What am I doing wrong?

[Dlenger1]

I have a recurring issue while doing self-inquiry. On some point I keep on circling. Here is a small example of the process:

What am I?

I am not this or that object.

What am I?

I am not what I am seeing.

What am I?

Am I the seer? Who is asking the question then?

So am I the one asking the question?

That is another question. So it creates a never ending circle of who is questioning the previous question.

At this point I tend to deduce that I am the ultimate seer or the ultimate one asking the question.

But it does not feel like an insight. It's just a product of my intellectualization.

Do you have any tipps how can I resolve this recurring issue? I really appreciate your help!

[Salvijus]

Yes. Turn a video of mooji or rupert spira or whatever you resonate with who shows you how to do self-enquiry, listen to them over and over, untill you get it, that self-inquiry is not a thinking pocess, it's a process of looking. Having someone to listen to is essential for begginers or even advanced ones. Because i assure you, you will not go far without guidence. You'll end up intelectualizing and deluding yourself for a lifetime.

 

Edited April 23, 2019 by Salvijus

[Leo Gura]

@Dlenger1 The intellectual questions are a good beginning point, but ultimately you have to graduate from that to basically just sitting in silence with a calm mind and focusing intensely on "the seer" or consciousness itself. Just sit and kinda stare at consciousness itself.

The problem with asking too many questions is that the mind then gets in the mood of giving verbal answers, which is never going to be enough.

The Neti Neti method is helpful here. Anything you identify as yourself, you must negate by realizing that that thing or property cannot be the True Self.

What you're really looking for is formlessness. "The seer" is formlessness. So any from you think you are cannot be it. And you have to be very careful about not thinking "I am formlessness" because that is still form!

This is supposed to be frustrating process and it takes intense concentration to break through. You will not break through if you do this process without intensity and consistency. 20 minutes of inquiry is just not going to produce enough intensity for a breakthrough. It's very important to schedule some long periods of time for nothing but inquiry. Like a solid week of full-time 12-hours-per-day inquiry. That is how people break through in practice. You must concentrate on it like an obsessive psychopath.

[Dlenger1]

@Leo Gura I already noticed that the intellectual answers are not authentic insights. I have no idea yet how I can experience something formless.

Thank you for your advice and for disillusioning me about the process! I guess I had wrong expectations about what it really takes!

[Dlenger1]

@Salvijus Thank you for your reply! I already listened a lot to Rupert Spira, but I will take your advice seriously and make it a daily habit. 

Did you already have a breakthrough experience?

[Shaun]

@Leo Gura I experience that I am consciousness and all else is an appearance within but I don't understand how it is legitimate to say that the thoughts and feelings are not me. Consciousness is all there is and the thoughts and feelings are also consciousness, so how can they ultimately not be me?

[Salvijus]

3 hours ago, Dlenger1 said:

@Salvijus Thank you for your reply! I already listened a lot to Rupert Spira, but I will take your advice seriously and make it a daily habit. 

Did you already have a breakthrough experience?

Haha no it's not like that.

When you self-enquiry the realization at some point comes that you are observing your mind, you're observing your self-image. Then you move into a deeper state of observing and disidentification. As you keep looking like that you move deeper and deeper into deeper states of observing. Time comes when even the intention to observe is seen, time comes where even a slightest effort of doing something is seen, then you're in a state of pure witnessing, you see that you're behind any kind of movement in the mind. 

There're no fireworks or breakthroughs, if you have fireworks probably you're doing something wrong, tho crazy things can happen, purging can happen, catharsis can happen but it's of little significence to raising your awareness. It's a slow and quiet process of observing. And as you observe your self-image, thoughts, feelings, effort, movement in the mind, then distence between you and the mind increases more and more. 

This will become clear to you as you continue with self-inquiry. And yes, please watch videos of spiritual masters as a support when you do self-inquiry. For example, when mooji speaks, just the process of listening initiates looking, automatic self-scanning starts to take place just by listening to his words. If i listen to mooji speak i can't help myself, i get sucked into doing self-inquiry  that's why it's so important to use them as a support otherwise you'll get lost somewhere and you won't even know it. I did self-inquiry with Mooji's guidence and still i got lost like 200times. If you go on your own it's a hopeless case.

Edited April 23, 2019 by Salvijus

[SriBhagwanYogi]

Please dont just repeat questions self inquiry is not mental mastrubation work. 

Dont do it only 20 min or so while sitting its not enough, you can do it all day 

 

[Nahm]

@Dlenger1 Are you aware of thoughts?

[Shaun]

The confusing thing about this is how are my thoughts not me? Consciousness is all there is so that's all they can be.

[Dlenger1]

@Nahm While meditating or doing self-inquiry, I notice that thoughts arise, but that they are not my creation.They just arise. 

But to be honest: In daily life I sometimes get caught up in thoughts. 

[Dlenger1]

@Salvijus Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions! I really apreciate it!

[Dlenger1]

@SriBhagwanYogi Thank you for the links! I will watch them as soon as I am home. 

[Nahm]

@Dlenger1   Are you aware of thoughts now?

[Telepresent]

4 hours ago, Shaun said:

The confusing thing about this is how are my thoughts not me? Consciousness is all there is so that's all they can be.

Are you experiencing all of consciousness as you?  Or are you experiencing consciousness, and defining thoughts as 'me', and the sound from outside the window as 'not me' (not necessarily in such a blatant way, but experientially, or in belief)?

If consciousness is all there is, then all that is MUST BE the same thing.  Including the thoughts and feelings that are defining themselves as 'me', separate from 'not me'.  We might think of them as 'made of' consciousness.

As those thoughts and feelings are demonstrably not all there is, but 'made of' consciousness, then anything that they may be called cannot be consciousness in totality.

And most probably, they are called 'me', or 'mine'.

So the 'you' that is attempting to define yourself probably is constructed from those thoughts and feelings, but trying to lay claim to consciousness/all there is by using the term 'me' in two ways simultaneously: to refer to itself as an experiential or believed thought/feeling/entity, but also attempting to use the word 'me' to mean consciousness/all there is.

The problem is in labeling: in what is meant by the words 'me' and 'you'.  You need to pull them apart.

[Telepresent]

@Dlenger1 I'm big on spiritual autolysis so I don't think intellectualism is necessarily a terrible thing - though just going around and around asking questions and letting verbal answers pop up won't get you anywhere.

And absolutely, there comes a point where the thinking has to stop.

But if your mind is determined to ask, ask, ask, then you can at least adapt it to a more useful form of asking.  That is, deconstruction.  See, the questions and answers you are repeating are based on foundational assumptions which are taken for granted as true.  So let's do a little deconstruction...

10 hours ago, Dlenger1 said:

What am I?

Assumptions: 

1: I exist
2: I am definable
3: I am definable as a specific thing, object, or such

I am not this or that object.

1: This or that object are separations from one another
2: I am not this or that object.  I've said so but have I proved it?

What am I?

I am not what I am seeing.

1: You are separate from the seen
2: You are a thing that is seeing

What am I?

Am I the seer? Who is asking the question then?

1: There is a separate thing called a seer
2: There is a someone or something which asks questions

And so on and so on.  It might appear absurd, and I'm not necessarily saying anything about the answers to these questions - because frankly that's not the point.  The point is to see how these questions exist on frameworks of assumptions of beliefs, which themselves sit on frameworks of assumptions of beliefs, which themselves...

Personally, I find it very useful to attack from both directions.  Rupert Spira, for example, goes for a very direct 'look at consciousness' approach.  Autolysis comes at it from the other direction - pull apart the beliefs.  I think both have their place

[Hellspeed]

12 hours ago, Dlenger1 said:

I have a recurring issue while doing self-inquiry. On some point I keep on circling. Here is a small example of the process:

What am I?

I am not this or that object.

What am I?

I am not what I am seeing.

What am I?

Am I the seer? Who is asking the question then?

So am I the one asking the question?

That is another question. So it creates a never ending circle of who is questioning the previous question.

At this point I tend to deduce that I am the ultimate seer or the ultimate one asking the question.

But it does not feel like an insight. It's just a product of my intellectualization.

Do you have any tipps how can I resolve this recurring issue? I really appreciate your help!

Use self inquiry as a tool, transcend from there, don't be the tool. Let chatter go, don't interfere, focus breath on the Spleen and relax the legs.

[Leo Gura]

15 hours ago, Dlenger1 said:

@Leo Gura I already noticed that the intellectual answers are not authentic insights.

That's good progress!

Quote

I have no idea yet how I can experience something formless.

That's the trick! There isn't a "how". Formlessness cannot be reached through any method or process. Formlessness just is. You are it. You cannot reach it through any steps because it is the zero-th step. It is impossibly direct.

Although psychedelics can put you there in minutes.

The reaching of formlessness is a spontaneous occurrence, like a lightning strike. You cannot predict it or make it happen. But you can increase the odds by intensifying your inquiry & concentration.

13 hours ago, Shaun said:

@Leo Gura I experience that I am consciousness and all else is an appearance within but I don't understand how it is legitimate to say that the thoughts and feelings are not me. Consciousness is all there is and the thoughts and feelings are also consciousness, so how can they ultimately not be me?

Of course they are a part of you -- because everything is a part of you. But they are not essential to you. For example, a thought or feeling can arise and then disappear. It's disappearance does not change your essence. So what you are -- your essence -- is independent of all arising phenomena.

What you're missing is that you must distinguish yourself from all form. You have to separate the formlessness which right now is intermixed and confused with various forms. Then, later, you will realize that formlessness and form are in fact identical. But at the same time, they can be distinguished! It's a paradox.

Your first awakening experience is you realizing that formlessness is distinct from all form. It's you realizing that Consciousness/You is distinct from any content that arises.

It's sort of like a TV realizing that it is distinct from the images it displays. In the unenlightened state you are like a TV which is attached to the forms it displays, not realizing that in fact all forms could disappear without affecting the TV's existence.

What you are looking for with self-inquiry is PURE CONSCIOUSNESS. Consciousness without any forms.

But be careful, what I said above does not mean that any particular forms must be eliminated. So don't get some silly idea in your head that your sensory field will somehow turn off or go black. That's not what I mean. I mean you must realize that the sensory field is always occurring within formlessness. Like water is always occurring within some container. The True Self is the container. Find yourself as the empty container which holds the world. Right now you are so identified with the world that you cannot see the transparent container.

Form = the material world

Formlessness = the transparent container which holds it

And ultimately, Form = Formlessness

That's what "nonduality" means: not two.

[Shaun]

15 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

That's good progress!

That's the trick! There isn't a "how". Formlessness cannot be reached through any method or process. Formlessness just is. You are it. You cannot reach it through any steps because it is the zero-th step. It is impossibly direct.

Although psychedelics can put you there in minutes.

The reaching of formlessness is a spontaneous occurrence, like a lightning strike. You cannot predict it or make it happen. But you can increase the odds by intensifying your inquiry & concentration.

Of course they are a part of you -- because everything is a part of you. But they are not essential to you. For example, a thought or feeling can arise and then disappear. It's disappearance does not change your essence. So what you are -- your essence -- is independent of all arising phenomena.

What you're missing is that you must distinguish yourself from all form. You have to separate the formlessness which right now is intermixed and confused with various forms. Then, later, you will realize that formlessness and form are in fact identical. But at the same time, they can be distinguished! It's a paradox.

Your first awakening experience is you realizing that formlessness is distinct from all form. It's you realizing that Consciousness/You is distinct from any content that arises.

It's sort of like a TV realizing that it is distinct from the images it displays. In the unenlightened state you are like a TV which is attached to the forms it displays, not realizing that in fact all forms could disappear without affecting the TV's existence.

What you are looking for with self-inquiry is PURE CONSCIOUSNESS. Consciousness without any forms.

But be careful, what I said above does not mean that any particular forms must be eliminated. So don't get some silly idea in your head that your sensory field will somehow turn off or go black. That's not what I mean. I mean you must realize that the sensory field is always occurring within formlessness. Like water is always occurring within some container. The True Self is the container. Find yourself as the empty container which holds the world. Right now you are so identified with the world that you cannot see the transparent container.

Form = the material world

Formlessness = the transparent container which holds it

And ultimately, Form = Formlessness

That's what "nonduality" means: not two.

Ok, that makes perfect sense and that's exactly where I am at. I am deep in the dark night of the soul just now and I keep getting this idea that Shaun's point of view and experience is the only experience there is and it is scaring me, but I hope that part is just delusion or the ego trying to take ownership of the true I. I am terrified of reality, Leo and I don't know where to turn. There's literally nowhere to go, suicide is no escape and I don't know what to do. I am absolutely trapped.

Edited April 24, 2019 by Shaun