Hello again Magdalena :) and thanks again for these wonderful
questions, that allows me to look for the best possible way of explain my point of view.
That said, I personally believe that written words on their own,
like in this conversation between me and you so far, can be only a possibly very brief, introductory phase.
I strongly believe that without a passage to a more direct communication, where words and meanings
come with a voice, its color, a tone, a gaze, the light or darkness in that gaze, a face and its facial expressions, a body and
its movements...so in few words, with some life...without all that what is left are just dead meaningless words :)
So I will follow with sincere pleasure the words challenges you propose me, but again, I consider words,
on its own and stripped from all the rest, very very limited, so much that are often mischievous.
I could name already so many words in the message I just wrote that are misleading language and meaning
"traps"..
So I really hope that not too far from now we could move to a one to one video chat of some sort.
It's still a big compromise compared to meeting in presence, but it would be already great.
However, can there be certainty about “everything”?
Can there be certainty about anything – regardless of what and how is experienced, or how it appears?
Please consider the following question carefully:
What are you really certain about?
What we are doing here, me and you, is trying to put in words something that is impossible to phrase,
impossible to really grasp, that is impossible to understand. Because the same idea of "understanding" requires thoughts,
that are the "problem" in the first place.
Again, if I have to try to honestly answer your question "what are you really certain about?" I couldn't.
For several reasons:
-The need of certainty it stems from some of the fundamental fears who make up the illusion of a self.
The fear of losing control - if I believe that I know "for sure" something I believe I control it. If I control it
it cannot harm me, and so on. So of course at the end, if we follow the chain of fears, we arrive at one
of the root fears: the fear of death. That is again the fear of death of a already non existing separate self.
So not only there cannot be certainty about anything, but just the looking for certainty is already a sign of a
an illusory self, also in panic mode :)
But "certainty" can also have another meaning.
If we talk about a concept built by thoughts that pretend to explain everything about something, or everything about everything ( where "everything" is just another word) to have all the answers, it doesn't exist and is stems from a desperate attempt to control reality.
But there is also a feeling of certainty. A feeling that is not made by thoughts. It's an happening, it's a clear
direct vision of what is. It's something that cannot be fully described in words, and produce a disappearance
of every possible thoughts, and so of the illusion of the self made by those thoughts.
Can you say more about this process of inquiry from your experience?
What happened as a result?
How was this “ending” experienced?
Was it gradual, or a sudden “shift”?
How do you know it was the self that disappeared?
I come from a very long path of seeking the truth. Started around 25 years ago.
In this path I was sometimes a bit closer to the truth, sometimes very far away.
So I went through many phases, but always with this seeking drive in me.
Because you asked a big question, and I understand you prefer clear and satisfactory answers, please bear with me
and the length of my attempt of explaining :)
A spontaneous experience in my twenties, alone in a dangerous wild nature corner of Indonesia, provoked the first strong shift in perception. I saw through the illusory "glass" of the self. I saw and felt that there was no separation whatsoever
between me and the horizon I was looking. But of course even this phrasing is very limited, because in that moment,
there was no me or what I was watching, as separated entities. There was just all what was there, and non separated.
The direct effect of that shift was the absolute disappearance of any fear and any thought. Even the question of fear or not fear disappeared.
What happened was that as a young Italian boy for the first time away from Europe, I had absolutely no idea of the strength and volume of the tide in tropical places like Indonesia.
I had just arrived on a little island, and from my little cabana I walked towards what I thought was "the shore" :)
A local told me just before to be very careful of some deadly sea snakes that were in the shallow water around the island: the black and white striped ones.
So safe on the sand I walked to what I thought was the line of the shore, with Idea of sitting there and watch the sun setting. When there, twenty meters or so from "the shore" I saw this little sandy "hill". So I sad to myself I'll sit there to watch the sunset. So I did. To reach that little hill I walked through about 20 meters or so of shallow waters, and right there in the middle of those 20 meters, in the crystal water I saw a couple of those deadly snakes. Scared, I walked much faster to that hill for safety and I sat there, telling to myself I've just this 20 meters to cover to go back, I'll be very careful. The water is also crystal clear, I can see everything and avoid those snakes if I see them again...everything will be fine.
So I sat there and looked at the beautiful sunset. I don't know how long it passed, but maybe 20 minutes later I realized that the water around the hill was much higher than before, so much that what was left of that sandy hill I was sitting on was just a small bump just sticking out of the water.
So I turned to what I thought was the shore...really stunned I realized that I was in the middle of the ocean. The shore was really far, maybe half a kilometer or I don't know, but really far. Not only that, but with the sun low at the horizon, its reflection on the sea's surface made the water absolutely impenetrable, I couldn't see a thing inside the now high water.
For a brief instant my mind was literally overwhelmed by fears of snakes, me swimming back for half a kilometer, not knowing what was coming at me and so on...
But for a reason I cannot explain, those very strong fears lasted a really brief instant, and then disappeared all together.
So much so that even if the sky was getting darker and darker, and the prospective was to swim back among deadly snakes - that I knew were actually really there - inside impenetrable dark waters, instead of panicking, instead of trying to swim back as fast as I could when there was still some light... I calmly turned to the sunset, that in that moment was reaching its peak of beauty and power.
Right there I had that shift, my first and very strong one. Those strong fears disappearing brought with them also everything else. There was no me, no sky, no sun or sunset, as separated entities. In that state of really incredibly calm bliss, I waited until the sun went down behind the horizon, then I swam back to the now
far away shore... in all that not a single thought crossed my mind.
Only later I elaborated what happened, only later I gave it words.
This experience changed everything. Once back in Italy i started seeking for an answer. What happened there? How I could gain back that state?
I won't go through all the books and great masters I met through those books. But one common tread was the non-duality path and my solitude. For many reasons, mostly connected to my work, my path was a very solitary one (I've never had a living guide or a guru or anything like that. Not even a friend or a partner who was sharing my same path). I think that solitude maybe helped shape a very personal path, but also maybe slowed down the moment of my "awakening".
That path had many high and many lows, but I never touched again that state I had felt in Indonesia many years before.
The second strong shift after many years after, thanks to the reading of the power of now. For the first time I clearly saw the ghost of "the self". Meaning that I clearly saw something that I had always called "me", that instead was just some sort of inner ghost, of puppet, a bundle of thoughts, memories, actions and reactions and so on...
So another question popped up...if I can clearly see this ME, who is the one that is seeing...
This shift eroded significantly the grasp of the illusory self on my life, but still it didn't disappear. It was still somehow
governing my decisions, my reactions etc.
It's really the meeting with the writings and video talks of Jiddu Khrishnamurti that produced the strongest and definitive shift in perception. To be precise It was a series of very strong shifts, one very close to the other, in a period of maybe a month in total, that produced the final clear direct and constant vision of what is, without no one there to see it.
That produced the clear awareness of the nonexistence of a self, separate or not.
There is nothing there, or here, beside what is...and that is already A LOT! :)
My awareness of it, is so clear and constant that I know - " "with certitude " " - :) that there is no possible going back.
Sorry if I use a stupid word, very much widespread, but it's also an effective one...I know I'm finally completely "awaken".
I still consider myself a seeker, because I believe that the nature of the mind is still unknown, even beyond the
disappearance of the self, and it will be always never completely known.
So I prefer to stay open to the idea that also maybe, and just maybe, there are other "levels" of awakening...
But also because I believe that I'm still not completely free of the illusion of time, that in my vision is very much
linked to the root of the most invisible thoughts, and with them to the very subtle and almost invisible
shades and remains of some sort of self.
I still can feel time sometimes, as something, a movement of some sort happening inside.
I'm working on that :)
Please answer all the questions from your own experience and don’t rely on the teachings of others to put words in your mouth, despite the limitations of language. Take your time – no need to rush.
I totally understand where your suggestion and request comes from. But please believe me when I say that I'm using only my words. After all those years of reading books on spirituality, non duality etc, the early phase of using masters words has long gone :)
All That said, I think given the limited amount of words and phrasing available in general in most languages to
describe something that has been described so many times, and in so many ways, it's inevitable that sometimes, some of my chosen words or phrasing can coincide with the ones of masters the teachings I read and I respect.
But it's not a choice for lack of imagination or laziness, it's just a coincidence.
I'm looking very much forward to continue by video chat (i really hope is what happens at one point at LU)
this sincerely beautiful and very rich conversation about NOTHING :)
With Love
Cristiano