Friday, April 20, 2012

What is the Self?

Oh, the visuals! 

Can a watcher of this video be pointed to except as an afterthought?  Does it come in to watch or does it appear only upon reflection?

Monday, April 16, 2012

The Art of Deceptive Self Maintenance

In the year I've been guiding those inquiring into No Self, there have been several who have expressed that they've directly seen the truth of it, but then just stopped.  Some, faced with the threatening notion that there is utterly no evidence for the package they'd thought themselves to be, turned and ran.  After an "OhMYGOD" moment of stark realization, I never heard from these folks again.

I wonder how they're doing, because once this is seen, there's just no unseeing, as they say. 



In the last entry I talked about how simple it is to see the truth of the complete absence of a self in tangible existence.  And I mentioned that it takes just seconds to verify this.  It's not at all difficult, and chances are if you're reading this, you've probably had a glimpse.

Have you dismissed it as a trick?  Do you doubt the seeing, or the guide who pointed?  Do thoughts appear to argue with that very direct experience?   Do you invest more weight in thought than in the tangible world?  Do you think the truth of it is impossible because what you've seen is so simple that everyone should have realized it by now?

"I" is a thought.  "Myself" is a thought.  Test this.  Where do they appear?  And how do those thoughts that come along to dismiss the realization appear if not in the same way.  They just come.  There is no you thinking them or controlling them. 

Verify your findings against everything your "sages" have said about this if you must.  Find the commonality, the instructions to see the world as a child, or that this seeing is so simple that it's often overlooked.  Then find those who've said that the realization is already here, or tell you to go "outside of the mind"  and see whether your experience verifies what THEY've expressed, not the other way around.



Sometimes the things you really want
sneak in the back door.
Notice.
- Mary Anne Radmacher




"Seeing that there's no self is also a thought." is what some have said in an effort to wriggle out of what they've seen. 

No.  THINKING "Seeing that there's no self is also a thought.", is a thought.  Checking and SEEING the truth of No You was direct, clear, and unshakable.  So, in considering direct experience versus thought, take a moment to review how many of "your" thoughts have mislead you, contained poor judgement, or were just plain dead wrong. 

In all the times you've checked for a self, how many times has verification of direct experience ever been refuted.

Under what conditions do you suspect it will be?




photo credit:  Autumn Swirl by Temmerson on DeviantArt

Saturday, April 14, 2012

On a Clear Day...

Attempting to find better pointers for a  friend, I reviewed "my" moment of no self realization to look for any clues I could give on where and how to "look".  The following is an email which came out of that review.  It's posted here just in case it's helpful to a casual reader.

Understand that this is not a prescription.  And no moment of realization is ever the same for anyone, so don't look to "how it happened" as an event to be expected or grasped.  The clues here are in the complete surrender of the intellectual grasping at no self.  It's that relaxing of what had been an entirely intellectual pursuit that lead me to begin a very clear and direct examination of experience.



But how to get outside the intellect?  How do I "look" if not with the mind?  Where are all of the pointers pointing to?  


They are pointing you into looking for cracks in the flow of thought.  It's there.


Email sent 04/14/2012


I know I've told you about my final "moment of seeing" (there were several glimpses beforehand).  Well, I'm not sure I told you about the part where something surrenders, and what is surrendered is the notion that the world has to be a certain way or another.  So, let me see whether I can describe what happened again, but include the part about surrender.  


I was sitting at my computer after a few weeks of reading just about every thread on Ruthless Truth, and also no-self.com.  But it was RT that explained it most clearly and in the end I found that the best directive which can be given is, 

"Just Look".  


You may not see that right now, but looking back, it is obvious that this is the clearest pointer...  The question comes, "how do I look?"  And just before realization, I just happened to come across a thread which explained it something like this: