Jon T:
i think trying trying to be totally receptive is the same as trying to pay attention. it's the trying which is at issue.
Directly preceding what is my second most recent PCE were three distinct steps:
1. An incident where there was a sense of having done something important or correct, but not fully remembering how I did it. Then I try to re-trace my steps, but in this process of trying to remember, the more I tried to remember, the more I was forgetting. I called it a "mental bind".
2. Suddenly I became aware that I was
trying to be sensuous. Instantly, in that moment and only
for that moment, I learned how to stop 'I'-ing, or trying, and just stopped doing that.
3. "In seeing, only the seen", or "What would this be like, if there was no-one here", or "I'm an identity-less camera in a room empty of anyone".
Cue PCE.
To me, the second step was the biggest punch in the face. "It's the trying which is at issue."
Jane Laurel Carrington:
I was driving, and I became aware that there was a sensation of my body making contact with the car seat, but the sensation of contact did not belong to me or to anyone. So I checked the visual field, and there was a visual field, but no one seeing anything.
This is uncannily similar to something that happened to me, just yesterday.
Nevermind the circumstances. I became aware of some sensations of progressively relaxing muscles in my arms. Suddenly I realize that those sensations (in a lack of better words) 'taste' or 'looks' or 'smells' or 'feels' exactly like vision when I'm in a PCE. There's a quality, a quality of selflessness, that was suddenly realized. The sensations of the muscles in my arms 'feels' the same way the sight of a spotted banana peel feels - not mine.
I had been reflecting on the fact that I find it much easier to use vision as a means to realize selflessness, and I couldn't understand how to perceive sensations that are seemingly 'mine' or 'my body's'. This insight into the selflessness of the sensations of 'my muscles' lead to a cascade of insights, e.g. the lack of distinction between 'inside' and 'outside', subject and object.