Hi Ilona
(Wrote this last night. It's fairly long and stream of consciousness but I think it will give you a better picture of what's going on. Thank you!)
Have been very depressed the past couple of days. Feeling like the walking dead. Emotional zombie. The body is holding a lot of tension. Whole body is clenching, jaw, psoas, hips, whole body tension. Exhausted. In any case, a lot is going on as far as this project we are working on here.
What has changed in normal everyday life? What do you notice, see differently?
Write more.
Moments of insight and clarity. Self I me, it's all imagination of the mind. All that is here is body and mind, which are inseparable aspects of the unit.
Identification = imagination
How can one thing be something else? It can't! To say "I am smart" would mean that "I" am actually something else, "smart".
So before it was seen that the character of "me" is just that, a character that I have been playing my whole life, like the Batman example you use.
This time the seeing is that even the "I" who is playing the character is completely imaginary as well.
There is no I. There is no me. There is no ownership of experience. There is only body/mind experiencing. Just empty of self. So then laughing happens, words are spoken, bliss arises, but it's all happening in empty space. There is no one experiencing this. No I am laughing. No I am speaking. No I am in bliss.
The high fades. The mind starts thinking: "None of this is happening to *me*. It's just empty space. What good is it if empty space feels bliss? If there is no one feeling bliss, what is the point of bliss? I mean who cares? Anything at all could be arising and it's all empty space, so what's the point? No more me means no more suffering but it also means no more pleasure either! Hmmm ...." So that is mind talking.
Then mind starts to freak out a little bit, looking for the missing "me". Mind wants a "me" for some unknown purpose. Like mind can't grasp empty experiences. Mind wants solidity. Mind wants ownership.
So one day, maybe more, as just body/mind, no I-me-self. Then I-me-self gets recreated to calm down mind. Little by little ownerships are added. Maybe there is no owner of body, but now there is ownership of emotions. There is ownership of stories. There is ownership of doing. It builds up little by little.
Writing in notebook. Identification equals imagination. Other things. How self is a creation of mind. It's not "my" mind. No owner here, right now as this is being written.
There is not the feeling that "everything is just happening". There is a subtle sense of ownership of activities, such as this typing now. There is no "I am doing this" more like mind/body is doing this. There is a sense of doing, rather than pure flow, but unable to say who/what is doing it. It is being done, there is some small effort involved, it is not an effortless flow, it is not being done by "life" particularly.
So prior to the big event of recognition, there were a couple of blips that I wrote about before. Then I started watching your videos again and re-reading your book. You mentioned Ciaran Healy. I got curious, went online, started reading. What pushed me over the edge was reading something like "are those thoughts involving self actually coming from a self, or are they thoughts ABOUT a self?". Started pondering this and Boom!
Never saw that before, so obvious! All those thoughts that say "I am tired", or "I am sleepy" or whatever don't come *from* a self, they are ABOUT a self! An imaginary self! Crazy! Wow! It's like the mind creates this self thing in order to make sense of the world, but it's completely unnecessary! There may be feelings of tiredness, or sleepiness, but there is no "I" that is feeling them!
Ooohhh again, it's all just happening in empty space! How is this even possible! Tiredness arising in emptiness? Sleepiness arising in emptiness?
With no subject. There is no subject! How is this even possible?? THERE IS NO SUBJECT, FEELINGS ARE JUST ARISING IN EMPTY SPACE!!
And then suddenly there is a "me" here again, writing these words. Not a particularly solid "me", but a person, a subject, typing words. There is a "me" here having feelings...
It's all so shifty, so slippery!
So you asked me what has changed, what is different now. So hard to define, but I think that this post should give you some idea of what going on. The I-me-self fades in and out. Identifications and ownership occurs, then it doesn't. Then it does. As I go through my day I operate just as always. There is an I and I do things. I feel things. I make choices. But then when I really look it's like...very shifty! Feeling like some identifications have dropped away, but not all. When doing daily life there is the re-adopting if the I-me-self as well as the character that I play. It's not like the character has changed at all. The character is still the same old character, with all the same old patterns, the same old fears, the same old way of relating.
As writing this now, it's like the character continues to be played but there is no one playing the character. There is no ownership of playing the character. The character gets played by the body/mind, that's all. There is no "me" person who is playing the character. It is just being played. Can't even say that it's being played by "life". Again, in this very moment there is NO SUBJECT!!! And the mind gets weird about this! "Does not compute!"
Well ok this is a long post and I am getting sleepy now. In this moment there *is* an I self, who is getting sleepy.and wants to sleep. You see how it keeps shifting?? Fading in and out so rapidly!
Thank you!
PS. The mind getting all weird about the experience of no subject .... Curious. Maybe one of those "resistance" things. Need to get used to that somehow. Might help deepen the experience, calm down the shiftiness... Not sure exactly how to calm the mind, might take some getting used to. No doubt!
Ok that's it for now!
Thank you!!!