I don't want your approval, just honest engagement - really looking to see if it's true.



I don't see what a logical proof would do. Convince you to look?

Reality, here and now, backs it up. Here and now there's no you experiencing/piloting life - it's just an assumption.



Sure alright - explain where to find a me.

_________________
Freedom is seeing that there's no you:
undisguisedlife.blogspot.com

Close, very close.

It's not even that you have a body, it's that there's just the body, just the thoughts, there's no owner.

You're exactly right about the finger pointing to the moon though - I think Tom describes that perfectly in terms of open-minded skepticism.

My recommendation - use it on every new idea you encounter.

_________________
Freedom is seeing that there's no you:
undisguisedlife.blogspot.com

Hiquodiam,

I do not have to try out the idea of no self now. I first did that 40 years ago, long before you were born. Because I will not claim to be a Hindu or Buddhist metaphysician prepared to debate the concept at the true, historical level of the concept does not mean that I know nothing about it. It is you who are simple mindedly proposing this as a new discovery but which you do not well understand. It is you who are putting yourself in the place of the man with one idea to whom all the world is a nail because he only has a hammer.

From the Merriam-Webster On Line dictionary:
Definition of TWIT
1: an act of twitting : taunt
2: a silly annoying person : fool

You are perfectly exemplifying this. You do not say, I have run across this great sounding idea, what do you think about it. You expound it as if you actually knew the concept. Instead of actually engaging in discussion with us, you provided no real content until I challenged you and still inadequately respond. Instead of looking into what I might perhaps know by looking around on the forum, you have been relentlessly hammering away with your only and partial understanding. Your only response to me has been to act as if I had no concept of what you are talking about and was simply being an obstructionist unwilling to look at your 'grand idea'. Not that I have the objections that I have actually put forwards. You might profitably read this article on WikiPedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id%C3%A9e_ ... chology%29

I ask you again, do you wish to remain here as a regular member as opposed to stay thinking of yourself clearly as a budding guru? I do not propose to let the latter continue in opposition to the purpose of this board which I consider you to be in violation of. Your comments to me have been in no way an adequate response nor represent a change in your behavior. Your repeated challenge to 'just try it' is in no way a decent presentation of the idea. What is your response in terms of a simple yes/no answer to my question?

Ted as Administrator

Many here do indeed know what you are talking about.
In your words: they tried, checked it out. Ted included. That is what you are not hearing.
You can suggest but not convince or force.
In my previous post I tried my way of expressing this.
You might want to read it again. I explicitely mentioned that I followed your advice instead of brushing it off like all the others ;)
(just to be sure: last statement may contain sarcasm)

All the best!

Please read: http://itisnotreal.com/hunting-the-i-expanded.html and this: http://itisnotreal.com/warning.html

You are at the beginning of a long journey, not at the end of a very short one. I've linked to two fantastic articles by a true, living, guru. Please take a look.



Yes, there is only feeling and conceptualizing but no identifiable entity "I" or "you". As you put it the "I" doesn't really point to anything, it is just the thought "I". I understand that as well as you do. That brings us to the mystery: what is this apparent "I", then? Look deeply into yourself, in other words, meditate.

Please note, it sounds to me and everybody else on this board that you are trying to play guru, so try to change your attitude a little. I'm not trying to play guru with you but Ted is right you are making a mountain out of a molehill.

40 years ago? That's a long, long time to leave a belief unchecked. Which wouldn't be much of a problem if beliefs and assumptions were stable.

They aren't though - they grow very quickly out of hand. Religions, political positions, sports fans, all plainly massively corrupted by this - people defending the silliest belief systems which grew out of hand.

40 years of not checking this? If I notice an unchecked assumption growing in my head for even a day I freak out.

The funny part is, this won't even take a significant portion of your time - it's something that, if it's true, it's true right now. Literally one look away, one second away.

If you're comfortable leaving your beliefs grow unchecked, fine. But it's not that - nobody would be, that's insane. It's that you don't even know it's going on.

And not, NOT because you haven't listened to me enough. It has nothing to do with me, this isn't a teaching. It's something to consider - you either see that it's true, or see that it's B.S. Or none of the above.

Just please stop actively warping what I'm saying to let yourself off the hook of engaging with it.




I've never once offered this as something to be debated. Ever. It doesn't need to be, it's true, you can look right at it.

It's fine that you can't debate the historical Hindu/Buddhist concepts surrounding this. I can't either, it's unnecessary - I'm not putting this forward as a Buddhist concept, but as a real life one here and now.

I can't debate the science behind gravity, but I can see my keys fall on the ground. I can't debate chaos theory, but I can very well see that there's no pink unicorn in my room right now.

I can very well see that there's no me living life right now.



I'm not saying "What do you think about it" for a very specific reason. That prompts people to look at it as a concept to be debated, or agreed with, or ignored.

This doesn't work like that, it just doesn't work on the level of conceptualization, but pattern recognition. It's the difference between debating what's in a treasure chest, and opening it up too look inside - looking actually stores the empirical data of inside the box in your brain, as a memory. It's much stronger than a debate.

This isn't a "great sounding idea" - it's an aspect of reality that you can actually look at, that permanently frees the organism from having to live as a slave to it's self-image. That's not really something you can debate without first testing it for yourself.

I approached you guys saying "I know about this cool thigh which eases human dysfunction. Here it is - check if it's true." Right in the first post - which includes enough content to do it, but I understand if it could use clarifying.

Nobody's asked me how to look though - you're too busy attacking this on a conceptual level to be curious enough to do so. Which, I suppose, is both of our loss - I really want you guys to see this.



If you really think I'm just here to flail my massive intellect (hah) and gather worshipers, go ahead.

If you can really lie to yourself on that extreme level, without any evidence backing it up, I can't stop you. Go on, defend your forum from my evil ways.



This is something which massively increased my personal growth using something I read in Tom's book.

Once again: This is something which massively increased my personal growth using something I read in Tom's book.

In what sense does that violate the purpose of this board?

_________________
Freedom is seeing that there's no you:
undisguisedlife.blogspot.com

Will do, thanks.

And yeah, I agree, this is by no means the end of suffering, or understanding, or learning, or life, or anything like that.



Seems to be nothing more than thoughts about "I", mental labels and images.

Do you see something else?



The recognition itself is a molehill, right - just one little thing to notice. What it triggers in a human life is, I believe, something which could adquitely be described as a planet in relative massiveness.

Yeah, I'm passionate about this. But I honestly think it's something to be passionate about.

_________________
Freedom is seeing that there's no you:
undisguisedlife.blogspot.com

Who suffers? You must have some suffering in your life. Don't intellectualize, just feel that question. In my experience that question (who suffers?) is a very deep question.

But tell me this. If you were to burn your finger with a match, who feels the pain? Who says "ouch"? And, more importantly, who pops the blister? LOL

And when its all over, the pain is gone, the blister is healed, and only the memory remains, Who learns the lesson?

Who is it that says..." I will never do that again"?

Even though I understand that I am MORE than this "physical" body, I also understand that my consciousness is occupying this vehicle (temporarily) and I am bound by the ruleset. So if I cut my finger I will bleed.
My consciousness is Most definately, linked to this body (at least partially) and this body is limited by this ruleset (by design). However, as Morpheus said to Neo, in "The Matrix"... "It is a system based on rules, but some of those rules can be bent and others can be broken"

I have had enough psychic phenomenon (or spiritual experiences) happen to me, that I now KNOW that I am MORE than this body. Or the link on my consciousness to this body is only partial, only temporary, and may only be an illusion.
And as Tom says, - If you lose consciousness here, you GAIN consciousness somewhere else. When you die in a dream, you wake up here. And when you die here, you wake up somewhere else.

If you want to get a clear understanding of the nature of reality and consciousness, I suggest that you look into some of Toms lectures on the Double Slit experiment, Quantum Mechanics, and the Larger Consciousness System.
Its not magic it is science. There are RULES.

_________________
LOVE is the answer

peace
patrick

I'm still waiting patiently for content. What "it" is.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

No one - that's the thing. Suffering is an experience, it just happens as an experience, experience doesn't happen to anything - it's already the end product. Look.

_________________
Freedom is seeing that there's no you:
undisguisedlife.blogspot.com

Content's what I said in the first post - that's literally all you have to do to trigger this.

_________________
Freedom is seeing that there's no you:
undisguisedlife.blogspot.com

It seems not that easy after all ;)
Yet nobody has asked you how to look until now...
... because, if one did, one would have seen what you see ... and if one does not see it, he did not look right ...

Well, is there room in your thougts to allow for the possibility that your way of approaching this is one of many - and that you may offering a simple shortcut which does not appeal as a particularly good one?
Instead it appears as very superficial and explaining nearly nothing.

It's actually a bit funny to see how Ted did explain himself, but you choose to read it differently - appearently not noticing what he said.
40 years of not checking this? 40 years of not having his beliefs checked?
Because he does not want to go back there and and try your shortcut, instead trying to help you see that you yourself are heading into a belief-trap?

What you read was not what was said.

Ego is a tricky thing ...

I wish you all the best!

Bette,

You might just as well give it up. Hicquodiam does not have any further content to provide to you. He has only an insight which while real is limited to his limited degree of understanding. If you really want to know what he is hinting about without truly understanding, you should go on the Internet and search for no self or anatman. There is a traditional Buddhist conceptualization of this that is ancient and complex and with no precise and universally understood statement. The original works describing it are available in translation there. It requires digging and subtlety as compared to understanding Tom's model. The metaphors of science and mathematics are more clear to us in our culture and more readily available than the ancient Indian metaphors are.

It amounts basically to the realization that the self is not at all as it is commonly perceived to be. It is not that there is no thing that is your self but that it is not you as you look into the mirror or typically think your thoughts within your head. It is explainable more clearly by an understanding of Tom's model than by traditional literature, just as Tom's model explains the Buddha's statement that all is Illusion is explainable as that we experience a Virtual Reality by way of the data stream from the Reality Wide Web which can be realized to be Indra's Net with we IUOCs as the jewels of consciousness that form the interstices of the net, interconnected over the RWW. That PMR is the illusion of being 'out there' as opposed to that as being the reality.

Hiquodiam has a blockage that he must get past before he is willing to extend his understanding further. That blockage is the feeling that what he received as an insight is an end point rather than just a point of view along the way. There is much more to understanding but he is unwilling to accept that statement and continue his studies to find it. He could learn a great deal more by completing his reading of Tom's books and perhaps he will yet, once he gets past the blockage of feeling that he knows it all already. His is not an unusual problem.

Ted

Hicquodiam-

Suffering continues though doesn't it? and that is the problem in having an existence. I think ultimately the solution to suffering has to do with your insight, but it is way too minor to bring real, lasting, relief from the pangs of existence. Deeper investigation along the same lines is required.

If you believe that you have no existence or that you do not suffer any longer I don't know how to respond to you. All you have uncovered is that the self-image you have constructed in your mind isn't real. A good first step but certainly not an ultimate solution.

If you continue to insist that it is somehow an ultimate solution I'm finished dialoguing with you. I'm not sure if you have read either of the links I provided you with, but I would be interested in your reaction to that material.