Ingen Takes a Swat at her Pesky Ego

Day after day, as I investigate this thing called reality, the world gets weirder and weirderer.  And this doodle so very aptly depicts the tornado of thought that whips up whenever I try one of these inquiries.

First of all.... WHY are there three things represented here when they are all supposed to be referencing just one.  One.  The one.  Me.

Me:  Right here.  This me in this body somewhere. 

And My:  Ok, so now this goes off the rails.  There's already a Sybil effect going on as though there can be a 'me' and a 'my'.  What is My if not Me? 

Ego:  Now we've got this spaceship circling the body where the me and my is.  So whose ego is it?  And if it's outside circling around, how is it mine?  Me?  My?

Does the ego belong to someone here?  Is it owned by something?  If so, WHAT?!  What is the thing that owns the ego?

I guess I could say that 'my' body owns the ego but if it does, it certainly hasn't been able to control it.  Just look at it buzzing around in circles, kind of like this logic.  If I own it, why isn't there a remote control for this thing?

It's odd how looking for the me always turns into a frustrating circle jerk. 

I am looking for the me.

I am looking at my ego.

What and where is this supposed I that is looking?!

"Who Am I?", I ask.  No one answers.






Questions for Investigation:

Are there two things, a you, and then a separate ego? Can the idea of an ego ever exist apart from the idea of a self? Where does the concept of a self end and the concept of an ego begin?

Most importantly, do either of these things exist as more than an idea?



Tools for Ongoing Inquiry:

Like the self, check for whether either actually exist outside of thought? What is the thing or entity that "has" or controls the ego? Then do the same check in reverse. What is the thing that “has” or controls the self?

Meanwhile, Ingen Discovers Eternity.

There I was in my last post, dangling on the precipice of my sometimes regrettable past while trying to not fall to hard into a hazy but hope-filled future.  This incredible feat was a tip-of-the-toe pirouette on the sharp and cutting edge of this single point of time called "Now".  Why the treacherous balancing act?  Because that's what all of the spiritual books say will make me happy.

It wasn't working. The "now" was too small to fit all of the thoughts about I was supposed to be doing at the moment, in the one immediately previous, and all the while ensuring I didn't fall into the next one unprepared.  It seemed exhausting.

It was also very obvious that the inquiry into Time and Now wasn't over.  Further investigation into "Reality-As-It-Is" was called for.

Here goes.

I'd already come to the understanding that there is only Now (see my previous post).  But it still seemed that there was this time-bubble called 'me' which was separate.  This was the thing that reflected on the past, sat in the now, and worried about the future.  It's as though there were four things, all somehow related to a me who had to track her place relative to each one.  It's no wonder I'm tired.

So then where is this Past that is not here, and therefore is separate from the me that's in the Now?  How would it be possible for it to exist as 'my past' without yours truly as central character?  The same question holds true for the Future.  If it's out there without me, then it's certainly not My future, because I'm not there yet.  I'm right here in the Now.  Or at least I thought I was before that last inquiry when I couldn't find This Moment either, except as a continuous eternity without measurement.  Time has no edges for me to be contained "in".

Does this make me eternal?!!

There is Past, Present, and Future, existing nowhere, and I've just discovered that I'm not in any of them.  When am I?

Questions for Investigation:

Does "Your" past exist outside of the idea of a you who has experienced it?  Where is the past or future right now?  Is the Past, Future, and Present separate from the You?

Tools for Ongoing Inquiry:

Note the times you feel that you are not Living in the Moment.  Is that feeling happening outside of the present moment?

Newsflash: "Staying in the Now" Is a Crock!

Oh, how I have tried to stay in the now!  Let me count the ways...

It's frustrating to suddenly realize that I'd been thinking about a problem at work while actually gazing at the sunset on a beautiful beach.   Or maybe it's a snap back to the delicious dinner with friends instead of getting lost in thought about which bills were due this week. 

We all do it.  We've taken the mantra of 'staying in the now' and turned it into another reason to berate ourselves for falling short of some spiritual or enlightened goal.

With the help of Ingen Findes, let's take a look at the "Present Moment".  To do that, we'll need to look at the nature of time itself.

Time.  It seems to be a measure of change rather than something I can get my hands on.  That's evidenced by the fact that when I'm indoors, I have to look at a clock in order to keep track of my day.  Outdoors, it's much easier because of the changing angles of the sun, or just the multitude of changing events.  Time is change.  I can't seem to define it more than that.

Before understanding how to stay in the now, I'll need to define it.  And I'm having a real problem with that.  When I look for an "incoming" now, I just get... Now.  When looking for the end or "outgoing" now, I get... Now.  I cannot find a demarcation or line between the past, present, or future.  It's just one long continuous now!  Past appears only in thought, and so does future.

Guess what that means?  There is absolutely no way to not be in the now.  That's the good news.  But then what's happening to cause the feeling of not being 'here, now'? 

It seems that the only time I'm not in the Now is when I've framed a scene in my mind, or compartmentalized life into segments.  THIS is dinner time.  THIS is beach time.  THIS is writing a blog post time so I shouldn't be thinking of sushi.

But what happens if the compartments are false?  Are there actual compartments in reality or is this just some lame left-brained idea?   Doesn't that mean that no matter what is happening, it's happening NOW and is the NOW?  Why have I imposed false rules about what is supposed to be happening at any given time as though I can structure every single aspect and moment?

Seems kind of weird to think about this.  But no matter what happens, I'm only ever in the moment. And when I realize that instead of thinking of bills, I'd rather think of the shoreline in front of me, then that's what I do in THAT moment.  Mission accomplished.  Struggling with this is wholly unnecessary.



Questions for Investigation:

Is it Now, now? What about Now? Try to leave the present moment and jump into the future, or move back into the past. Is it ever possible?




Tools for Ongoing Inquiry:

Keep trying to leave the now. When the thought that you are not "living in the now" comes, when is that thought occurring? Can you ever fail to stay in the present moment? Are you a time traveler? If you could travel through time, what time would it be when you got there?

The Real Meaning of Manifesting Your Life

Just look at this doodle.  It looks like a lot of stuff doesn't it?  Almost too much to process?  Yes, that's exactly where I'd landed when I realized that this was the very point. 

Every day I'm bombarded by sensory input and it's a gigantic soup of experience.  Life buzzes, chirps, whizzes, and whirs and the only way to make sense of it all is to group, categorize, and name parts of the soup and call them Things.  I need to understand that a part of the soup that we label BUS just might run me over if I step out in front of it.  But it's not separate from the scenery and so the mind does its job of separating and pulling it apart... car, bus, motorcycle, street.  None of it would be separated except through thought because from what I can see all of the images are just present in one large canvas.  Sounds overlap and intrude on each other, but I can separate music from car horns.  Look!  See?  I've just named them!

Are there ever not things?  I realize that when I'm daydreaming or lost in the world of thoughts about future or past, I can stare at the scenery or listen to the sounds for moments at a time without recognition of any specific thing at all.  I literally think the things into existence.  As soon as thought enters, things magically appear.  You might even say that they 'manifest', though not in the way the new age books like to tell me they do.


Questions for Investigation:

What separates things? What makes up the borders? Can we pluck a thing out of the scenery in front of us? If not, is it truly separate or is it thought about variation in observed qualities which makes it so?



Tools for Ongoing Inquiry:

The next time you are watching television, look at the screen and see whether you can pluck an object from the scene. Are there objects existing inside the screen or is the image a seamless whole? What is it that makes it seem as though there are separate objects in the picture? Are they truly separated?

How I Woke Up with Just One Look

Here's an excerpt from something I'd written the very first time I was asked what my moment of "seeing" looked like.  Every time I read this, the AHA! comes back to me fresh and new, but more than that, the account is simple and direct, exactly as the act of seeing happened.

To set this up, know that I'd been working on the inquiry by reading a forum which came before liberation unleashed but the idea was the same.... it consisted of dialogues between seekers and guides, though "dialogues" is not exactly accurate.  That's because the guides had distilled the message or pointer to "Just Look".  The directive became my mantra and two weeks after finding the forum, "it" happened.

Here it is:

Last Sunday after a couple of weeks of reading (yet more new) posts on this [Ruthless Truth]  site, then finding the exercises on no-self.com, I dropped all the assumptions and spiritual "knowledge" and just looked. Plain and simple. 

(and now it's amazing how easy it was if your advice had been followed from the beginning.)

Yes, I saw my computer monitor. I saw my lamp... the mouse, the pen, the windows, sheets of paper, legs, arms, fingers, and became annoyed by a film of the tiniest specks of dust. Then I looked for the smallest evidence of a tangible Me. That's when it first hit. How was is possible to see a single speck of dust more clearly than I could see a Me? Where the hell was I? And if I wasn't able to find myself RIGHT THERE WHERE I THOUGHT I WAS SITTING, then WHERE COULD I POSSIBLY BE? 

It's plain and simple. Look for the Me, the Myself, the Self, the Doer, the Thinker, the Seer, the Hearer and you'll not even be able to find something less than those specks of dust piling up on the printer.
That was it.  And every time I do a new inquiry, I follow the same strategy and distill it down to "just looking".

It's the key.

To read more about the moment of seeing, you can read it on my other blog here:  Tabula Rasa

Enlightenment by Selfie

This doodle asks a simple question but as inquiries go, I've done enough of them to know that it's always the simpler ones that rock my paradigm the most.  They have a habit of helping to reveal that in the world of the mundane, there are some really very extraordinary mysteries.  Forget about the Secrets of the pyramids, to find a real mind bender, apparently, all I need to do is to look in a mirror.

Let's start.  I hold a mirror.  I look.  After a few seconds of reflexively thinking that there's a me here and an image 'there' that represents the me here, I pause, breathe, and go back to the basic rules of inquiry.

Do it like a child.

Ok, fine.  I'm going to do this one like a toddler.

So what's going on?  Well there's a feeling that is recognized to be a 'me' and a feeling recognized to be 'here' becomes a mashup of me/here.  It's just a feeling, though. When I look for an image of a me here where the feeling is, I come up empty.  Nada.  The feeling itself is actually floating in empty space and has no precise location.  To look for it, I have to imagine my body, then try to further imagine the place in that body where the feeling exists.  I give it a minute and find that I think it's sort of in the head and heart.  I realize that this is a complete guess because I can't touch the feeling at all. I begin to notice that the more I try to zero in on this feeling and location, the more vague things become.  It's a little LOT disconcerting to notice that I'm now using words like

believe
think
feel
imagine

This self has been here for years . For something that feels so real and true, why do I need to use such weak-kneed terms?!

Time to look in the mirror, because that's where I can find something solid and real which is measurable.  Besides, I know I can be sure of finding it.  But Ugh.... here it comes....  doubt.  Why do I need to look at something outside of this right-here/right-now feeling of a self in order to find myself?  This doesn't make sense.  The image is "out there" and yet it's the only thing I have ever recognized as me.

What in the world?  

Don't get me started about selfies.   They now make even less sense than ever, and I want to deconstruct it. Here goes the selfie...

There's a feeling here
Close to the feeling, there's an image of a hand and camera
The feeling faces a mirror, and the hand, together with camera, takes a photo of 'over there'
The 'over there' is suddenly the same as 'right here'
The hand flips the phone and sees the image 'in there' of 'over there' which represents 'right here'.

Ack!!  Ms. Lill, you have done me in.


Working Questions for Your Own Inquiry

Questions for Investigation:

Are you "here" or is it more accurate to say that you are "there", in the mirror? Are you somewhere in between the two, or are you in both places at once? Where is the space in which the You exists?



Tools for Ongoing Inquiry:

Notice images of "you" in different mirrors. What space does the You occupy in those moments? Why does it feel as though the space occupied is different from where the image is found? What evidence doyou have to support the idea that there is a 'me' here, and a 'me' there?

How to Come Out Smelling Like a Rose

This inquiry seems fresh every time I work with it.  That's because when I really GROK this one, it becomes pretty evident that the story happening in my head is somehow able to completely override or REPLACE reality as-it-is. 

 

How?   Well, let me see whether I can write this out in clear terms...

 

The panel on the left always seems to reflect the truth of what happens when I smell a flower.  It's a great depiction except for one major flaw!  If I run outside right now to smell the about-to-bloom magnolias on the scrawny and newly planted tree in my front yard, the reality is that the event is actually going to be experienced as the panel on the right.

 

But.

 

When I tell you the story of how things happened when picking up the magnolia and taking a good strong whiff, the panel on the left is truer to the story.  It IS the story.

 

And therein lies all the difference.

 

That left-hand panel is the MAP of experience while the one on the right IS the experience.  (Well, as close as I can get when trying to communicate this concept with concepts, but that's another post.) 

 

When I look at the truth of reality-as-it-happens, my experience is immediate, fleeting, unstructured, uninhibited, and unplanned.   On the other hand the story of my experience is:

• Long (it takes longer to tell it than the time it took for it to happen)
• Structured (the story, whether told in thought or aloud, has a linear movement)
• Inhibited (I could never tell the entire story or I'd never get to the point)
• Planned (The words are formed in thought and sentences are structured according to rules)

The contrast between the panels becomes clear but the results leave me with a strange dilemma... the left tells a fictitious story that was never my experience at all while the right, even when truer, just doesn't work in the way we usually communicate. 

Ok, so now I understand what a doodle is supposed to do... tell a story.  No wonder they're always drawn like the one on the left.  They're not really accurate at all, though!

Care to go down a rabbit hole with me on this one?   After more inquiry, I found that both panels can only ever represent thought, and it's thought twice-removed.  That's because there is the scent happening, and there is sight, but only thought has said those are the experience of a rose.  Only thought says there is a thing called scent and only thought says there is a sight called "red", "flower".......  All I ever really experience is... !!!

I'll let you know whether I make it back from this one.




Working Questions for Your Own Inquiry

Questions for Investigation:

Which of the two panels is the image that usually comes to mind when thinking about the experience of "I smell a flower"? Is the panel on the left a true representation of what the experience of SMELLING, ITSELF looks like from your point of view, or is the panel on the right more accurate? How does understanding the difference between the two feel? How does seeing the difference feel?

Tools for Ongoing Inquiry:

Notice all of the differences between the story we tell ourselves about an action, and the action itself. When looking out at the view, do eyes see an image of you looking at the view, or is there just the view? Where do "you" live... on the panel on the left or the one on the right?