you're the best,
Jack.
I know you are but what am I?
;>)
If I’m the best, then you are a big sweetie.
This!
“THERE IS NO ROOM INSIDE SMELLING FOR ANYTHING ELSE TO BE HAPPENING BESIDES SMELLING.
I like this. makes sense.
Don’t forget this.
ME: "If there is a self, tell me where and what it is, now specifically."
I have no fuken clue here - not cussing at you, just frustrated at spirituality and words. I hear so much contradictory stuff:
Every teacher has a different way of expressing things. If you don’t understand what one of them is saying you won’t necessarily get it by trying to compare what they say with what someone else says. When you know who you are this will change. Till then, you have no way to compare anything with anything else except through thinking.
Thinking, as we know, cannot smell anything. It cannot have direct experience.
This, by the way, is why they suggest up front in LU to set aside other practices.
ME: "Follow up question, are you saying that if the senses WEREN'T mixed an confusing, that there WOULDN'T be a self? What about if a few of them were missing?"
haha good one, I guess blind people still believe in self probably?
Would believing your socks are green or blue or yellow change the fact that they are red, if they are?
You are you whether you have all your senses, arms, legs, ears, fingers, or not. You are you no matter what you think, smell, taste, or hear. You are just you. Just like you were yesterday, a month, year, or decade ago.
Remember? Look back there and see.
ME: "Direct experience is just direct experience. There’s nothing to be unsure about if you understand what it is.
What do you think it is?"
What i’m seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting, thinking.
Close. No cigar, however.
The OBJECTS of the senses are not Direct Experience.
The sensing of them is.
thinking is where I get lost,
You don’t say!
;>)
what is it like to directly experience thought?
If you fart and smell it, and then the smell goes away, it’s the same as if a thought arises and you notice it, and it passes.
I’ve spent much time interacting with thought substance, thinking, putting attention in or on thoughts, watching the thinker as of today (didn’t find one ultimately), but I really don’t know what the right orientation to it is. I don’t think there is one. That’s thought. but it’s an open question for me now.
The “right orientation” is that thought is thought, just like smell is smell, and that in thought, there is no room for anything other than thought to occur.
“watching the thinker as of today (didn’t find one ultimately)”
Look again. Look many times.
I’m actually quoting my understanding of you at you here. You’d said something like “the illusion of self is a mix of senses.” I guess i left out that illusion part.
FYI:
Illusion doesn’t mean there is nothing there. It means that what we perceive to be there isn’t what it seems to be. An oasis in the desert is light and imagination, not a pool of water and a palm tree.
ME" If there is a self, tell me where and what it is, now specifically."
I have no fuken clue here - not cussing at you, just frustrated at spirituality and words. I hear so much contradictory stuff:
“No I,”
“you don’t exist,”
"no self"
“no-separate self (now we’re adding in separete),”
but also “you are awareness,”
“what you really are,” (you??)
“you aren’t anything,”
“no distance between observer and observed,”
“I AM,”
and last, eckhart tolle’s “I can’t live with myself” — (“I” was real for “him,” but “myself” wasn’t
Again, stop listening to so many people.
Here's the question again:
If there is a self, tell me where and what it is, now specifically.
The way to answer this question IS NOT to do what you did: you brought the question into your thinking.
This is Colored Socks all over again.
YOU HAVE TO LOOK.
Where?
Seeing (is there a self there? in what is seen?)
Hearing (is there a self there? in what is heard?)
Tasting (is there a self there? in what is tasted?)
Touching (is there a self there? in what is touched?)
Smelling (is there a self there? in what is smelled?)
Thinking (is there a self there? in what is thought?)
Where in any of those places (steel balls) is there any room for a "self"?
How can I know your interpretation has anything to do with my truth,
By looking at “your” truth. Do they resonate? Which one resonates more? How? Where? Do you know when you are lying? That would help. We'll do an exercise about this
ME: "Follow up question, are you saying that if the senses WEREN'T mixed an confusing, that there WOULDN'T be a self?"
I don’t know.
THat’s why we are trying to get you to see them clearly.
ME: "What’s under the politeness?"
Good rule following boy from childhood + i’m tired of pissing you off and getting pissed off in turn. easier to lay down. Also socially conditioned to be polite and I value kindness /ethical behavior. I'm angry a lot deep down. maybe other stuff.
Yep. Figures. It shows.
I’m not pissed off. Haven’t been for quite some time. And, nothing you could ever do could piss me off. Me being pissed off or not ONLY has to do with my interpretations of your actions. Hasn't anyone ever gotten the wrong idea about your intentions?
Hard to imagine how "trying" to smell more or less would make a difference
have wondered about this, some people say “put attention in 5 senses, be with your body” and others are more strictly “do that for the purpose of seeing through illusion only”. any idea?
Stop listening to so many people.
ME: "In the physical universe, you cannot put something of equal size, shape, mass, density, etc, in the same precise space as another one at the same time. So when you try to put the “smelling” and “thinking” ball in the same place, they won't, can’t, will not cooperate. One displaces the other.”
youre totally right. You hit on a sore spot for me right now.
Sore? What? Why?
ME: "Do you have any choice about whether or not you have any perspective you have about anything?"
Love this question. I don’t know how I’d know, and don’t know how I got that^ perspective, so there’s something behind the scenes probably. What I do know is that when I read this, I immediately recognized the suffering in believing that I could manufacture a perspective or judging myself for having a “wrong” perspective.
The answer here is just that “perspective” is just thinking. And you have examined thinking. You have no say over any thought that happens to arise.
What about the notions you have about you doing the “drills” the way you think “I want” you to do them? What constitutes doing them “right”, and / or how “I like” them to be done?
confused what you mean by this. I do have notions of course. Are you asking about control? or my notions?
Notions are notions. Where do "notions" fit in Direct Experience?
ME: "Come up with a set of thoughts to have, and then try to not have them. Try to have other ones instead."
lol this was funny. neither worked.
Right. Do it a million times and see if that changes.
ME: "What was that like? What happened?"
it didn’t happen. I brought a mental image of pink elephant into my mind, couldn’t make it go away, or didn’t know how, and it disappeared on its own. Then I tried to come up with other thoughts, and realized i didn’t know how to magically come up with the new content of those thoughts, so nothing came up.
Right. Anybody you can find running the show then?
ME: "Try to not have them and then try to have them again.
What was that like? What happened?"
didn’t have any second thoughts in the last activity, so i’m just going to repeat the and see again.
This time i couldn’t even force the pink elephant picture into my mind. couldn’t generate any novel thoughts. so I'm not the thinker, or atlesat I'm a bad one LOL
Yep.
ME: "Try to predict what thought you are going to have next (about anything).
What was that like? What happened?"
didn’t have the foggiest idea where to start when I tried. it was like “oh this is blank”
Try again.
ME: "THERE IS NO ROOM INSIDE SMELLING FOR ANYTHING ELSE TO BE HAPPENING BESIDES SMELLING."
I like this. makes sense.
post note: **see commentary in smelling drill below on how indecisive I am though below, because in hindlight I'm laughing i wrote "i like this, makes sense" so quickly.**
Right. Just like with the 6 steel ball thing.
take 1
1. Y/N: No.
2. If “N”, are you saying that because that’s the answer you think I want to hear? Or is it just “N”?
1. it’s just no. I can’t prove it without thinking. But it’s just a smell, kinda indescribably smell shaped. nothing else in the smell than smell...no thinking required to get a whiff of something strong and recognize a whiff for whiff.
Yer darn tootin. A whiff is just a whiff.
1. Y/N: No.
2. If “N”, are you saying that because that’s the answer you think I want to hear? Or is it just “N”?
1. another way to answer this, smells are hard to “know” (because knowing is thought? i think this was part of the problem for me) but it’s really strong and fairly distinctive, and it can happen with or witohut tihnking.
Knowing is not thought.
LOOK:
What is it that knows you are thinking, smelling, or tasting?
take 5
1. Y/N: No.
2. If “N”, are you saying that because that’s the answer you think I want to hear? Or is it just “N”?
1. even more clear this time. i apologize if you didn’t want narrative, just realized you might have wanted just Y or N. i started with the assumption that there might be something in a smell another than smell, just to reality check it, and smelled, and was like ?%$@%. it’s hard to describe/words are above the experience, but there’s only smell in smell. smell is its own thing, or sensory experience is just what it is, dare I say.
Thank goodness! By jove, I think he’s got it!
Let’s continue with HEARING
There are sounds, and the capacity to hear them: this is the sense of “Hearing”
We can separate the two into representatives of different domains: content, and context.
Please let me know if you understand this distinction, and describe it in your own words.
To do:
Take note of the fact that hearing is happening in your daily activities.
When you start your day, remind yourself that today is “Hearing” day.
Write “Hearing” at the top of your note pad or e-note. As you go through your day, list:
When you notice that you hear something, write down what it is that you heard.
Note, with each sound, that they are taking place within the sense of Hearing; the capacity to hear.
Note then, that there is Hearing, and there is what is heard.
Context, content. Sense, object of the (particular) sense.
While you may have thoughts about what is heard, or about hearing itself, note that whatever you may think or not think, sounds and hearing happen all on their own, in their own place.
Thinking isn't any more necessary for sounds to occur, than it is for them to be heard. The same goes for the other senses.
Please report daily. Copy / paste and use the form below.
List:
What was heard?
What sense did it occur in?
Which was the content/object, and which was the context/sense?
Is it clear that in this case, what was heard, and hearing itself, occurred independently of any other senses?
Go man go.
J
