Interview with Bill
1. What is the story behind the name Bill? Where does he live, what does he do, what music does he listen to, does he have a hobby?
That's a good question. Several years ago I would have replied much differently to this question than today. I would have told you about all my ‘good’ traits, and hardly any of the ones I don’t like. I might have listed some accomplishments and dropped a name or two to elevate my standing in your mind. I would have cared whether you liked my ‘story’ or not.
I’m not in the same place now… I am much concerned as to what is going on with me currently and not so concerned with the past. I’m more into being ‘just some guy’, and not some special guy. Of course we are all unique here in our expression of life, but its seen clearly that no one has more native status than anyone else. All of are stories anyway that reside solely in memory. What I used to think of ‘Bill’ as some fixed, certain entity, is now seen more as a fluxating me that can vary from one moment to the next and is certainly not fixed. The view here constantly is changing. This seeing of ‘me’ as being the story it actually is, and not a fixed reality/entity, is powerful in the LU process. This is one of our goals in working with people that they can eventually see themselves as the story they are.
Usually before we come to LU, this idea we have of ourselves as a solid, enduring, independent entity is something we’ve believed in all our lives. We come here and find a little crack in this theory… and upon a real investigation we find this supposed story to be full of holes. But even though this story and idea of being a person/entity is seen through, everyone still has a personality and a unique expression or being. I used to think that this me is what was needed to be dropped, or gotten rid of... This personality or ego or whatever you want to call it. I no longer believe that - as it’s not real in the first place; but is like a mask and is also a really strong assumption we’ve believed in forever. So it can’t really be dropped…as it’s only a persona we’ve taken on. It can however, be seen through and seen to be an assumption and an illusion we’ve created with our own minds. How do you see this? A simple answer is you look. You stop for a moment and look and see what is here in reality… what’s right here now in front of you, and not believe everything thought tells you about how things are.
I live in the US...the west coast, Pacific NW. I am currently retired for a few years. I've had several careers and interests over the years. I was a hippie in my youth in the day that there actually were such things :) - then got tired of being poor all the time and went to work in several different jobs over the years. I’ve cooked in restaurants, worked with the disabled, had a small nursery (plants), and then worked in real estate and built homes for a number of years. Then something happened… I don’t know what but I settled down a bit :) wanted something more stable... and spent the last 20 working years in the IT field, as a technical support person. This worked out well as I do have good technical skills, and also like working with people one on one. And in the particular job I had, it allowed me to do both, so I enjoyed it. Many in the IT field are stuck at a desk behind a monitor all day long. My job was not like this as I was up and about and constantly on the go, dealing with various issues and problems.
I've always been the type that if I wanted to do something, no matter what it was, I'd learn and figure it out.... whatever it took. I’m not into music like I was in my youth, which was a lot of the older rock that you hear on classic stations nowadays. I also like classical music. Right now I like Sofi Tukker and Maggie Rogers a lot as newer young artists. Anything good... I usually like. I take care of my yard and house, and like bird watching, and hiking. Am lucky enough to live in a great natural area and right next to a few national wildlife refuges; love to get out in nature there. Also both the Pacific coast and Cascade mountains are each within an hour and I love to visit and just look.
2. Could you tell us more about your path before LU?
How did the search begin, what was wrong?
What do you wish you knew before starting out as a seeker?
I was raised on the east coast USA, protestant religion but never really got into it. I could never really get past the Immaculate Conception idea as being real... even as a youth it sounded too far-fetched, thus the religion thing just kind of collapsed for me. In my early days I was a very compliant child and looked to please, as that is what I thought was expected of me. I never quite felt that what I was was enough, and I was constantly looking outside myself for validation of self-worth. My home life was fairly stable, although it was lacking in what I thought I needed as far as being valued for who I was. This was no real fault of my parents, (which I used to think it was) but more my own personal response to life. This led me to look outside me in various ways to fill this hole I had. As time went on, I turned into a bit of a rebel in my youth, nothing too deviant.. but usually I went against the norm, or questioned it and was almost always rooting for the underdog, whom I identified with. This was the late 60's so it was happening all around me. The entire youth culture was in upheaval against the established norms of society of materialism and especially wars that were ill conceived. Somewhat similar to what’s happening now. Most everyone I knew back then tried drugs of every kind and persuasion. Me too, but never developed a heavy drug use. I did dabble with psychedelics and pot … but in seeing what happened to so many who went too far. I backed off of getting too deep in those. I do think LSD had a profound effect on my entire life outlook. I took it a handful of times and most certainly my point of view on life changed, and I had a glimpse of a bigger picture… of something more than ‘me’ and me simply being a part of that. I had started drinking as a teenager and kept it up through young adulthood …. I thought that alcohol was more 'safe' than all of the other drugs of the day; but little did I know I was slowly but surely developing an addiction with alcohol.
Fast forward a few years….I had somehow gone from being a hippie a few years earlier to working in real estate - this was around 1980...and it was a very up and down business. Feast or famine was the norm. I was doing good with it until the economy started to turn bad, and as a reaction to the downturn, my company sent the entire group to a personal development training that was intended to help us be more productive in the falling market (and of course help the company be able to survive). What the training was really about, and the company owners didn’t realize this, was looking at your deep seated beliefs and anything else that was getting in your way of being a functioning, productive human being. This was my first look at anything like this; soon after starting it I intuitively knew there was 'gold' in this for me, and that my own beliefs about me were a big part of what was limiting me not only in real estate, but life in general. It was at this very intensive training that I first admitted I was alcoholic... even though the seminar had nothing to do with alcohol. It was really about honesty, and being real, of looking at yourself without backing off, and letting others see who you were. This is what came out for me there. It was like a weight off my shoulders when I did this. This admittance is one of the hardest things an alcoholic can do, and is the first real step in recovery. I didn't know any of that at the time, but I was able to see clearly that I had a serious problem and could not BS my way around it. And believe me I tried to do just that for a long time. I feel very lucky I was able to do something like this in a safe place and had the opportunity to really look without any blinders on at ‘me’. The next year or so was spent with this knowledge and more continued drinking; and it got worse even though I was not fooling myself anymore about it.
Over the course of the next year, several ‘bad’ things happened, which is very typical in the alcoholic life, but one day something particularly painful happened, and I knew then that if I wanted to keep living on this earth, something had to change. I could not go on like I had been for years… my body was not going to be able to take it. I felt strongly that if I did not quit, I’d be dead in ten years. I literally 'saw' this. It was powerful... I knew then I had to somehow quit drinking and using. So this gets into my first dabbling in any kind of spiritual thing. I remember asking 'God' to help me.. on my knees praying like I had never done before in my life, praying for something to help me as I realized I could not do it by myself as all my many attempts to quit by myself had failed. In a day or so I was led to join AA and within a few short months I had fully embraced it and found it one of the most liberating things I’d ever done. Something surely happened that day and back then; as I've not had a drop of alcohol since then. (knock on wood) I’ve spent years in AA going to meetings, assisting, helping others as I could and doing my best to live a clean life. Alcoholism is a very selfish disease and in AA we learned much about this ‘me’ and how it only was concerned with itself. The entire program is meant to help counteract this collapsing in on oneself and to know you are a part of life and not this isolated ‘me’.
I’m forever grateful to not only AA... but the company that ran the trainings that helped me SEE what beliefs and thoughts were running my life back then. I have worked with them through the years... assisting with the trainings every few years. Every time I would go do this.. I would be on a pink cloud of sorts for a month or so afterward. It was kind of like an emotional enema… all the ‘stuff’ that had built up through normal everyday living could be let go of in a safe place. This up and down... of ‘getting it.. and then losing it’ eventually led me to look into spirituality and eventually nonduality. I didn’t understand how I could be so clear one day... and then in a month or two be back in the poor me, me, me syndrome we all know so well.
In 2009 or so I came back from one of these weeks long seminars and happened to see one of Eckhart Tolle's books at a charity sale at my work. It was 50 cents. I thought.. 'Hmmm, I've heard of him.. he was on Oprah or something... he’s gotta be a lightweight or a fad? But hey.. its only 50 cents.. oh well, get it" So I did and in reading him it reawakened some of my earlier interests in spirituality and it wasn’t long that I was off to the races.. Seeking and looking and searching for everything I could find on the internet about spirituality and then the focus turned more towards nonduality as that's what seemed to resonate with me. So... all this reading and looking and searching was going on.... and not really much finding anything to satisfy this hunger I had. If anything… I had more questions about it all.
On what I wished I could have known before starting all this… I could say I wished I knew that this self that I was so sure of being all my life.. I wish I would have known how unsubstantial it was... and is. But not really, life unfolds as it does. I wouldn’t change a thing looking back.
3. A few words about your thread? Do you remember what beliefs you came with and what you found out at the end?
On Jan 1, 2012 I was browsing around and ran into the audio interview our Ilona did with Trip and Jon Troy, these two guys who ran a weekly talk show with nondual authors etc. I really liked what Ilona was saying and knew from listening to her that this process was different than anything I’d seen so far.. (and by that time I’d seen most of them) I knew that I wanted what she had in hearing her, and went in the next day and signed up to the relatively new LU site. I think it had started the previous September. My guide was a woman from Texas named Liz who kept asking me lots of questions... questions no one had ever really asked me before. It was clear this was a different process than anything I'd seen before. Most all of the spiritual stuff is about some guru espousing 'how it is' and from that you're supposed to somehow 'get it'. Or you’d get ‘zapped’ somehow and you’d be enlightened. LOL. This is a very common belief out there.
The focus was never on ‘you’ but on concepts and theories about how this is. But that model doesn't work as well as they might hope. If it did we would see many more who are not seeking. The LU process is different in that you are expected and have to do the heavy looking for yourself. The guides point, but you have to look at where and what the pointing is going. We find out this is not an intellectual endeavor as we'd always thought... that it’s really about simple 'looking' at the reality that is right here in front of us. And that there is really nothing to figure out like we had imagined.
Of course the big belief I had, which nearly everyone has, is that this 'me' is substantial.... is the master of its own fate, and is 'real'. The guides plug away with questions to help us look at this, and if successful we see this me is nothing in reality but a set of assumptions and beliefs and memories. It goes against all we think we know... but If we can simply relax and see what’s here, this can be easy.... but its usually not. The mind comes in with all kinds of defenses to keep us in doubt. Intellectuals can have a very hard time with LU as at some point they have to go beyond or before the mind and thoughts… its very foreign to most of us as we’ve always attacked problems analytically. The big ‘hope’ for most coming in is that they will get that one pointer that has been eluding them, and then they will ‘get it’ and be enlightened forever after that experience. I can tell you this is a bad model to follow, but many do (I did previously) and it took actual looking at reality to get past this.
On the doubts… continued looking exposes this. No matter how hard we look, we cannot find a separate 'me' in reality..... only in thought. Thoughts happen.. yes.... but they are not real in the sense of being anything substantial.
I tried so hard to see this when I was in the dialogue... I knew it was somehow there.. as many had seen it, and I knew they weren't making it up. Then finally one day a few weeks or so after I started, I must have relaxed enough, I was walking my dog and not really paying attention to any of this or even thinking...this 'I' thought flashed up in my head and I stopped. I ‘saw’ that it was just a thought and not real. Not real… just a thought coming up. It was undeniable at the time. Whew! It was freeing to see, but not what I had expected. No lightning bolts went off, I was still here on this earth, the dog was still here, as was the sidewalk and my home. But something was different. The perspective had changed... subtly but surely. I saw in that instant that this ‘me’ was not a real thing, just a firmly believed in assumption.
The simplicity of it was seen… no me. No self. Just life – as it is.
I had a lot of fear about a lot of things.. money and security being one big set of things. And of course this money and security always revolved around a me. The me was the issue really and not the money or security. Much of that either dissolved or lessened quite a bit although it still comes up at times. One of the big things I've learned is acceptance of what is.. (including me).
I wrote this in my thread the day after I saw this... it sums up pretty good what was going on for me:
“An I is a figment of almost every living human’s imagination. It’s the core of what we refer to when we say I, me, mine, myself… At a very young age, you start to know your name and then comes the sure process of identification with this image of yourself as an I. That’s me you tell yourself, this is MY stuff, MY face, body, family, life……….Look in the mirror, that’s me. The stories start and the I is at the very center of every one. I did this, I did that. I know this or that. Everything that comes into contact with the I sticks to it. Good and bad. The I likes it or hates it and every shade in-between. The I is almost never satisfied. It gets what it thinks it wants, and then something else is wanted. The I is deeply afraid it won’t be someday and is continuously concocting schemes to protect itself and also how to get what it wants or at least what it thinks will ease the underlying suffering of separation it feels. It doesn’t know that it is feeling separation…..Just a deep knowing that something is missing. Not whole. There’s no end to it. Even though you can’t find an I anywhere in reality, this assumption is unquestioned by the world.
What I have learned is that the I is truly only a thought. It is an illusion. A superb illusion. This I can be searched for but not found in the real world. To see this is a very subtle process that can be seen by almost anyone with the right patience and pointers. When its seen, It’s like it was there exposed all the time right out in the open but almost impossible to see. When the seeing happens, clarity starts.”
4) What would you say the Liberation Unleashed process is exactly? What is it that happens in all these thousands of conversations?
It’s a pointing out, and asking people to look and see for themselves what is here right now prior to their beliefs coming up. When looked at clearly, it can be seen that thought, is not necessarily the reality that we have imagined it to be all our lives. A looking and seeing of what is ‘here’ before thought you could say. We have taken for granted that our thoughts are 'the truth' since we were very small. We come to find out through questions and looking and eventually seeing for ourselves that while thoughts undoubtedly happen, they are not reality in the most basic sense. For example we can see a tree, or bump our toe into the chair and ‘know’ without thinking that these are real happenings. But a thought can pop up about something, it ‘feels’ real, but if we go to look for it.. We can’t really find anything solid and true. Just the memory of a thought that is now gone. In a similar way, we ask that people look and find this self or 'I' that they have believed themselves to be all their lives. Usually this is a deeply ingrained belief we all seem to have from early childhood. We assume it is there and real... this 'I'. We think we ‘know’ it. But if we really investigate and look, we can never really find anything solid… just the assumption that it’s there. At best it’s a thought.
We present many different exercises to help a person actually look for this I, and if the person actually follows the instructions and takes this simple look (and it is simple), they come up empty in finding this I. It appears as nothing more than a few thoughts and feelings, or a highly believed in assumption that is at the root of all suffering and most all the problems we have.
Many think we somehow try to exorcise or get rid of this 'I'... but that is not what happens; or what we do. You cannot get rid of something that is not there in the first place... but clear seeing alone can break through the belief in this I and that seeing can be enough to unravel its grip on us. We don't lose our personality, or somehow become zombies. We just see that this I, this self that we'd assumed being all our lives is just a story... It was a story way back when, is a story now, and will be a story as long as we're here. We can know this all intellectually, yet not really SEE it. If we are doing our jobs as guides, we relentlessly point for the person to 'see' this with their whole being and not just in the mind. This is really not a kind of understanding that the mind can grasp. It can be tricky, as the mind is what we’ve always used to solve problems and figure things out…. but it is not the emphasis here.
5) Some may say that seeing that there is no separate self is a nihilistic approach to life, that it is denying personal experience. What would you say about that?
Yes, this can happen, I’ve seen this nihilistic point of view come up. Often it does. I usually do not buy into it, but have felt it at times myself and know the feeling. A kind of extreme emptiness is felt. This is really part of the story, but not the whole part and this is where I see people get stuck. I know it as I’ve been there too. I have a theory about why this happens - of course it’s just my opinion. Liberation Unleashed is mainly concerned with the seeing of no-self. This is fine and good, but it is really 1/2 of the equation. It’s what we are NOT, solely. It’s a negative viewpoint in a way if viewed alone. The other side, or half, is what we are in a positive sense. LU does not dabble much in this, but it is just as important as seeing the absence of a real self. Its paradoxical for sure, we look and we see emptiness, nothing specific that we are…. And then the next instant we look and see and feel we are full of life. We both exist… and yet we don’t exist. It depends on the point of view taken. Both simultaneously… its paradoxical for sure but it’s what is seen here.
Many will say that what we are, our 'true nature' (or other words like this) cannot be found as it’s not in our capacity to know or understand this. This may be true in an intellectual sense... no one really knows what anything 'is' in the deepest sense; we can only know about things.
But what we are, our identity if you will, is maybe the simplest thing we can know; and it’s very odd that we can get to adulthood without seeing this. Yet for most all of us no one has ever pointed this out to us. It’s actually very easily seen when it is pointed to.
Are we our bodies? At first thought, the answer is yes... but a little looking proves that is not the case. The body is constantly changing and we have a totally different body than we did when we were younger. We can lose body parts and we are still here.. so it cannot be that this is our ultimate or real identity. Thoughts are another one, they are so pervasive (never stopping for long) and influence us so much and are so easily identified with, we can easily think this is what we are… thoughts. But then its seen it doesn’t matter if we are thinking, or not… we're still here. And thoughts change constantly, so thoughts can’t really be what we are. Likewise goes to emotions and experiences of all sorts. They all come; and they all eventually go. Nothing stays. They also are not what we are in any ultimate sense.
So what's left? Not very much! But if we keep looking and asking, we will eventually come to see that this 'being' or 'presence' or 'awareness' that we seem to carry with us always... this sense of being alive, must be part of, if not all of what we are at our core. If I think back to being a child, the basic sense of being and awareness is the same now as what it was then. These words (awareness, being, consciousness, presence) are nothing special and I see people getting hung up over them. But why? These are only descriptive words at best and are not words that imply some kind of pervasive, soupy, mysterious type of fog engulfing everything. Just the simple everyday awareness that is behind all seeing and knowing that goes on all the time for all of us. Not the object/subject type of awareness but that which is here prior to it. Could you understand or know anything without this background of being, awareness, consciousness, that's here. No, of course not! It’s so much a part of what is and what we are we overlook it. It’s not an object we can point to and say.. ‘oh that’… yet can anyone deny they are here and aware? You can try to deny it, but you have to be here and aware to even do that.
This is not LU doctrine what I'm writing here... but it is what I have found through looking and trying my best to investigate what 'I' am and what's going on here. If I relax and look, I cannot find a separate, individual self here... all I see and feel is this sense of being here... this simple presence of being alive. Make no mistake, this IS about aliveness and being… and not about something dead and absent. This is about life.. not death. We also see that the 'I' does not die in seeing through it, we see however it never was in the first place, other than a deep seated thought in our heads. This seeing and acknowledging of simple beingness is at the root and heart of all the great nondual religions and teachers. It’s what they all point to, yet over time the message has gotten distorted in many.
6) How are your relationships with friends and family now that you are approaching life with a deeper view? Have things changed at all? And what would you say is the biggest difference in how you lived before this realization and how you live now?
This question, and its implication, gets into another fallacy that we see with people's expectations coming into LU. They expect from reading all the enlightment stories before coming here, that once this is all seen.. That all of their personal relationship problems are going to be solved and they'll magically now get along with everyone, especially those they might have had issues with before. Haha.
This is just another expectation to see through. While it’s true in one sense that some of this might be true, most of it is an urban myth. For me it’s more of accepting the differences in thinking I see in me and others and allowing everyone to just be where they are; wherever that is for them. I was the type that tried to get along with everyone, but of course that doesn’t happen often in reality. Some people you are naturally attracted to, and some you are not. I have dropped some old relationships that were not conducive and not looked back.
The biggest difference for me is that I am not seeking or searching for who and what I am anymore. This dropped off after seeing that this 'I' was a story. I can't describe it exactly, but I seem to be able to look at most any religion or philosophy and know intuitively whether its BS or not, by how much emphasis it places on stories and thought, or in some kind of understanding. Other personal type preferences have not really changed at all. There’s an underlying peace that seems to be here no matter what is going on in my personal world.
7. For how long have you been guiding in LU and how many threads have you guided?
I have been guiding since 2012, I was fairly active in my first few years, but have not been as active in the last several. I think about 75 or so people I’ve guided with about 30 seeing through the self.
8. Why a guide and not a teacher?
There’s nothing to learn in the sense of gaining new information or achieving something.
Is it an achievement to simply be what you already are? No. It might feel like it at first when the seeking just collapses upon seeing through the self.. but no, its just an acknowledgement or affirming of what is already the case. This is really about pointing for others to ‘see’ in a way that is natural yet covered over by layers and years of belief. So our work as guides is to help the client (guide) lift this veil, although we don’t really do anything but point. The guidee does the ‘work’ by looking and seeing past and through their own rigid belief systems.
9. Could you tell something to those who have fear and postpone their exploration in LU?
There’s really not a better time than right now to look at any of this. Many are afraid that somehow seeing through the self will mean annihilation or losing everything they hold dear. This is unfounded (but understandable), nothing is lost in this other than false beliefs. But I understand it can be scary for many. A real open mind and earnestness to pursue this is needed. If a person is not in this mind set…. Then the guiding probably won’t be fruitful. It might help anyways, but can prove to be frustrating.
What is so different about this is that it’s not the normal type of learning about something that we are all so familiar with. You can’t study up for this and then pass a test. In fact too much knowledge about all of this can be harmful to the seeing. People have ideas what this is about, but they are only guessing from the mind’s point of view. But this is not some kind of ‘understanding’ that can be gotten with words and books. It takes a real stopping, looking and seeing; really without a bunch of critical thinking and reasoning that we are so used to doing to solve problems. It’s not solvable in that way. This might sound like a bit of mumbo jumbo, but for anyone who has been in LU they know exactly to what I refer.
10. What are the most common expectations and misconceptions you have to deal with when guiding?
Oh, I went into that a little in the above question.
There are many expectations people have of this…. Mostly in how they will ‘end up’ once the seeing happens. Many think they will be an ‘enlightened’ person (a misnomer actually) after this and have a different attitude and presence about them than they do now. They think (from all the stuff they see on the internet) that all of their problems in life will be solved or greatly lessened, that they will get along better in life and be ‘happy’ from here on out. I’m generalizing of course, but these basic ideas we do see quite often. The basic idea people have (and I had it too) is that there’s going to be a big change. We go over these ideas and try to put all of them out, so we can get on to the meat of what LU is.. the SEEING that there is not a separate individual self running our lives, or life in general.
The biggest misconception I see is in the thinking that this is some kind of understanding, or special knowledge, that once known, the sky will open up and the self will be seen through. NO. Absolutely not! This is where so many stumble…especially those with an intellectual bent; they just ‘know’ that if they learn all about this through the mind, that it will happen. There’s usually an expectation that there’s one little ‘secret’ or bit of information that when acquired… all will fall into place and they will see the ‘truth’. Haha NO! It’s not something that’s known by the mind. It’s a literal and even physical seeing of reality that is here right now. It takes no special training or knowledge. The thing is, this ‘seeing’ is already happening for everyone, but our beliefs and thoughts crowd out this ability to simply look and see things as they are. If a person can simply relax and look, it can be seen that you are this ‘thing’ you’ve been searching for forever… and its not a ‘thing’… it’s YOU that is really found.
11. What would you be your advice for those who completed LU process and had the realization?
Do whatever comes up. The possibilities are endless and none are right or wrong. Many go through this, have a bit of a wakeup, and then slowly but surely revert back to the same place they were. That’s ok if it happens. Doubts can come up that seem real and they are bought into. Again, this is ok if it happens. There is no preferred place really. At some point these people might have a crisis or yearning to come back… they at least have a clue now of where to start again, and how to look. But again.. I will emphasize that it’s not ‘better’ to see this, than not see it. There is no real advantage in the scheme of life either way.
Many people go through LU and have a rather profound seeing of this. It shocks them to the core of who they are. After a while, this usually settles some, but can ignite a further looking and searching for confirmation. To them, I would say to keep the looking up. We tend to fall back on the mind as time passes, and the mind (thoughts) is really not how any of this is seen. Some laugh for days at the absurdity of how serious they had been about life and themselves in the past. Yes some understanding happens, but the understanding is absolutely secondary to the seeing and knwing of what you are. Guiding others can be a help for these people as in helping others to see this, they are also ‘looking’ themselves again and again.
There are no rules for any of this. Anything and everything (or nothing) can and does happen.
12. Is there anything else you’d like to add? Anything you want to share?
Having been a big reader of all things nondual for years, always looking for the most clear honest pointing, I was lucky enough to run into John Wheeler’s work five or so years ago. He is without a doubt a modern day gem, and his pointing is relentless and clear as to what’s real and not pointing back to himself in any way, unlike what you see out there so much on the spiritual marketplace today. He retired from teaching years ago and his books are out of print now, but If you should happen to find anything of his… read it! You won’t be disappointed.
I will say that along with John, our own Ilona and her very clear pointings have had the most influence on me since my search had started. I do love reading some of Ilona’s guidings and like her easy direct style.
I’d encourage everyone who is interested in what LU does to give it a shot. It can’t be gone into on a whim, or haphazard and without a real determination to see it through. Let’s face it, seeing that there is no real individual self is a stretch, as it goes against everything we’ve been told and learned since we were a child. Many think this is a debate club and come and try to convince their guide in their latest theory. As you can imagine, this doesn’t work. We are saying that this ‘I’ you believe yourself to be is a fiction… a story… not findable in reality if looked for. So it takes an open mind to enter into these talks. You have to be willing to investigate this in a thorough way, and be guided.
For the people who have gone through LU, I’d encourage them to find out what they are after seeing that there’s no individual separate self here. There’s no self… right… but still; you are here, and aware. What is this? What are ‘you’? For sure you’re not a nothing… even though emptiness might feel like the reality at times. Look in the same way you’ve seen through the self. Find the other ½ of the equation that is also the truth of what you are. It’s not hidden and is intuitively known already. Just take a look.