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Thank you for writing to me in the last few days about your request. The more you write, the more you help me.
I think what’s happening here is that the mind has given up. It’s not trying to figure this out any more. It’s not throwing tantrums any more, either, in the form of frustration. It has sort of resigned to the situation – that there is nothing to do, nothing to understand, and no-one to understand. Resigned to the fact that there is no shift. That there is only silence. Accepted the fact that the one who was hoping for a shift doesn’t exist. It still feels like it is the seeker that is giving up. Everything is getting more quiet. Maybe surrender is the right word.
Yes, it’s very good that the mind has given up. That it has resigned itself to the situation that there is nothing for him to do in this search for the self. The self illusion is created by thoughts and therefore thoughts or the mind will not be able to dissolve this illusion.
I now ask you a question every day. Please only deal with this one question and answer as soon as you have a solution, an answer or an intermediate state.
What we are doing here is focused guiding for seeing there is no real, seperate, inherent ’self‘ – what do you understand by this?
🙂 Steffi
Dear Adrienne!
Thank you for agreeing.
Are you asking me to stop meditating?
You don’t have to stop meditating, but maybe you will do this meditation from now on?
When you enquire into the 10 fetters that prevent the awakened state from being the ’normal‘ state, it is very helpful to practise again and again the method of finding out whether something is actually experienced or it is just made up.
This method comes from the shortest instruction given by the Buddha to a seeker. The seeker, a man from Bahiya, grasped it immediately.
And this is what the Buddha said.
### The Bahiya Sutta
Bahiya, you will realise:
> In the seen, there will simply be the seen.
In the heard there will simply be the heard
In the thought there will simply be the thought
In the recognised there will be simply the recognised;
In all this you will not be seen, heard, thought or recognised.
If you are not seen, heard, thought or recognised, you are not there.
If You are not there, You do not exist, there or elsewhere.
This is the end of suffering.### Meditation
Sit comfortably and upright.
On a chair, or on the floor.Breathe deeply a few times.
Feel the pressure of the seat, the feet on the floor.
Feel the sensations of the moving breath.
Do you feel it is too fast or too shallow, nice and deep and calm?Whatever it is, let it be as it is. Everything is allowed to be as it is.
What thoughts are there?
Let them wander freely and notice what they are about.
All thoughts are allowed.
Breathe gently and let the thoughts be there, all of them.Feel the sensations that follow the thoughts.
And notice the thoughts that follow the sensations.What is your mood, how do you feel?
All feelings are allowed, without making them bigger or smaller.
Pay attention to the thought comments, they are also allowed.
If you want the thoughts to disappear, notice that too.Listen to the sounds that are there.
Traffic, people, maybe music.
Pay attention to the names and the comments of the thoughts.
Maybe you like the sounds or not. Maybe there is resistance to the traffic noise.Everything can be as it is.
Then open your eyes and just see what is there. What colours? What lines? Turn your head slowly back and forth.
Close your eyes again and go to the next sense.
Smell what you can smell right now.
Then taste what you can taste right now.
Let everything simply be as it is.
Now feel the sensations of the moving breath again and stay with it as long as you like.
This is the life your body is going through. Everything else is a thought story.
Then take a deep breath and end the meditation.
Dear Deniz! Could you come over to the chat:
https://matrix.to/#/#stromeintritt:matrix.orgI guide all community members there.
Dear Adrienne!
I am learning English on a platform called Preply. Do you know it? Maybe this is something that could work for you: https://preply.com/en/teach
Okay, let’s start from scratch. I think this will work best for me and you 🙂
## Are you ready?
– Are you ready to make the inquiry into self illusion a top priority?
– Are you ready to write to me daily about your inquiry?
– Are you ready to put your current practice (meditations, satsangs, esoteric practices, nonduality talks, dharma, sangha, etc.) on hold for the time of the inquiry?
– Are you ready to put aside all *spiritual* books, videos and audios for the time of the inquiry?
– Are you ready to fully engage in the inquiry of your own experience?
– Are you ready not to abandon the process you have begun, even if unpleasant feelings arise?
– Are you ready to question all your beliefs and preconceptions about awakening?
– Are you ready to be 100% honest with yourself?## Process
**Very important: You should have time for the inquiry. It should (be able to) be your #1 priority **
Regarding the process, I suggest that you take at least one hour every day for the inquiry. It doesn’t have to be all at once. You can integrate the inquiry into your daily routine. This usually works best. Checking again and again, in between. While going for a walk, waiting in the checkout queue, during your lunch break, looking out of the window…
Please put aside all *spiritual* books, videos and audios for the time being. They will not help you. You will only clarify in your own direct experience the question of why we call a self our own.
Please do not participate in any satsangs, meditations, nonduality talks, spiritual or esoteric workshops or seminars, online meetings, etc. during your time here. Let your spiritual/Buddhist/or similar practice rest. Concentrate fully on this inquiry.
I will not teach you anything. I will ask questions and you look into your own experience for the answer. That is your task! It is important to base your answer on direct experience, not on thoughts, conclusions or assumptions. You want to see the truth directly.
Please be 100% honest. Anything else is useless. There are no right and wrong answers.
When you have found the answer, write it to me. If you have an intermediate result, write to me. If you get stuck, write to me too. **Daily**
I’m on from Monday to Thursday and usually reply every day. If I can’t do it myself, you can just do the exercises again.
At the weekend it’s family time and I’m not usually here.
I am happy to be able to guide you.
Hi Deniz!
This is my guiding offer: https://stromeintritt.org/en/guiding-offer/
Alternatively, take a look at the exercises I sent you and we’ll talk about them in the Open Fetter Group.
> I still have a sense of free will. I still feel like I can have a choice
This is the sense to look at! When you feel that sense of free will, look closer. Where is it? How does it feel exactly? Are there body sensations connected to it? Look at them. Can they do anything?
🙂 Steffi
Dear Adrienne!
I didn’t realize you had no income. So let’s do it without a contribution. And you keep coming to the Open Fetter Group once a month. Would that be ok?
What do you teach?Dear Deniz! Recognizing that thoughts are just thoughts and that YOU are a story, a thought, is the first very important step. Everyone gets to this point in the inquiry and it can feel like a shift to realize this. It feels very relieving, doesn’t it? And then the self sense emerges…. it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s the normal way. I would suggest that you look a little further for the self. Daily 1:1 guiding would be good. You could also try Christiane’s new book: How to see through the self illusion.
Dear Adrienne!
And what makes you think that I still have a lot to work through?
I say this because I would have a lot of questions based on your answers in the inquiry. It would be good to look at all of them. Also because you say you have already done all these exercises from Christiane’s book and yet something is still hanging, I could imagine that in a more intensive and regular exchange this could perhaps be found.
Please tell me more about the daily 1:1. How does it work?
This is my guiding offer: https://stromeintritt.org/en/guiding-offer/
There is a strong feeling sometimes that something is deeply wrong here, that things are not okay. It is a deep dissatisfaction with everything. It is a thought and an unpleasant sensation in the body. It is one manifestation of the I belief. On the other hand, there is an equally strong belief in no self. And in between, frustration.
Wow, that’s good, Adrienne! That frustration shows up when you inquire into your assumptions and they have nothing to do with reality. You already see that the self doesn’t exist and you try to replace the old belief in the self with the belief in the not-self. However, we don’t want to develop a new belief.
So the situation is that something clearly doesn’t fit together fundamentally. And the brain now tries everything to somehow balance out this state of tension.
If you do the inquiry and are absolutely sure that there is no self to be found, say out loud: “There is no self!”
How does that feel? Is there any resistance to saying it, or does it already feel familiar?Please note that I am only here from Monday to Thursday.
SteffiFor whom is a thought conscious? What is it that hears thoughts? It is not another thought. Thoughts appear in awareness, which is able to detect the appearance of phenomena. Awareness is not “me” because “me” is a thought and awareness is not a thought. Awareness is definitely here though. It is inseparable from the phenomena that appear in it, but it is not merely experiencing. It is also the capacity, the openness for these phenomena, the potential for experiencing.
So what is awareness?
Dear Adrienne!
From your answers and your inquiries, I gather that there is still a lot that needs to be explored. Daily 1:1 guiding through the self illusion would probably be a good idea. But unfortunately I can’t do that here in the Open Fetter Group. I could ask around to see if someone from our group could do it, if you like. Another idea is Christiane’s book “How to see through the self illusion”. This is now also available in printed form. You could work through it and we could talk about it at the group meeting…
🙂 Steffi
Can you make the decision not to think? The decision would appear in awareness on its own. Not “my” decision. The mind is so quiet now that there wouldn’t be any thought for a while – but then a thought would come, unstoppable. Through meditation, the mind can be trained to have fewer and fewer thoughts, until all is quiet. Intention to meditate or to train the mind appears on its own. Everything just appears in awareness by itself.
Dear Adrienne!
Could it be that there is the expectation that with seeing through the self illusion all thoughts (should) cease?
🙂 Steffi
Dear Steffi, these questions are soooo good, I feel like I should do more repetitions of them. For most of them, I have glimpses and realizations when doing them, and some little things are subtly changing in my daily experience. Especially the questions about inside/outside, memory and future, and not having a body gave me glimpses. The problem is, I still have doubts. I can’t remember how different life was before the shift. Life feels very similar to what it was before the shift so much so that I am not even sure if a shift happened…maybe I tricked myself for a few days. Shouldn’t the fetter of doubt also fall? I think I still have doubts about having a shift or not. Is it possible to see through the fetter without a shift?
Dear Deniz! It is not possible to see through the self illusion without a shift. The shift is the seeing through. If there a doubts you have to look more. Could you please describe the shift you may have experienced one more?
Don’t make all the exercises at once. Take one each day until it is clear. Than go to the next one.And please use the quote funciton 🙂
October 3rd is a public holiday in Germany (Day of German Unity) and traditionally this is the day on which the Allrad Stammtisch meets in a sandpit. So I’ll be offline from Wednesday to Sunday 🙂 Who else has plans for the long weekend?
Dear Adrienne!
> Where do thoughts come from?
>> No idea. They suddenly appear, as the sounds and the smells. There is a feeling that they are perceived/noticed first in a non-verbal form, and then they are somehow put into words – all done very quickly and effortlessly. The thoughts immediately pull away attention to their content, like a giant magnet, in a way that the content takes over from consciously registering that a thought has just appeared. When the thought/thought train is gone, the mind registers that there were thoughts – in retrospect. Thoughts are rarely caught red-handed, in the act.Yes, this is true. You can´t catch thoughts red-handed. They are past when they were recognised. Is there a difference between thoughts and mind? What is the mind?
> Where do thoughts go?
>> They just evaporate and disappear from the mind. If the mind wants to keep hold of a thought, it will keep repeating it again and again, until it is dropped. Sometimes thoughts can be felt “under the surface” so to speak – not conscious enough to be put into words, but conscious enough to generate sensations in the body (feelings).Whom is a thought conscious?
> Can you eliminate a thought once it has appeared?
>> There seems to be something that can stop an especially distressing thought, or at least not go down the route the thought is pointing to. This seeming ability was developed in the past year. But there is no-one doing it. And it doesn’t always work.<What is that something?
