Having Trouble With Self-inquiry

[How to be wise]

There is one thing about self-inquiry which I'm finding difficult to do. One part of the technique is that, when you identify with the sensations you're feeling, you say that you can't be that sensation because it is not 'constant'. However, it's very hard to actually feel that, because in the moment that you're feeling the sensation, it feels like it is 'constant'. Sure, you can say to yourself that you won't feel it one hour later, or you didn't feel it yesterday, but it's very hard to convince the heart unless I'm actually feeling that it's not constant. 

Any suggestions for how to overcome this issue is appreciated. 

[Telepresent]

14 minutes ago, How to be wise said:

One part of the technique is that, when you identify with the sensations you're feeling, you say that you can't be that sensation because it is not 'constant'.

I worry when people write sentences like this that they're trying to convince themselves of something: someone else has told them that they're 'nothing', or 'not their sensations' and now they're trying to persuade themselves to believe it.  Which leads to the sort of struggle you're describing.

I'd suggest rather than doing that - rather than trying to align your thinking to what anyone else is saying - you want to find what you're believing and then interrogate its truth.  So what you're describing here sounds like a conflict of intellectual thought with deep belief (that you ARE the sensations and they ARE constant).  Find your evidence.  Find the PROOF of that belief.  Don't try to prove it wrong or work out a clever argument that you're not the sensations (such as 'they're not constant') - find the PROOF of what you believe, which is that you are them. 

Of course, if you fail and fail and fail to find proof, that may shake your foundation a little.

For some fun, here's a game: pay attention to where your sight ends.  In the periphery of your vision, try to pinpoint the exact spot where something becomes nothing.  Then try to pay attention to the quality of that nothing: it's not dark, it's not light, it's not anything.  And then ask yourself where your sense of you resides.  Is it 'inside' your head?  Is it behind or inside that nothing?  Then pay attention to that in comparison to the changing images of sight.  Is there a difference?  What is it?  And what does it mean for you?

[Visitor]

5 minutes ago, How to be wise said:

...you say that you can't be that sensation because it is not 'constant'....

Why do you think that you have to be constant?

People basically feel either love or fear. Or in other words, true or untrue. Neither are constant while one still has a mind that wishes to identify itself (the ego), which it fears to lose. So self-inquiry is either about ego-self and/or Being. The first is untrue, the other is true. Both are inevitable.

To know what is not constant is to access memory of what was beforehand. What sensation in the past is not constant because it is not now. What we feel 'now' is as constant as we feed it with either fear or love. If you wish the stay serene, then love is the fuel to keep it going.

[Wouter]

@How to be wise You are probably using Leo's guided inquiry? What I do to "prove" to myself that it's not constant, I just try to drop the sensation.

 

For example "you can't be the inner because there are gaps between the inner voice"->I try to silence for a short moment, and I notice that indeed it was silent for a while. 

[Space]

2 hours ago, How to be wise said:

There is one thing about self-inquiry which I'm finding difficult to do. One part of the technique is that, when you identify with the sensations you're feeling, you say that you can't be that sensation because it is not 'constant'. However, it's very hard to actually feel that, because in the moment that you're feeling the sensation, it feels like it is 'constant'. Sure, you can say to yourself that you won't feel it one hour later, or you didn't feel it yesterday, but it's very hard to convince the heart unless I'm actually feeling that it's not constant. 

Any suggestions for how to overcome this issue is appreciated. 

Yes unless you actually directly experience the sensations flickering in and out, then reality does appear to be constant. That's what 99.99999% of people believe they are experiencing -  a solid, continuous, material reality. Yes, each individual time you perceive something solid such as the body, it's a completely new moment of consciousness. But this is difficult to grasp experientially, unless you've done a bunch of intense insight meditation and trained your perceptive abilities to perceive the individual frames of reality. 

But you have to go by what you're directly experiencing right now. So you're correct in saying that it does feel constant. Self-honesty is crucial. Move on from thinking about the solidity of the sensations. Instead, ask yourself, what is aware of the constant, solid feeling of the sensations? If you're perceiving the sensations of your body, just like any other perception, then can it be what you are? This takes repeated, repeated questioning, so don't expect to 'get it' straight away.

Edited August 8, 2017 by Space

[Toby]

You could listen to this guided meditation. It's very much compatible with Ramana's approach and als examines feelings - what you are and what you are not.

 

[Dodo]

3 hours ago, Telepresent said:

I worry when people write sentences like this that they're trying to convince themselves of something: someone else has told them that they're 'nothing', or 'not their sensations' and now they're trying to persuade themselves to believe it.  Which leads to the sort of struggle you're describing.

I'd suggest rather than doing that - rather than trying to align your thinking to what anyone else is saying - you want to find what you're believing and then interrogate its truth.  So what you're describing here sounds like a conflict of intellectual thought with deep belief (that you ARE the sensations and they ARE constant).  Find your evidence.  Find the PROOF of that belief.  Don't try to prove it wrong or work out a clever argument that you're not the sensations (such as 'they're not constant') - find the PROOF of what you believe, which is that you are them. 

Of course, if you fail and fail and fail to find proof, that may shake your foundation a little.

For some fun, here's a game: pay attention to where your sight ends.  In the periphery of your vision, try to pinpoint the exact spot where something becomes nothing.  Then try to pay attention to the quality of that nothing: it's not dark, it's not light, it's not anything.  And then ask yourself where your sense of you resides.  Is it 'inside' your head?  Is it behind or inside that nothing?  Then pay attention to that in comparison to the changing images of sight.  Is there a difference?  What is it?  And what does it mean for you?

That's good, being aware of nothingness, nice

[Shanmugam]

On 8/8/2017 at 3:21 PM, How to be wise said:

One part of the technique is that, when you identify with the sensations you're feeling, you say that you can't be that sensation because it is not 'constant'.

Try this... when you observe a sensation, it cannot be you.. because you cannot be the same as what you observe.. If you see a dog, you cannot be the dog because you see the dog... The observer and the observed cannot be the same... So, whatever you observe, notice, sense or feel is not you.. Try discriminating this way.. 

Than you will understand that what observes never changes but what is observed changes all the time..

[Truth Seekah]