Sight without thought or self continues to function spontaneously, without effort. Sight is just obviously happening.
Hearing is simple and can’t and needn’t be made to happen. It’s never known what will be heard until it’s heard or what was heard until after it’s been already passed. At the time of hearing it’s spontaneous and effortless.
Sensations also move constantly and unexpectedly or unpredictably and fall away the same way. They aren’t created but are experienced.
Yes
Thoughts are the both the clearest and least clear. There’s still the tendency to somehow believe in ownership or control of some thoughts and be able to recognize others as just as uncontrolled and unowned as sight, hearing, and sensations. Looking now it can be seen that even these thoughts are arising uncontrolled and , that without a thought afterwards saying it wasn’t spontaneous, they are spontaneous. There’s some relief again at the recognition of how that cascades to everything that thoughts take credit for. Guilt, second-guessing, shame, embarrassment can be seen to a way of claiming what was never actually claimable. If all moments are essentially just like this one, spontaneously arising, when would the things that led to those feelings have had the chance to be controlled by a self?
Exactly. And how could "another moment" be different? See exercise at the end...
A reluctance comes up when the thought that there’s no one to claim the “work” that’s gone into this process is seen as possibly being true. When would there have been a separate self to initiate any process? Was there a moment so unlike this one where it was present and if so, where was this separate self? Where did it exist outside of thought?Such a self can’t be found looking now even if thoughts keep trying to take claim after each word is typed and attributing them to a self. Where is it? Where is it? It’s a very subtle thought almost just a feeling that claims being a self.
So there is a wish to be the one who did this process and claims the work and fruits...
But can that someone be found? And is there someone deciding to have that wish?
If you don't make it about what the feelings want, but what is actually there........
Attention is also claimed by thoughts but it seems to shift in a similar way to thoughts. It moves then because it’s a familiar feeling, the movement is claimed as “natural” which it is, but there’s no mover of attention apparent.
Intention and will can be seen to be spontaneously arising in DE.
Emotion can be seen to be moving without a controller.
A thought immediately arises that says “choice” is where “I” always get stuck but looking in DE, the body continues typing, picking up crackers, chewing, and clearly almost none of it is even thought about. The part that is does sometimes arise in thought first, but the thought itself just spontaneously arises. The order can be either before or after but there’s nowhere for a controller to be. No central manager.
Right. Whatever connection might be between thoughts, intentions and actions none if it is self or controlled by self. Yes?
Why does it feel like there is one when clearly there isn’t?
If you believe Allah or Yeahova is the one true god with the one true book, it WILL feel true. If you decide to see through the unfounded belief, you cannot let yourself be guided by how it feels, only by what genuine attention to reality reveals.
Similarly with movement sometimes a thought precedes movement, sometime not. A thought isn’t a self though. A thought just says “I’ll type a quotation mark at the end of this sentence.” Then it’s typed, but what does the “I” refer to without thought? Just an empty... nothing. Nothing real, not even feeling really. It could be said to refer to the body and yes, there’s a body here, but is the body the “I” if the body is only acting (either before or after a thought about the action)? The body itself can’t both be the self and control the self.
What is a body? In direct experience? Is there anything in body that is not spontaneous nature without separate self?
I can see pretty clearly how everything conceptual is not real in the sense of DE. DE is beautifully simple. It’s doesn’t even need comment because it’s so obvious and apparent. All the politics and economy etc. exist in time and are completely invisible to DE so how could it inform those stories? This process could only show reality as it is without those stories, which also actually includes those stories but doesn’t in any way depend on them. It seems like it is a very simple seeing of reality just as it is.
Yes, stories can be useful relatively speaking, and no more. Here we are only concerned with the belief in some self that is controlling things, experiencing things, etc.
Do this exercise:
Time Exercise
There is a general assumption that there is linear time that started (if started at all) somewhere very far in the past and advances to the distant future. The present moment (now) is considered to be a very small fragment of time, or an event that is moving forward on a linear line, coming from the past and advancing to the future.
But is there an experience of the ’now’ moving along the line of time? Any experience of one ‘moment’ giving way to the next?
Is there any actual or direct experience of one event following another?
How fast is the ‘present moment’ actually moving?
Just look at 'this moment', can you find a point where it began? How long does the ‘now’ last?
Where does the ‘now’ start, and where does it end?
When does the ‘now’ exactly become the 'past'?
What is the ‘past’ in actual experience?
So is there actual experience of ‘time’ or thoughts about ‘time’?