Requesting a guide

[Firen]

Hi Stacy,
Thanks for sharing those. I am hearing you. I am definitely thinking too much. It's chaotic in here.
I've been doing ButtChair daily and focusing on different body parts and feeling how there is no separation, it's just all sensation. I held my partner's hand in meditation the other day and focused on trying to find the border between where my hand stopped and their's started and I couldn't find one. It was just all warmth and tingling.
I had a question to ask but now I've forgotten it, so I guess it wasn't necessary lol.
I'll keep looking. Something is preventing me from really LOOKING. I think it is what is written in that blog post you shared. My mind is convinced that there isn't anything outside of thinking. It is challenging to override that.
Firen

[Anastacia42]

You're getting there.

Love the part where you checked when holding hands for no separation. Here is another one.


Hand on Desk

Please close your eyes for this exercise, just notice any ‘mental’ images or thoughts that appear and put them aside.

Place a hand on a desk or table (flat surface) - Close your eyes.

Now 'go to' the Sensation which we would normally refer to as 'hand on desk' and answer from what you can FIND.

1) How many things do you find? Are there two things (hand and desk) or is there one thing – AE of sensation.

2) Do you notice 'one thing feeling another thing'? Or is there just 'a sensation'?

3) Do you find an 'I', a body, a hand 'feeling' . . . or is there just 'a sensation'?

Look very carefully. Where does ‘feeling’ end and Sensation begin? Can a dividing line between ‘feeling’ and sensation be found? Or is there just sensation?

Can a ‘feeler’ ever be found in 'what is being felt' – AE sensation?

If that is all, and no INHERENT FEELER is found . . . would anything that is suggested as the feeler be other than a concept/idea/thought?


You can try this with your eyes open. If you can let go of the "separate hand" story, it can be very interesting.

Loving,

[Firen]

I am going to keep doing this exercise but I wanted to tell you how it's going. I've been doing it in 5 minute chunks. The first several times the temperature of the table was really tripping me up because it felt cold and I couldn't get past the feeling of being a warm hand on a cold table. But then on the 4th or 5th try, I suddenly felt like I just sort of zoomed in on the cold sensation and realized it actually felt more like little spicy prickles and that my mind was just labeling it as "cold." After I realized this I didn't have any trouble with that part—like the conceptual layer had dropped off. I did the exercise a few more times, and the last time I did it, my hand and the desk totally disappeared as "objects" and the sense of no separation spontaneously started traveling up my arm and across my chest. Suddenly my mind shouted in alarm: "Oh my god, I don't exist!!" And for a moment my sense of my body disappeared...just like poof!—I was gone. And then I came back half a second later and was feeling the sensations again like before.

[Firen]

I came across the list of all the guided conversations where realization has happened and I found yours. It was lovely to read about your experience and to see all of the people you have helped. Now that I think back on it, requesting you as a guide was a clear moment of things happening on their own. I didn't decide to request you. I saw a few posts you had made recently and then the request just wrote itself. Like water flowing. No effort. And then there you were!

I am from Dallas originally. I have been in California for 11 years. I am familiar with Denton, or at least the Denton of the 1990s. That area has changed dramatically in the past 25 years. I left Dallas in 1999 after I graduated high school, returned to Dallas for a few years in 2008, and have been in the Bay Area now since 2014.

I have two cats, CleoCatra and Obob. I don't know if Trillian is still around, but they sound like a wonderful companion.

Sometimes I think of my pets as a metaphor for my awakening quest. I used to have this dog named Jaxon and he developed a rash. The vet told me I had to wash him in this special shampoo, but told me I couldn't wash it off or dry him; the medicine had to soak into his skin. I had to just sit there and look at his sad little eyes and hear his whimpers in the bathtub as he sat there shivering and wet. It was very hard. I think about Jaxon and my cats when I have to give them eyedrops or something and I imagine that I am in fact Jaxon or Obob and the universe is just trying to take care of me and help me but I keep getting in my own way. My mind believes that the world is so scary when in fact it is just all beauty. The truth is too big for my little mind to understand. Life is really just love, sitting on the edge of the bathtub and wishing it could dry me off and give me a hug.

LOL. I know that's all stories. The human mind is very good at stories, it turns out.

So right now, the cage that my thoughts are creating is incredibly tight. More tight and painful than it has been in a long time. And the more ruminating I do, the tighter it gets. I feel impossibly trapped in stories of my own making. Emotions are high. I can see that they are stories but I am still acting them out. I am compelled to do it. I am watching myself wind up and trap myself in webs of suffering and I am simultaneously thinking "well, this seems like a good place to be for awakening, so let's goooo!" I also do not want to be in here. It's bad in here.

Funny thing is that there is a sense of just being able to drop everything...and there is just peace there in those brief moments of dropping it...but I keep picking it all back up. And tightening and tightening and tightening. There is a sense of danger. If I don't carry all this, then it will fall apart. Or I will go crazy.

Why do I see myself acting out stories that are not true and yet continue to act them out?

This is a phenomenon I've been experiencing for a while: calmly watching myself acting out stories from some untouched place of complete safety. I am watching myself create suffering for myself and others. Incessantly. Obsessively. Why?

Anyways, lots of rambling, but I felt compelled to share. I'll keep doing the ButtChair and HandDesk stuff. My mind is obviously totally bonkers, that much is clear. Maybe someday I will stop believing it. At the very least, the sensation exercises get me out of my head for a bit.

Thank you for your guidance <3

Warmly,
Firen

[Anastacia42]

Hi Firen

Yes, our minds entertain us with stories. Go read "The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who We Are" by Alan Watts. That and others of his, such as "The Game of Black & White " would be right up your alley right now.

Yes, I was born in Fort Worth, and lived in Denton & Dallas. Yes, the area has definitely changed a lot. There is a shopping mall (Hulen) where I used to ride my bicycle as a kid. iI've been in Colorado since 1997.

Yes, Trillian is right here. She's 16 now.

Tell CleoCatra and Obob that Trillian says, "Hi."

I liked the bath metaphor.

Friend me on Facebook (Stacy Ann Clark in Boulder) and you'll see lots of Trillian pictures. Tell me it's you.

But none of your stories or mine will help you see.

Why do I see myself acting out stories that are not true and yet continue to act them out?

It's all a big mystery. We don't know. Can you see that?

The Work of Byron Katie is great for questioning stories that hurt. Her books & web site have all you need. She also does a weekly teleconference you can join.

It sounds like you're practicing well and that 1 episode of clear seeing is excellent.

Just keep LOOKING. & don't believe the stories.

Loving,

[Firen]

I found you on Facebook. Hiiii :-)

Oh my gosh, Trillian is such a beautiful baby.

I don't post much on FB and realized I don't think I have hardly any cat photos on there. But my cats do have their own Instagram account if you happen to be on that platform: https://www.instagram.com/monkeys.in.catsuits/

I have almost finished "The Book." It's great. It's the best explanation of how everything is "one" that I've ever heard and I can feel some of my mind's resistance and doubt releasing—so maybe I'll be more open to experiencing that oneness.

It's all a big mystery. We don't know. Can you see that?

Yes, I can see this. This had me caught for a long time though...trying to figure "myself" out. Why am I reacting this way? How do I "fix" it? Etc. I recognize now that this is all just a distraction. It's just more mind doing mind.

It's easy for me to fall into reading, reading, reading—instead of looking. It seems this is common. Reading is easier. My mind says: "But looking is sooo boring! And I don't even know if it's working!" Lol. With reading my mind is engaged in dreaming about a future day when I will at last be awake and everything will be amazing. Ha!

I recognize this to be a trap. Or a distraction. Something like that.

So I shall go LOOK now.

[Anastacia42]

Yes to all of that.

LOOK but stay relaxed.

I think I have Instagram. I'll check. Seems I do. Great pics!

Loving,

[Firen]

There seems to be something here about movement and stillness.

When my hand is still on the desk for a while, my sense of my hand and the desk disappear. It's like they no longer exist. It's just a soup of sensation.

My body is made up of movement all of the time. My heart beating, blood pumping, breath. My whole body tingles with something...life? The tingling is movement, pulsing.

Subatomic particles must always keep moving to give the impression of solid objects when they are almost entirely made of space.

They say the universe is expanding. Planets revolve around the sun.

Watts call all this ceaseless movement wiggling. He says there are no objects, only actions. I can understand this. Nothing ever seems to stay still.

If I stop moving, do I exist? Does my hand actually exist when it melts into the soup of sensation? It exists as sensation, yes. Does it still exist as "my hand?"

If my eyes and my senses create the hand, is there still a hand if I can't perceive it as a hand?

Is this actual or just perceptual? I'm struggling with getting past the idea that I'm trying to "trick" myself into something. The physicality of it is puzzling me.

My identity only exists if there is a past and a future—in my memories and aspirations. I must be moving in time to have an identity at all. I see this. Well, at least I logically understand it.

My mind's incessant chatter, too. If my mind stops chattering, "I" cease to exist. My mind chatters so loud and so fast when I feel threatened or upset. It is remarkable how quickly it starts whirling & spinning the web!

But the physical stuff—does it disappear when I close my eyes and stay still? Or do the concepts just disappear? The sensations are still there, I just can't find the conceptual part anymore.

Eckhart Tolle says I am stillness. What are these things called movement and stillness?

[Firen]

Or is all of this just mindfuckery and I should just keeping looking?

hahaha

[Anastacia42]

Firen, you know the answer to that!

At the same time I understand that this can be fun to play with. It just won't get you where we're going here.

LOOK & stay relaxed.

Loving,

[Firen]

Roger that!

I am getting tired of playing around.

Looking…

[Anastacia42]

What are these things called movement and stillness?

STORIES about a completely unknowable mystery!

Read that again.

LOOK

[Firen]

I've been doing HandDesk and ButtChair quite a bit over the past 24 hours and I'm feeling frustrated and doubtful. If my doubt is pointing to an underlying belief, I am wondering if it's perhaps a belief in the soul or spirit that is blocking me. When I ask "who is experiencing" or try to find the self and can't it in my DE, I seem to carve out this little side room where I keep this "energetic self" on the side. I can't hear every sound frequency or see every wavelength of light so I know my DE of the world is limited by my human senses. Which leaves open the possibility that "I" do in fact exist, but on some kind of energetic level that cannot be quite detected by my 5 senses. "I" seem to be an energetic bubble of stuff that is contained in this body.

How can I move beyond this belief?

[Firen]

If I look at this more closely, I see that I have a general belief in forces or things that are outside my limited capacity to directly know them through my 5 senses. Other planets and stars and black holes exist even though I have never experienced any in DE.

Does that make them concepts? Maybe my understanding of a concept isn't wide enough. Is it that a concept includes anything and everything that cannot be experienced directly, regardless of whether it is actually "real" or not? To include:

-my hand if I can't see it or feel it as "a hand"
-the border between my butt and the chair—if I can't find it, then it's a concept
-anything happening anywhere in the world that is not in my DE
-my "soul" if I can't find it with my 5 senses

Then it becomes a concept?

If time is a concept then there is only now and only what is now and in DE can be true and not conceptual.

Ugh. I am feeling confused, which is usually a sign that I'm overthinking. Taking a deep breath and going back to looking...

[Anastacia42]

Everything is content of thought, a concept.

Really, even DE is a concept. But using those 6 seems to work.

No word is the thing it represents.

I suggest you take a break because you will never see if you are stressing. You must be relaxed. You cannot cause it or force it.

"Enlightenment is an accident. Meditation makes us accident prone."

Sunryu Suzuki.

It is likely to creep up on you when you least expect it, but definitely won't do so if you are paying too much attention to thinking.

Take the day off.

Loving,