Month: December 2022

Watching movies = no thoughts

As I practice suspending the intermediate internal narrative thought-stream – called no-self or being a nobody or Presence – there is no sense of knowing or understanding. And there is clear sense that “traditional” knowing – and the familiar feel of knowing is unnecessary. It All functions just fine – and better –  without it.

And I’m finding this is accompanied by a feeling of alone-ness and even longing for it. It’s a very familiar and an old mental habit and seems to have a comforting feel to it -possibly not unlike Linus and his blanket. I wonder if this is akin to what I felt when I threw away my security blanket as a young child. I can still see the long march to the trash chute – the long narrow hallway, the grimy trash chute door and how heavy it felt to pull it open, the feel of putting it into the chute and letting go and the finality of the slamming metal door.

While there is no doubt that this is the right way to go and even peace at the thought of dropping the intermediate internal narrative thought-stream, there is still some fear of letting go. Will there be anything to take the place of the discomfort and alone feeling right now?  Will this pass – of course it will – and in a year, as the periods of no-thought increase and become longer and more frequent, will this time fade into memory? I assume so, which is one reason I continue to blog this.

Still, there is some sadness and tinges of fear mixed in. Talking to my self has been my primary comfort and security for a long long time. Am I that unusual n this respect? Do I have it to much greater degree, or am I just  more aware of it?
Do most peo0ple have this and just aren’t as aware of it as I am? I notice how my mind wants to both make me wrong for being so dumb and doing this to such a degree for so long, and at the same time special for being able to be so much more “broken” than others.

I find it interesting that Eckart Tolle talks to this directly – sitting with another in Presence – no thought, no judgment, etc. As does Ram Dass – “being nobody”.

Knowing is of the mind and in the past. Papaji says something similar.

One thing I notice is that when there is no intermediate narrative there is no “knowing”. So I look at my cat, but there is no sense of “knowing” it’s Ripley, or even a cat. So knowing is a product of the critical, narrative, mind, always in retrospect and therefore not available in the moment.

Yet it all works OK. All things still function. The cat still gets walked.

The last week has mostly been integrating “forgetting to remember to be Joe”.

Asking folks “have you ever had an experience where you forgot to be you” – were so immersed in the experience: walks in nature, sports, movies, drugs, etc., is a good way to talk about what seems to have happened to “me” spontaneously. No “me” of course, and “me” and “I”
make less and less sense and have less and less relevance.

I move between having no thoughts and there is just the experience and times of stopping the intermediate narration.  And times when the narration is still present.

This video was useful in how they talk about the “natural state”.

So, the practice continues, sitting in silence, focusing on the heart and letting it all unfold.

Without non-ordinary reality experiences, there seems less and less inclination to blog.

Though, laziness is talking over and there is less and less inclination to do much.

We’ll see.

December 17, 2022

I have been pondering why I am feeling resistance to the many direct insights, recognitions and mind-blowing (literally) Realization of the Non-Dual nature. At least 8 within the last 6 weeks.

Then it hit me – I want the experience of loss of identity – physically experience the loss of separation between  this body/mind and all else. That will do it.

Or would it?

Saturday December 17, 2022

“I’m always baffled by how in-character people are, how themselves they are, how good at being who they are they are. “Wow,” I’m often tempted to say. “You’re so you!” It’s like living in a wax museum and marveling at the realism of everyone you meet. Personhood is very mysterious to me. I myself am not very me, in fact, I’m barely me at all. I could change my planet, species, gender, nationality, community and family without blinking an eye, but I can’t imagine Goober changing his brand of pipe tobacco. ”
– McKenna

To See or Not to See 3

THIS I can relate to. I feel less and less like “myself” each minute Whatever the F that even means. I have no idea anymore, if I ever did (didn’t).
W/o a cosmic optometry switch – before/after…
It gets harder and harder to tell.
The no-self shock blew a lot of wiring.

It seems that when I meet people I know now they “fill in the blanks” with ‘old Joe’ crayons. There’s not much of me showing up these days & not much embellishment – very simple and direct.
Yes, I make jokes and stuff. I’m actually very good at a party and in social settings – now that “I’m” not doing it. Nice, polite, friendly, witty, insightful, occasionally snarky if called for. I literally have no idea what’s coming out of my mouth next – versus all the rehearsing I used to do. There was maybe earlier, a little filter – just to check I won’t get hit or arrested – but that is fading. F’ it.
I show up very simple, even dry to an extent and even more so now after the shock.
So people who know me just fill in the blanks and color in between the lines, I guess.
When I meet new people, they have nothing to compare to, and enough of me shows up that I seem like a person and they still probably fill in the “person” blanks.

This is actually a good analogy: I feel like a line drawing in a coloring book and others will fill in the colors for me. I don’t have to do anything.

Of course, that is what we do with everyone all the time. I’m just aware of it.

Speaking of not having to do anything…Here’s the shirt I picked out for tonight’s Xmas party. No idea it had the masks on the cuffs or the stitched writing. I swear, I don’t have to think, plan or do anything – it’s all done for me.

Direct experience of no-self faded. I think it served to show what is possible/coming? Also to assuage fears and prepare – lay the groundwork. Plus there were other effects – can’t seem to manufacture the “I” -thought and it is easier to get to meditative state and stay out of the “gap” . LIke driving 70+ mph with little or no thought.

And I’m in contraction of a backlash from the intense no self experience – an experience that there’s nowhere to hide from.
It was so intense,  it was so brutal. It was so without possibility of contradiction or escape.

While I’ve mouthed the words: accept the truth of your own non-existence for decades, it’s a whole different matter when it happens and it’s ripped away completely.

Ripped away is a good term. This stuff does not happen by choice – who could want this and how would they know what to want? No, it’s foisted or even forced on us.

There is no model for this – how could the mind know what to make up?

Brought awareness to it and sat for a bit and came out of contraction.

Started with literal feeling of “hole” inside the center of the body  and something “gone” – or was never really there.

Then quote From Mckenna popped in – Never understood what he meant – then got it tonight:
(paraphrasing) We create the story of us to hold  off the unacceptable truth of no-self. Any story, no matter how good or bad is better then the truth that “we” do not exist and never did and are merely sock puppets on the hand of the One.

Well…quite the night.

(Note: The One in this context is not intended to imply any form of duality at all. Just the Source, the IS appearing as emptiness and fullness. )

All action is spontaneous of the Source. Collapse of ego and no longer a “me”.
All is the Source. Complete freedom to act. Complete liberation.
There is no me and never was – only the illusion of a separate self. That is gone or rapidly dissolving. There may be some residual “fear” around: what if the Source chooses to do xyz and we hurt others, or get hurt or wind up in prison, yada yada. Without me, the ego to watch over and control, we’d be out of control and could do, well, Anything!🙀
But that freedom has always been the truth and Right Action always arises. The ego never chooses or has any choice or volition.  The Source has never ‘made the choices’ the ego fears…why would it start now?

You can’t make it happen, you can’t prevent it from happening has always been true for the ego. It can’t act.
Tried meditating- unable to generate the I-thought with out forcing it and that feels wrong. Barely able to generate Who am I – but that’s all beside the point and no longer needed, as there is direct access to Self/the Source, Stillness, peace, wisdom. All right here when needed w/o the filter/interference of illusory egoic self.

No longer need to work through I/Who Am I for 30 minutes to “quiet the mind”. The Source is readily in and below all thoughts and sensations and experiences. Simply closing the eyes, or not even that and it is here. “I Am That: is no longer needed as it’s redundant and introduces duality where there is none.

Question of why to ’practice’ at all comes up for contemplation. If it arises I do it. If not I don’t.
This has always been true but now more direct and unfiltered.
Rock solid-ness w/o any doubt. Direct, unquestionable, feels almost  arrogant but so what? The Source is The Source. Period.
I don’t think this is just egoic posturing in a new way.

Huge lifting of responsibility of ego. Huge relief of no longer carrying that burden. Not that it ever did.
There’s more here. No need to try and force the stopping of narration between insight/intent/will and expression, I don’t think. It will wind down of its own accord.

Also, a sense that some/all? of the “flowery” drama of how Joe shows up and speaks is just trapping added by the ego to have a hand in things and take ownership.
No talking is needed – so maybe Bob is right.  Like putting a cap on Michelangelo’s David or putting a ceramic cherub on a fence post at the end of the trail (this was really seen once – a friend threw it down in disgust). Totally unnecessary decoration that really adds nothing to the moment and the perfection of the One. Example- the Rocky Mountain High quote on the front page of this blog. Ugh. Will leave it for now as a signpost-memento of egoic Joe. And my sister liked it, so it may work for others. (removed it 2022-12-18)

This is all still very fresh. We’ll see how it plays out and evolves, but hard to imagine going backwards.
😊🙏🏻

From July 23, 2009:

We are all blind.
It takes losing all we hold dearly,
before we can see clearly

Clean sober
And shamed
Fuck
I cant even assemble a fucking lasagne w/o thinking I’m fucking it up and feeling shame and like a failure (this happens almost every time I put a lasagna together you think after 25 years or more I’d get over it – you’d be wrong🤨)
AND stepped on kitty tails and toes by accident while assembling
(Big screams and kvetching)
Kitties are fine and finally ate.
…
Usually I’d take something
But -no weed or pills
And
Choosing not to drink -so as not to pollute my consciousness.
I consider that a big success.

And sure, I know
The lasagne will be fine.
🫣🙄😓😑🥸

My fucking ego.
It needs to be taken out and shot.

Staying clean is much easier than my next goal.
I want to stop looking at news. I’ve deleted the news app off my phone and iPad. We’ll see.
I’ll leave it to D to tell me anything critical.

Since a very early age  – I don’t remember when, i have been talking to myself in my mind.

An ongoing narrative about myself, life and others.

Over the years it developed into an automatic habit and eventually took on  negative “tapes” and would run these tapes. It also includes the ability to play songs in my head and hear them almost note for note.

These both served to take me out of the current moment slightly – thus avoid pain suffering and embarrassment and insecurity  -at least to some degree  -or so I thought.

I also become very good at rehearsing what I would say and do in coming situation. I effectively ran simulations of all possible outcomes so I would be ready.

This also avoided real feelings and being here now to a great degree.

I did – at times over the years – notice that I could suspend this narration. When an insight or intent or will arose, I could simply not generate the narration and go right to action. Or, when watching a sunset, for example, simply watch it and have no narration. But these were few and far between.

Even when I was practicing for real in the early 2000’s and I noticed this, there was an intuitive sense this was the thing to do – but I did not pursue it.

Talking to myself is very familiar and comforting. It’s like having a friend to talk to and talk back 24×7. Like a security blanket or frankly even masturbatory.

Fast forward to the last few weeks. As the Realization hit: First There is only the Source manifesting as all and I am that source as well – the belief in Joe as the doer and separate self began to vanish and the negative parts of the personality – sadness, worry, insecurity, fear dropped away and the second Insight I am that hit with rock solidness. But I think only the belief went away. There was still the narration. Good narration – no old bad tapes, so a huge improvement and resulting change in personality – but still narration and so stull a “self”.

And again came the impulse to practice stopping the narration.

One thing I’ve been struggling with almost daily is the idea of no-self. It’s talked about a lot and I just did not get it.

Finally, today, I worked through this at length with Dave and as he explained the sensation of no one watching the sunset, just watching or no one doing. I thought: He is talking about when I suspend the narration!

Because that’s the exact experience! When I suspend the narration and there is the insight/intent/will bubble up and it goes straight to action – word or deed – there is no “sense of being the doer” nobody in the middle so to speak.

And when I suspend narration when there is a stimulus – like a sunset – there is only watching the sunrise happening -no experiencer to know there is sunset being watched. And even then only in hindsight is an experiencer injected.

But in reality there is no one here -no experiencer,  no knower no doer. Never was.

When people have intense experiences – walking, sports, sex, drugs, there is no narration, but they may go back and in “hindsight’ fill in the imaginary self as the doer.

My text to Dave:
Because

At the core

There is no one here and never has been.

Wow 🤩 to type those words and feel it head to heart

Rock solid.

Or balls to bones if you prefer the matrix.

I prefer yours.

And nothing to be scared of

Or sought after or attained.

It’s a stopping, a dropping of a mental ‘tic’ essentially.

Like saying ‘Ya’ know’ after each sentence.

I see this as a conditioned habit. Probably so severe in my case that for most people the Realization is enough to snuff out the narration if there was not much there.  Their’s went to “automatic” – while mine stayed manual. I have to remember to do it; It becomes part of my main practice. I wonder how this will work in mediation.

But in my case, it was strong enough to keep going on its own.

And I was scared of what no self would be like. And resistant to it.

Now I think it will wind down on its own little by little until there is just the intent-action or watching a sunset.

I think this is what Papaji is talking about when he says just stop thinking for one second.

If I do not suffer and do not seek –  why bother with it then. Well, there may be a slight polluting of the direct experience of Self.

And the narrative can get in the way and sustain the ego. I would say it is the final remnant of egoic activity.

It will cease and probably all that will remain is the memory of a long time spent over-thinking things.

I should add – when I suspend mind talk – practice no-self — now that I know what it is called — the results are better- direct, insightful, compassionate.

Example – clerks at Hallmark and Costco.

Mckenna was right: we create the story of a false self to protect us from the unacceptable truth of no-self. It is simply not acceptable or us not to exist – to be sock puppets on the hand of the One.

From December 12, 2009:

Sensory forms versus thought forms – each sense of the object – is a separate thought form. I saw this early on , that the juncture of sensory thought forms, and mental thought forms, this juncture is made real by me, and is the “self” that is “assumed’ or filled in by the mind. If there is seeing, there must be a see-er, and in that instant “i” as seer seems to exist. Such is the nature of perception and thought: if there is a thought, there must be a thinker and I am the thinker.

But no, simply an illusion, the mind filling in pieces.