions are some very basic kind of thought. But pragmatically speaking I can separate direct experience reality from thoughts. "I" is a thought. "Chair" is a thought. Then there is direct experience. I cannot say anything about direct experience. The moment I speak about it, it is thoughts.

I can experience the sense of value in noticing primary reality and the difference between that and thoughts including "I". And I believe this is the insight I more or less had at age 17 - I am not at all sure its fair to call that just an experience, the sense that direct reality is something else then thoughts was never lost, even though some of the accompanying emotions of course were transitory.

Yet - it doesn't feel clear to me that this changes my reality in obvious big ways in practical terms. In practical terms I will keep using chairs and I will keep taking care of "my life", putting more energy into it, than the life of people I pass in the street. The fact that I recognize it is not direct reality doesn't suddenly deeply change my relation with things on the relative level. And also, the fact that I and Elad are thoughts, doesn't change that the stories about "I" and "Elad can be precise and useful in the relative, like the understanding of chair, or they can be deluded - like thinking I am Batman or that the chair is a dragon. The story of Elad holds a different level of validity in the relative, then the fiction of Batman.

So where does all this leave me? I feel the benefit of attending to direct reality (which I cannot say anything about) and the difference between that and thought/reflected reality, and remembering that "I" and "Elad" are stories. I will keep doing that. Yet I don't have a sense this will change anything very much now, rather than just be a continuation of the realization at age 17. I imagine if I did not have that realization at age 17, and much clarification that followed after, then all these topics would be more fundamentally new.

I am wondering if it is possible for me with your guidance to see something more clear or fundamental then the above.

Warmly,
Elad

Hi Elad,

Let me know if I am writing too much. Here is a little more that comes to me:

It is ok, I'm asking simple questions and you have to look and reply from experience. My job here so to speak is to help you describe the experience without going into the habitual thinking. Most of your answers are coming from thinking and not looking, but that's ok. We all do that, it feels "normal". When we look we see the difference.

So if I ask a simple question what is the colour of your socks you are wearing today

you have two ways to come up with an answer:

• You can have a think about it, you can think back to this morning and try to remember putting your socks on, and you can probably tell me what colour you think they are.

• Alternatively, you can take a quick look at your socks and tell me what colour they actually are.

Hopefully you would agree that you can only be 100% certain by looking.

For the purpose of our dialogue together, it is going to be very important that you are clear about this difference. Knowing is about knowledge which is all in the mind and we are not interested in that. We are only interested in looking at and seeing what is actually going on in your present moment to moment experience. We are only interested in your direct experience in the moment.

Can you see the difference between thinking about something and looking directly at experience?

I can see in direct experience that "I" is a thought. And - and here I seem to disagree with some of what is written in Gate Crashers, but not disagree with Buddha Dharma - seems to me everything else then direct reality is a thought. A chair or a hand is also a thought. Maybe even the sense perceptions are some very basic kind of thought. But pragmatically speaking I can separate direct experience reality from thoughts. "I" is a thought. "Chair" is a thought. Then there is direct experience. I cannot say anything about direct experience. The moment I speak about it, it is thoughts.

Mmmm so this doesn't mean that we can't speak and communicate no?
We have 5 senses + thought (but not what is a thought about, not their content)
When I ask about the colour of your sock - you look, see the colour and reply.
Is it very, very, very simple.

So where does all this leave me? I feel the benefit of attending to direct reality (which I cannot say anything about) and the difference between that and thought/reflected reality, and remembering that "I" and "Elad" are stories. I will keep doing that. Yet I don't have a sense this will change anything very much now, rather than just be a continuation of the realization at age 17. I imagine if I did not have that realization at age 17, and much clarification that followed after, then all these topics would be more fundamentally new.

I am wondering if it is possible for me with your guidance to see something more clear or fundamental then the above.

Are you willing to put aside all you think you know and simply look?


Sending love,
Luchana

ps. Again a kind reminder that there is a meeting today, you can come and we can look at this together.
Message me at luchanauzunova@gmail.com for details

Hi Luchana

I will focus on what I can see with you here, rather then what you might not understand with me.

I can look at my sucks. I can see the color they have conventionally is grey plus a few other colors in spots and etc. The difference between thinking and perceiving, conventionally speaking, is clear to me.

The name grey is just a name, when I call my socks grey, in reality it is a simplification of more nuances, and the color is dependent on several changing factors. But yes it's more true to call my sucks grey then green, conventionally. And I see that by looking not imagining.

Anyhow I can seperate imagination and looking the way you mean.

I will be on a bodywork and such retreat for the weekend and can't come to your group today. Otherwise would have liked to come today.

Hi Elad,

Let me know if I am writing too much. Here is a little more that comes to me:

It is ok, I'm asking simple questions and you have to look and reply from experience. My job here so to speak is to help you describe the experience without going into the habitual thinking. Most of your answers are coming from thinking and not looking, but that's ok. We all do that, it feels "normal". When we look we see the difference.

So if I ask a simple question what is the colour of your socks you are wearing today

you have two ways to come up with an answer:

• You can have a think about it, you can think back to this morning and try to remember putting your socks on, and you can probably tell me what colour you think they are.

• Alternatively, you can take a quick look at your socks and tell me what colour they actually are.

Hopefully you would agree that you can only be 100% certain by looking.

For the purpose of our dialogue together, it is going to be very important that you are clear about this difference. Knowing is about knowledge which is all in the mind and we are not interested in that. We are only interested in looking at and seeing what is actually going on in your present moment to moment experience. We are only interested in your direct experience in the moment.

Can you see the difference between thinking about something and looking directly at experience?

I can see in direct experience that "I" is a thought. And - and here I seem to disagree with some of what is written in Gate Crashers, but not disagree with Buddha Dharma - seems to me everything else then direct reality is a thought. A chair or a hand is also a thought. Maybe even the sense perceptions are some very basic kind of thought. But pragmatically speaking I can separate direct experience reality from thoughts. "I" is a thought. "Chair" is a thought. Then there is direct experience. I cannot say anything about direct experience. The moment I speak about it, it is thoughts.

Mmmm so this doesn't mean that we can't speak and communicate no?
We have 5 senses + thought (but not what is a thought about, not their content)
When I ask about the colour of your sock - you look, see the colour and reply.
Is it very, very, very simple.

So where does all this leave me? I feel the benefit of attending to direct reality (which I cannot say anything about) and the difference between that and thought/reflected reality, and remembering that "I" and "Elad" are stories. I will keep doing that. Yet I don't have a sense this will change anything very much now, rather than just be a continuation of the realization at age 17. I imagine if I did not have that realization at age 17, and much clarification that followed after, then all these topics would be more fundamentally new.

I am wondering if it is possible for me with your guidance to see something more clear or fundamental then the above.

Are you willing to put aside all you think you know and simply look?


Sending love,
Luchana

ps. Again a kind reminder that there is a meeting today, you can come and we can look at this together.
Message me at luchanauzunova@gmail.com for details

And yes I am absolutely willing to put aside what I think I know and focus exclusively on moment to moment direct experience/looking.

There was some "spiritual ego" in the response, I dont mean a real seperate self, I just mean a pattern of defensiveness, protecting the sense of the one who knows. Apologies for the tone. I think things might start to clarify. I think it's getting clearer that no one can predict what thought and action comes next, that the sense of someone who knows and is in control is a belief that gets attached all the time. Feels good, liberating. 2,4,555,732,444444,7777, green, funny, happy, ha ha, Jo Jo, lalalalala. Who chose this sequence? Who could predict what would come next? Who can predict what's written next now? Seems like it's getting clearer no one is in control of that. The helpful focus seems to be to attend to: is there really any one who chooses and can predict what happens? Doesn't seem to be the case, all though the sense that there is one, and the wish to be someone who knows, keeps returning, the sense of personal succes in maybe "starting to really get it" is there. And at the same time, it seems clear that also that kind of "me story feeling", also the investment in the story of self, is not chosen by anyone, same as what is written next here is not really chosen by anyone. I don't think there is full clarity or confidence at this point, but certainly there seems to be an interesting movement. Luchana I appreciate you for walking with me, and want to keep going, hoping/aiming for unshakable clarity in the matter. It's still not there, but who knows, maybe it will be soon, maybe even - maybe it is. Im returning to what you said, that there is only now. I think that seems clearer too. This seems to be just happening, including all stories of past and future. Nothing is really know I guess, except what is experienced right now. And no one seems to control the movement of experience emerging and dissolving. There is some excitement and gladness right now, also moments of fear - is this real, what does it mean for my life, what is it all "an illusion for nothing", "did I hurt others and myself with my belief in a self and how". And at the same time right now it seems pretty calm. Like a sense of, okay, just see what happens next/now, keep looking if it's really real, that no one has been controlling anything, and no one can control anything. Trust. Thank you again.



quote=Luchana post_id=365434 time=1683779892 user_id=13797]
Hi Elad,

Let me know if I am writing too much. Here is a little more that comes to me:

It is ok, I'm asking simple questions and you have to look and reply from experience. My job here so to speak is to help you describe the experience without going into the habitual thinking. Most of your answers are coming from thinking and not looking, but that's ok. We all do that, it feels "normal". When we look we see the difference.

So if I ask a simple question what is the colour of your socks you are wearing today

you have two ways to come up with an answer:

• You can have a think about it, you can think back to this morning and try to remember putting your socks on, and you can probably tell me what colour you think they are.

• Alternatively, you can take a quick look at your socks and tell me what colour they actually are.

Hopefully you would agree that you can only be 100% certain by looking.

For the purpose of our dialogue together, it is going to be very important that you are clear about this difference. Knowing is about knowledge which is all in the mind and we are not interested in that. We are only interested in looking at and seeing what is actually going on in your present moment to moment experience. We are only interested in your direct experience in the moment.

Can you see the difference between thinking about something and looking directly at experience?

I can see in direct experience that "I" is a thought. And - and here I seem to disagree with some of what is written in Gate Crashers, but not disagree with Buddha Dharma - seems to me everything else then direct reality is a thought. A chair or a hand is also a thought. Maybe even the sense perceptions are some very basic kind of thought. But pragmatically speaking I can separate direct experience reality from thoughts. "I" is a thought. "Chair" is a thought. Then there is direct experience. I cannot say anything about direct experience. The moment I speak about it, it is thoughts.

Mmmm so this doesn't mean that we can't speak and communicate no?
We have 5 senses + thought (but not what is a thought about, not their content)
When I ask about the colour of your sock - you look, see the colour and reply.
Is it very, very, very simple.

So where does all this leave me? I feel the benefit of attending to direct reality (which I cannot say anything about) and the difference between that and thought/reflected reality, and remembering that "I" and "Elad" are stories. I will keep doing that. Yet I don't have a sense this will change anything very much now, rather than just be a continuation of the realization at age 17. I imagine if I did not have that realization at age 17, and much clarification that followed after, then all these topics would be more fundamentally new.

I am wondering if it is possible for me with your guidance to see something more clear or fundamental then the above.

Are you willing to put aside all you think you know and simply look?


Sending love,
Luchana

ps. Again a kind reminder that there is a meeting today, you can come and we can look at this together.
Message me at luchanauzunova@gmail.com for details
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