Seeking guidance

[Honeybear]

LU is focused guiding for seeing there is no real, inherent 'self' - what do you understand by this?
What I believe this means is that there’s no part of the mind that operates as the central receiver and controller of experience. In other words, that internally there isn’t an experience and an experiencer—there’s just the experience, or, if you want to put it in terms of the mind, there’s just the mind that is experiencing.

What are you looking for at LU?
When I take the time to look directly at my own experience, I can see that there’s no entity somewhere inside of me experiencing it. The first time I really saw this, I was reading Gateless Gatecrashers and writing answers to some of the questions. I think I was responding to one about my most cherished beliefs, and I had this sense of shock when I saw that not only was the belief I had in mind just a thought, but that the idea of the “I” that held the belief was also just a thought and nothing else. I saw that the “I” wasn’t there inside of me at all, and it was so surprising to me that I laughed and looked around the room. It was the first time I’d ever understood what people were talking about when they talked about nonself. Up until that time, I’d thought that nonself meant that the self was a conditioned and changing process with no core, which it is, but thinking about it that way allowed me to keep feeling like there was some entity in there that was the self—but just conditioned and changing. This was the first time that I saw that in some sense the self doesn’t exist at all. But for whatever reason, that experience and resulting insight didn’t change my perceptions or my sense of myself, and I still generally feel like I’ve got some kind of self inside of me that’s receiving and processing experience, as well as controlling certain aspects of it. What I hope to get from Liberation Unleashed is a realization of nonself that is deep enough to change those perceptions.

What do you expect from a guided conversation?
I’ve tried to look at the forum enough to have a general sense of the process, but not so much that it creates too many expectations of how it will work for me (or of what I should say when asked certain questions). So, I’ve kept myself a little bit ignorant on purpose. But what I anticipate is that the guide will ask me questions and expect me to answer based on what I’m able to directly see in my own experience. My hope is that working through this process with someone who knows the right things to ask will cause me to have a realization that is deeper than the one I had on my own.

What is your experience in terms of spiritual practices, seeking and inquiry?
I’ve spent a lot of time meditating in the past fifteen years. I’ve had a regular home practice, and done group and solitary retreats. I’ve done both shamatha and vipassana practices, and have mainly been working in the contexts of Theravada and Tibetan Buddhism, although I no longer consider myself a Buddhist. My meditation has been helpful for me in a lot of ways, but hasn’t led to the kinds of breakthroughs that other people have, and that I’d hoped for.

On a scale from 1 to 10, how willing are you to question any currently held beliefs about 'self?
10

[Jadzia]

Hi Honeybear,

if you want we can walk together for some time and look at whatever we find to see what is for keeping and what is for letting go.

If you are ready to go:

I had this sense of shock when I saw that not only was the belief I had in mind just a thought, but that the idea of the “I” that held the belief was also just a thought and nothing else. I saw that the “I” wasn’t there inside of me at all, and it was so surprising to me that I laughed and looked around the room.

This sure was a moment of clarity, what did you expect how it would go on after such an epiphany?
What would life be like after one's seen this for once and forever?
What would change, what would stay the same?
How would you be like?


Love,
Jadzia

[Honeybear]

Hi Jadzia,

Thanks so much for your reply, and for offering your time to do this process with me. I really appreciate it.

This sure was a moment of clarity, what did you expect how it would go on after such an epiphany?

It definitely felt like a moment of clarity, and I think I expected it to be more than a moment. I thought it might permeate and shape my experience more than it did—that it would spread to other contexts and not just be available when I look intentionally. I thought it might change my underlying sense of myself more.

What would life be like after one's seen this for once and forever?
What would change,

What I imagine is that if I were to really absorb this insight in a visceral way, I would feel more fluid somehow, because I would be less gripped and confined by the stories I tell about myself. A number of these stories are negative and painful, and I think that if I fully comprehended that the thoughts, memories, and emotions aren’t actually attached to anything and don’t define anything—since there’s no self in there to define—they wouldn’t have such a hold on me.

Right now, I also strongly identify with the voice inside my head, and I imagine that there would be less identification with my thoughts if I really got it that there’s no separate and essential me thinking them.

Also, when I’m looking at things with my eyes, I have the strong feeling that there’s someone in here looking out, and I imagine that this would also change. As it is now, I have to stop and check on purpose to become aware that there’s no one in here seeing.

what would stay the same?

What I imagine would stay the same is that I’d still have a lot of the same mental patterns—the same personality, the same kinds of thoughts and ideas and emotional responses. But I also imagine that some of these might start to shift over time if I weren’t clinging to them so tightly as me.

How would you be like?

I imagine that I’d be much like I am now, but easier somehow—easier with myself, with others, and with circumstances. I think that I might suffer at least a little less. And I think that I would have the confidence to know that I had awakened to some degree and that I could continue to awaken.

Thank you so much, Jadzia. This is really generous of you.

Love,
Honeybear

[Jadzia]

Sometimes a crack opens in our belief system and we suddenly see what is, clear and sharp and know that this is it.
For most of us it takes more looking and asking questions, questioning our overview and the beliefs which hold it in place, before the knowing becomes more stable. Just take into account that a belief system has to be worn out by looking again and again until it drops away or doesn't have any pull any longer.

Your expectations are ok, they won't get in the way of our looking together - simply have an eye on them, new ones might show.

Also, when I’m looking at things with my eyes, I have the strong feeling that there’s someone in here looking out, and I imagine that this would also change. As it is now, I have to stop and check on purpose to become aware that there’s no one in here seeing

.
You looked, wonderful, and didn't find a someone or whatever doing the looking. Good.

Right now, I also strongly identify with the voice inside my head, and I imagine that there would be less identification with my thoughts if I really got it that there’s no separate and essential me thinking them.

The voice in the head, How is it known that it is you? :-)

Love,
Jadzia

[Honeybear]

For most of us it takes more looking and asking questions, questioning our overview and the beliefs which hold it in place, before the knowing becomes more stable. Just take into account that a belief system has to be worn out by looking again and again until it drops away or doesn't have any pull any longer.

Thanks. That’s helpful.

You looked, wonderful, and didn't find a someone or whatever doing the looking. Good.

Yes, the experience with Gateless Gatecrashers was maybe like a year ago. The experience of seeing that there was no self back there looking from behind my eyes was just a couple of weeks ago. I looked at something and tried to trace the looking back to its source and found that I couldn’t—there was no source; there was just the experience of looking itself. When I do it now, it’s sort of elusive—sometimes I get it, and I can see that there’s just looking, but sometimes, a voice says, “But I’m looking!” and that feels like me. When that happens, I can sometimes decouple the thought from the sense that the thought is me by noticing that actually it’s just a thought, but sometimes the sense of it being me is more convincing.

The voice in the head, How is it known that it is you? :-)

Such a hard question!

I guess the voice in my head feels like me because: 1) It feels like it’s in my head, and it feels like it’s someone, so I guess I conclude that it must be me. 2) There are physical sensations in my head that my mind associates with the voice, and somehow the combination makes it feel more like me—the sensations reinforce the voice or make it more substantial or something. 3) The voice is always available in all of my moments of conscious awareness, unlike things that aren’t me. 4) It has a great deal of continuity, in that it has a certain vocabulary and certain ways of thinking about different aspects of my life. It’s recognizable because of these patterns and habits—I don’t really ever think things that seem very uncharacteristic of me. It never starts speaking French, or espousing political views that I didn’t have yesterday. 5) It knows about and is integrated with other aspects of my inner life, like the mental images that make up my memories about the past and visions of what might happen later. 6) It has instant access to knowledge about (at least some of) the things that I’ve learned and experienced. 7) It seems to have a sense of agency. Like, I can think “I’ll go make pancakes,” and then I go make pancakes, so it feels like the voice is me and it decided what to do.

I’m sure there are more reasons, but these are the ones I can come up with at the moment. I think that it’s some combination of these for me.

When I look at the ones like 5 and 6, where I say that the voice knows, or it has access to knowledge, it’s clear to me upon reflection that the thoughts themselves don’t know anything or have access to anything else. In that case, it’s that there seems to be some entity behind the thoughts. Of course, when I look for what that entity is, it isn’t there. Then I think that my self must be some kind of unconscious entity that is feeding these thoughts up to my conscious mind, but that’s not what the self feels like—it feels like the self is a presence that I’m consciously aware of. But what that presence is, is a little slippery—I think sometimes the voice itself feels like me, and sometimes it feels like there’s a me behind the voice.

Thanks, Jadzia.

Love,
Honeybear

[Jadzia]

You really take to it. Lots of gems to be found.

I looked at something and tried to trace the looking back to its source and found that I couldn’t—there was no source; there was just the experience of looking itself.

No one doing the seeing, just seeing.

When that happens, I can sometimes decouple the thought from the sense that the thought is me by noticing that actually it’s just a thought, but sometimes the sense of it being me is more convincing.

See, experiences are fleeting. No use trying to hold onto them or trying to recreate them. You've experienced this, that's enough.
Gating can be seen as one step of awakening, no need to hurry, there are more to follow and lots of experiences will deepen on the way.

Good work on the voice question.
It seems to have a place and it is called/labelled "my voice".
It seems to have a sensation accompanying it, hm.
It is always there.
Continuity, yes, makes the story quite convincing. Recognizable (don't know if this is even a word but I guess you get what I mean.)
It is said that it is connected to past (Memory including learned stuff) and future (daydreams/visions).
It is supposed to comand, give orders which are always(?) followed.

Lets have a look.
Where exactly is the place in the head? Can you really point at it? Does the voice have a form?
Is there always a sensation and does the sensation know about being the voice? Is there any connection between voice and sensation you can find when you look?
If the voice gives and idea/order what to do is the action always done? Is this always coming before the action?
It seems like a voice, but is there any difference between thought and voice?
This is enough to look at at the moment. :-)

When I look at the ones like 5 and 6, where I say that the voice knows, or it has access to knowledge, it’s clear to me upon reflection that the thoughts themselves don’t know anything or have access to anything else.

Yes, nevertheless the story of power of thoughts and omnipotence is told, right?

Love,
Jadzia

[Honeybear]

No one doing the seeing, just seeing.

Yes

See, experiences are fleeting. No use trying to hold onto them or trying to recreate them. You've experienced this, that's enough.
Gating can be seen as one step of awakening, no need to hurry, there are more to follow and lots of experiences will deepen on the way.

Ok, thanks!

It seems to have a place and it is called/labelled "my voice".

I think that rather than labelling it as my voice, my general belief when I’m not purposefully examining it would be that it’s actually me. Calling it “my voice” is actually a step up in terms of getting closer to reality.

It seems to have a sensation accompanying it, hm.

Yes, this is related to feeling like it has a place—I associate the sensations in my head with the voice. Normally I wouldn’t be paying attention to these sensations, but if I ask myself why I feel like the voice is happening in my head, rather than say, in my heart, I think it’s partly because some pretty important sense organs are in my head—eyes, ears, nose, and mouth—and also because, although I can’t feel it, I know that my brain’s there too, and that part of its role is to generate thoughts. So I think I have an idea that the voice is happening in my head, and feeling the body sensations in my head is some kind of partial confirmation.

It is always there.
Continuity, yes, makes the story quite convincing. Recognizable (don't know if this is even a word but I guess you get what I mean.)
It is said that it is connected to past (Memory including learned stuff) and future (daydreams/visions).

Yes.

It is supposed to comand, give orders which are always(?) followed.

I didn’t mean to suggest that it was issuing commands—more that it seemed to have the ability to make decisions and to act on them. Maybe those are commands, but I meant it in a softer way, because after the voice says “I’ll make pancakes,” it can always come back and say, “No, pancakes aren’t healthy. I’ll make oatmeal,” or whatever.

Where exactly is the place in the head? Can you really point at it?

No, I can't find the exact place to point to. Sometimes it seems to be behind my eyes, sometimes it seems to be inside the back of my head, and sometimes it seems to be just behind the back of my throat. Then sometimes it seems to be in my mouth, nose, and throat as if I were speaking—kind of a very subtle subvocalization.

Does the voice have a form?

I guess it has a form insofar as it takes the form of mental sound, rather than a mental image of written words. But it doesn’t have any physical form.

Is there always a sensation and does the sensation know about being the voice?

I don’t know if there’s always a sensation, because I definitely don’t notice it unless I’m looking for what makes it seem like the voice is in my head somewhere. Then I notice sensations, but I think that they’re just the regular body sensations of having a head; they don’t seem to be special physical sensations that are associated with an internal voice. So then it seems like my mind makes the connection between the internal voice and the physical sensations of having a head either because it thinks the mental voice is taking place in my head and so it believes that the sensations are related or in order to feel more of a sense of agency—like the voice is really me, and not just some random mental experience. If I have two related experiences happening at once that I identify with, it makes the sense of self seem more solid.

The sensations don’t know anything about being the voice or about the voice at all.

Is there any connection between voice and sensation you can find when you look?

No. There seems to be slightly more of a connection when there’s the kind of subtle subvocalization, but obviously, my vocal chords and such aren’t the things that are making the internal sound. So no—no connection at all!

If the voice gives and idea/order what to do is the action always done?

When an intention is expressed by the internal voice, I don’t always do what it says. Sometimes this will be because the internal voice will then say something contrary, or sometimes I just won’t do it, without needing the internal voice to say anything.

But it seems that a thought like “I’ll go make pancakes,” is the exception, not the rule. Most of the time when there’s an intention to do something, it comes as a quick flash of a mental image of some aspect of me doing the thing, rather than as a sentence in my internal voice. In the past, I wouldn’t have noticed these images, as they’re often quite fleeting, and I would have thought of them as ideas without a particular form as either images or an internal voice. But since I’ve been doing vipassana meditation lately, I can see more clearly the different kinds of thoughts that I have. So after I get this little fleeting image, if there are no contrary thoughts, images, or impulses, I go do it. Much of the time, though, I’m doing things without any forewarning that I can catch—like I’ll reach for my cup without having an image about it or without hearing my internal voice.

Is this always coming before the action?

No. A lot of the time, the voice seems more like a narrator of what’s happening than someone who tells me what to do. Sometimes the voice comes after the fact and is superfluous. Like, earlier, I went to pick up the mail, and petted the neighbor’s goat on the way. A second or two afterwards, I could still feel the warmth of her on my hand, and then the thought “I can still feel the warmth on my hand,” came up in my internal voice. It was narrating what I’d already felt. Then, when I got back, I had the experience of thinking “I’ll go wash my hands,” when I had already walked into the bathroom and turned on the water. So, the internal voice’s expression of an intention to do something does not always precede the action.

It seems like most of the time what the voice is doing is talking to other people in my head—either revisiting conversations I’ve already had, or saying things that I might say to someone in the future.

It seems like a voice, but is there any difference between thought and voice?

There’s no difference between thought and voice if what you’re asking is whether the voice is just a thought. The voice is a type of thought. I guess I was calling it a voice to distinguish it from other kinds of thoughts that might appear. For me, some thoughts appear as the mental sound of words, phrases, and sentences that are in my voice and generally seem to come from this essential me (although I do occasionally hear them as just thoughts without identification); some appear as the mental sound of words, phrases, and sentences that are in other people’s voices and are either my memories of what people have said or what I imagine that they might say; some appear as mental sounds that don’t involve voices—the sound of a violin or an airplane or whatever; and some appear as mental images. Most of my thoughts are a combination of mental images and my mental voice. When I was talking about the voice in my head, I was calling this a voice just to try to be clear because if I said “thoughts,” that would include all of these different types of thoughts, and if I said “words,” that could conceivably include mental images—like if I saw the image of letters of a word spelled out in my mind. (If I should use a different set of terms for what’s going on in the mind, you can let me know.)

Yes, nevertheless the story of power of thoughts and omnipotence is told, right?

Yes, somehow it often feels like the thoughts themselves have power and agency, I think because I’m generally primarily engaged with their content, rather than observing their nature as thoughts.

This is so interesting and fun! Thanks, Jadzia.

Love,
Honeybear

[Jadzia]

Alright.
You seem to be the voice in the head, as well as the listener to you who seems to be the voice in the head, as well as the acting on ideas of you, you seemingly being the voice in what seems to be your head.
Are you bewildered now?
Doesn't this look a lot like an amazing and elaborate story?
Check the story with what is found in the direct experience.
Voice = Thoughts which are noticed.
Head = ?
Listener = ?
The one acting = ?
Mind = ?
What of the last four can you find in your direct experience right now?
Direct experience meaning, what can you see, smell, taste, hear, feel (physical feeling), or noticing a thought.

Thoughts
There are different types of thoughts if we want to pick it apart: the voice, images, contents of different kinds all happen in thoughts. The contents can be memory (past), visions/daydreams (future), judgement, commentary (you already noticed a fav function of thoughts ;-)), discussions with different roles (role playing), and we could label many more.
In the end all happens in thoughts. For now let all of them be called thoughts, to make it a bit easier for us, ok?

Yes, somehow it often feels like the thoughts themselves have power and agency, I think because I’m generally primarily engaged with their content, rather than observing their nature as thoughts.

This is a good point. We learned to take thoughts, aka their content for face value, as truth, as keen observations of reality.........but are they?
We notice thoughts in the moment, what about the content of thoughts, can we notice them right now in our direct experience?

Love,
Jadzia

[Honeybear]

You seem to be the voice in the head, as well as the listener to you who seems to be the voice in the head, as well as the acting on ideas of you, you seemingly being the voice in what seems to be your head.
Are you bewildered now?

Yes, It’s interesting how flexible the sense of self is—it’s happy to be the one thinking or the one listening to the thoughts or the one deciding whether or not to act on them, and generally doesn’t find any contradiction in identifying with all three, even when the first and the third are in conflict.

Doesn't this look a lot like an amazing and elaborate story?

I take the identification with all three so much for granted that it’s hard to see it as a story—it seems so natural. So I keep looking at what you’ve written and thinking about how it doesn’t make any logical sense for the self to be identified with all of them—it feels like there’s one talking, and one listening, and one deciding or acting, and it makes no sense to call all of those myself, since the self feels singular and coherent. So, yes, it’s kind of an amazing and elaborate story. Such deeply ingrained ignorance, in the sense of literally ignoring what’s actually happening.

Check the story with what is found in the direct experience.
Voice = Thoughts which are noticed.
Head = ?
Listener = ?
The one acting = ?
Mind = ?
What of the last four can you find in your direct experience right now?
Direct experience meaning, what can you see, smell, taste, hear, feel (physical feeling), or noticing a thought.

I can directly observe my head because I can feel it, and I can see parts of it without a mirror, and the rest of it with one. I cannot directly observe that the thoughts are happening there. I feel like they’re happening there because of what I wrote about last time, and also I think because thoughts cause a lot of changes to happen in my head—they’ll cause my eyes to move, or my facial expression to change—but I can’t actually determine that the thoughts are happening in my head. Part of this is because I know that the brain doesn’t, like, vibrate or anything when it’s creating thoughts, and so any sensations I feel can’t be due to thinking. (I know that’s an inference and not a direct perception, but it’s an important part of how I know that the thoughts aren’t causing the sensations in my head—it feels so much like the thoughts are happening there!)

When I look for the listener, I cannot find it. I cannot find a separate thing in the mind that’s experiencing the thought—it’s just one process of thinking or of a thought-being-known.

The one acting is so hard! It feels so intuitively correct that there’s someone in my head carrying out an action, which is cracking me up as I type this, just because it’s so funny to be poking around in these deeply held assumptions. Ok, so when I type, sometimes I know what I’m going to type, and I feel like I’m deciding, and sometimes It just happens without me thinking about it. Just now, I picked up a vase that’s in front of me and put it down about ten or fifteen times to see if there was someone doing it. I feel like I’m doing it, so I need more help. I think it’s harder because I’ll often have a thought that’s related to the vase while I’m doing it, and then I feel like the thought is me, and so I’d have to do another deconstruction on the thought and see that it’s just a thought and not a separate self, but somehow this is more difficult to do when what I’m trying to look at is a physical action. . . . I just did it some more, and even if I’m not having a thought, I still feel like there’s a me up here in my head that is picking up the vase—maybe because my eyes are up here, and I’m looking at what my hand is doing. Help!

I definitely cannot find a mind. This one is easier for me than some of the other ones. The mind I don’t find at all—it’s just a way to describe the fact that I’m having experiences. Sometimes I use the word to refer purely to internal experiences like thinking, and sometimes I use it to refer to the fact that I’m having any experiences at all—like I can only see the table in front of me because I’m sentient and have a mind and the table appears in my mind. But no, I can’t find the mind itself.

For now let all of them be called thoughts, to make it a bit easier for us, ok?

Yep.

This is a good point. We learned to take thoughts, aka their content for face value, as truth, as keen observations of reality.........but are they?
We notice thoughts in the moment, what about the content of thoughts, can we notice them right now in our direct experience?

I can notice the content of my thoughts in the sense that I can know if I’m thinking about a vase or my sister or an upcoming event. Whether I can notice what those thoughts are referring to depends on what the content is. I can see the actual vase in front of me, although the one in my mind doesn’t look exactly like it because my memory isn’t perfect and because usually the images in my mind are a little imprecise. My sister I can’t notice in direct experience because she’s hundreds of miles away and totally disconnected from her as I’m imagining her. I’m imagining her in her house, but she might be elsewhere. A future event I can’t find in my direct experience because it doesn’t exist anywhere.

Thanks so much, Jadzia.

Love,
Honeybear

[Jadzia]

Yes, It’s interesting how flexible the sense of self is—it’s happy to be the one thinking or the one listening to the thoughts or the one deciding whether or not to act on them, and generally doesn’t find any contradiction in identifying with all three, even when the first and the third are in conflict.

This is one of the real jokes - we learn that we work in a logical way, we get trained to act, feel , think, react in such a way ..... no way it doesn't works like that. Bye bye logical thinking!

I can directly observe my head because I can feel it, and I can see parts of it without a mirror, and the rest of it with one.

Now it gets interesting, what exactly do you feel or see?
You might feel a sensation, but how is it known that this is head? How do you come by the information?
You might see something colour/form like, but how is it known that this is head? How do you come by the information?
How is it known?

I cannot directly observe that the thoughts are happening there. I feel like they’re happening there because of what I wrote about last time, and also I think because thoughts cause a lot of changes to happen in my head—they’ll cause my eyes to move, or my facial expression to change—but I can’t actually determine that the thoughts are happening in my head.

No, you can't. It can't be known in your direct experience where thoughts happen.
You can say: I feel.... or I think..... which both is thinking ABOUT something, but it is memory/assumption/supposedly learned knowledge.

they’ll cause my eyes to move, or my facial expression to change

Don't fall for the story: Can this be known or is it a nice suggestion by a thought?

When I look for the listener, I cannot find it. I cannot find a separate thing in the mind that’s experiencing the thought—it’s just one process of thinking or of a thought-being-known.

Right.

The one acting is so hard!

You will get there, lets rest this for the moment and return to it.

I definitely cannot find a mind. This one is easier for me than some of the other ones. The mind I don’t find at all—it’s just a way to describe the fact that I’m having experiences.

Yip.
And yes, we could call the word 'mind' a concept - it doesn't point to anything, it is a try to explain something.
That happens a lot.
Is a word that what it describes?
Does a word know anything of what it describes?

Love,
Jadzia

[Honeybear]

Now it gets interesting, what exactly do you feel or see?

I can feel sensations in my head like tingling, pressure, warmth and coolness, and wetness in my mouth and eyes. And then if I reach up to touch it with my hands, I can feel warmth, solidity, sponginess, and the texture of my hair and skin. Feeling around, it makes a shape that’s consistent with the shape I remember my head to be. When I look without a mirror, I can see the edge of my nose and a tiny blurred bit of the top of my cheeks, and also some of my hair. When I look with a mirror, I see a recognizable human face and head that I identify with, but it’s reversed. You could also describe what I see as just color and shape, but my mind doesn’t see it that way—it automatically interprets what I see and perceives it as a face and head. I can back out of the content to some degree and notice that the image is actually made up of color and shape, but I can’t unsee the perception of a face and head.

You might feel a sensation, but how is it known that this is head? How do you come by the information?

I know that it’s a head based on memory. I’ve always had a head there, and all the other living humans have one there too. What, exactly, a head is also comes from memory. I’ve been taught about things in there that I don’t have direct experience of, like a brain and optical nerves and eardrums and such, and then I know from experience that my head and other people’s heads function in certain ways that are consistent with how my head is functioning now—like my eyes can blink, and my tongue and cheeks and jaws and forehead can move, and so on, and I can feel those movements.

You might see something colour/form like, but how is it known that this is head? How do you come by the information?

The colors and forms are in a recognizable pattern that has a lot of continuity and doesn’t change much from one day to the next. And I recognize similar colors and patterns where other people’s heads are. I have an idea about what a head is based on my own experience and what I’ve learned elsewhere.

How is it known?

I piece together 1) what I can see and feel directly, with 2) other information I have from memory, to know that it’s a head. My mind does this process of synthesizing the information in a way that is inaccessible to my conscious awareness: I look, and, without thinking or consciously assembling this information, I see a head. When I’m feeling the sensations in my head, I often have a subtle mental image of it that helps confirm that it’s a head. And when I look at it, I have physical sensations that help confirm what I’ve seen.

Don't fall for the story: Can this be known or is it a nice suggestion by a thought?

I don’t actually know that the movements are caused by the thoughts. There’s a correlation in that, for example, if I’m trying to remember something, my eyes go up to the side, or if I’m thinking of something I don’t like, my face will assume sort of an unpleasant expression, but I can’t know that the thoughts are causing the movements in my face. It could be that some other process is causing them both.

You will get there, lets rest this for the moment and return to it.

I kept looking at it after I wrote you yesterday, and what I saw was that most of the actions I do are undertaken without any conscious thought, which was weird to notice. I knew that some of my actions were automatic, but the percentage was much, much higher than I’d realized. But whether I consciously decided to do something or not, whenever I stopped to check who was doing it, I came back to the same feeling of me up here in my head doing something down there with my body. I’ll put it aside for now.

Is a word that what it describes?

A word is a symbol that stands for the object within a system of language. It’s not what it describes.

Does a word know anything of what it describes?

A word doesn’t know anything about anything.

Thanks, Jadzia.

Love,
Honeybear

[Jadzia]

I can back out of the content to some degree and notice that the image is actually made up of color and shape, but I can’t unsee the perception of a face and head.

There is no need to push away or get rid of the story or the ongoing comments of thoughts. They are fine and don't need to get into the way.

We are taking a deeper look at what for most people are one thing, that what is directly experienced and that what is added. This is needed to see what is real and what is add on.
Yes, most of the add on relate to something called memory (thought), knowledge (thought), what is learned (thought), read (thought), or heard (thought). All of this is content of thought.

Right, if you had a head yesterday you might find one today when you look into the mirror or touch it - but can you be sure, really sure and not just follow an assumption, unless you look and feel?

A word is a symbol that stands for the object within a system of language. It’s not what it describes.
A word doesn’t know anything about anything.

Yes to both.
What does this mean?

Love,
Jadzia

[Jadzia]

A word is a symbol that stands for the object within a system of language. It’s not what it describes.
A word doesn’t know anything about anything.

Yes to both.
What does this mean?

How convinced are you that when you use a word that it describes what you see?
Do words/thoughts really describe reality?

[Honeybear]

There is no need to push away or get rid of the story or the ongoing comments of thoughts. They are fine and don't need to get into the way.

That’s helpful. Thanks.

We are taking a deeper look at what for most people are one thing, that what is directly experienced and that what is added. This is needed to see what is real and what is add on.

Ok, so we’re disentangling the two and knowing which is which, but not trying to get rid of the concepts of heads and such, and not trying to create an experience where we only feel sensations and see colors without knowing what the objects are—basically, not trying to go back to an imagined experience of infancy.

if you had a head yesterday you might find one today when you look into the mirror or touch it - but can you be sure, really sure and not just follow an assumption, unless you look and feel?

I don’t think there’s a way to know for sure that I’ll have a head when I wake up in the morning until it happens and I see and feel it. I have good reason to think that if I’m going to be having any kind of conscious experience, I’ll necessarily have a head, but I can’t know for sure, in that I can’t know it directly until it’s happening.

Yes to both.
What does this mean?

What I mean is that a picture of a tree is not a tree. A word is even more abstract than a picture, since it’s just sounds or letters and these sounds or letters have no intrinsic meaning and have no necessary relationship to the objects or concepts that they signify. They come to have meaning through social agreement. Even onomatopoeic words like buzz or cock-a-doodle-doo, which sort of sound like the things they’re intended to represent, don’t sound exactly like them, and the words for those things are different in different languages. So you have these groupings of arbitrary sounds/letters plus what socially we’ve agreed they’re intended to refer to, and that’s a word. But what they’re intended to signify is also an abstraction. A cup is a pretty simple word, but there are tons of different kinds of cups out there in the world. The word cup is just a general symbol that we use to stand in for these varied objects.

How convinced are you that when you use a word that it describes what you see?

I think I might be confused about the question. I’m not sure whether you’re asking 1) if I understand that the collection of sounds/letters has no inherent connection to the meaning, and therefore no inherent connection to the object, 2) if I think that the word—including both the collection of sounds/letters and what it’s intended to signify—can somehow capture the full reality of whatever together they’re used to refer to in a particular instance, or 3) if you’re pointing to the fact that an essence of a thing—often represented by the concept we have of it—can’t be found, i.e., what Buddhists call emptiness.

If you mean how convinced am I that the sounds of a word describes the object, then I feel like the sounds have an arbitrary relationship to the object and do not describe it.

If you mean not just the collection of sounds that make up a word, but that plus the meaning that we assign to the sounds, and you want to know whether that’s an intrinsically accurate description of what I see, I would say that it’s useful and conventionally accurate, but never a perfect match. My idea of, say, a fork, is an abstraction, made out of thoughts, and what’s in front of me is a particular, actual fork made out of metal. But the word describes it well enough. The meaning of the word fork is general enough to include forks made out of plastic, wood, stainless steel, sterling silver, etc., and with three tines or four (and maybe two), and this one fits within those parameters. The word fork accurately describes what I’m looking at in a way that the word spoon would not, but there’s no way for it to capture everything about the object that I’m looking at—the weight, the smoothness, the shine, the shape, etc.

In terms of emptiness, I’ve done some meditations where you contemplate that things don’t exist inherently, so if I’m looking at an object that we call a fork, I should see that it’s not inherently a fork because it’s just a collection of parts, and is dependent on the conditions that gave rise to it, as well as on the conceiving mind (like to me it’s a fork, but to a rabbit, it’s just some random, hard, inedible thing). But I haven’t really been able to integrate the import of those meditations into my view. I get it theoretically, but when I look, to me, it seems like a fork, rather than a conditioned and changing object that I only see as a fork because I have the concept of a fork in mind. I still basically take for granted that the object exists as what I think it is.

Somehow with all this casting about I think that I still may not have answered the question that you intended. Let me know!

Do words/thoughts really describe reality?

No. Words are elements of a symbolic system that refers to reality but can’t fully encapsulate its particulars.

Thanks, Jadzia,

Love,
Honeybear

[Jadzia]

Ok, so we’re disentangling the two and knowing which is which, but not trying to get rid of the concepts of heads and such, and not trying to create an experience where we only feel sensations and see colors without knowing what the objects are—basically, not trying to go back to an imagined experience of infancy.

Right.
For what else is it good......for cracking the belief system, by finding out what is fantasy and what is real.

I don’t think there’s a way to know for sure that I’ll have a head when I wake up in the morning until it happens and I see and feel it. I have good reason to think that if I’m going to be having any kind of conscious experience, I’ll necessarily have a head, but I can’t know for sure, in that I can’t know it directly until it’s happening.

Discernment!
"I have good reason to think that if I’m going to be having any kind of conscious experience, I’ll necessarily have a head" this is thoughts telling a story - totally unproven.
Yes you can't know for sure, and not knowing for sure always shows an assumption - oposite to an experience.

For the following you wrote: Don't go for explanations, definitions, intellectual work - not needed here.
All this only has one point: What do you learn of this for ever running story of Honeybear.

1) if I understand that the collection of sounds/letters has no inherent connection to the meaning, and therefore no inherent connection to the object

Do you understand this deep down, not just intellectually but can you feel what it means to the story of Honeybear?

if I think that the word—including both the collection of sounds/letters and what it’s intended to signify—can somehow capture the full reality of whatever together they’re used to refer to in a particular instance

Is the reality ever captured by a word, yes or no?
Does the word apple capture in any way the reality apple?
What does the word Honeybear (add your real name here) point to?
Is it pointing to anything in direct experience?
If yes, to what exactly is it pointing? To an entity?

if you’re pointing to the fact that an essence of a thing—often represented by the concept we have of it—can’t be found, i.e., what Buddhists call emptiness.

Nope this isn't what we need to talk about here. :-)

then I feel like the sounds have an arbitrary relationship to the object and do not describe it.

Yip.

Words are elements of a symbolic system that refers to reality but can’t fully encapsulate its particulars.

I get your answer, but it is rather a defintion, or?
How does it relate to the story of H?

Love,
Jadzia