I've been trying to write a concise post, but spectacularly fail every time. Some stuff is happening recently that I want to share, and for now I will share this little bit:

"In seeing, just the seen".

You read that, and you think something like:


when in fact that is the practice. Sure, some explanation is in order, but it is not theory, it is instruction.

It's stupid simple. Here's one way of trying to explain it:

This is my ‘trick’: seeing as if I was a camera, a no-one, identity-less, just vision, no seer. I'm a camera floating in the air, in a room where there's no-one. This room, my living room, just as it is now, without me; my experience of the room, minus 'me'. “How would this be, if there was no one here?”. Take your current experience / situation, pay attention to / notice it, then subtract yourself.

To clarify: there is no imagined camera, that's just a way to put in into words.

Do you see how that is seeing without a seer? You very concretely just stop adding 'you/me' to experience.

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Do not reach out towards objects in an attempt to gain sensory clarity to perceive the objects’ presence more clearly. Instead, retreat the ‘I’. Let it collapse unto itself, like an underwater implosion or a collapsing sun. Don’t reach outwards; collapse the inner. It is not a leaning forward, but a step backward. The “outer” world will instantly become more clear, and you will notice a quality, a 'taste' that is distinct, which you can use to recognize this state.

So, don't look at things; allow seeing to just be totally receptive.

Edit: for spelling.

'Pay attention' is too strong for me. It's too forceful. To myself I say "Do not pay attention. Notice", and this implies to be "totally receptive".

Don't 'look at' any of the sense doors and their corresponding objects, simply let them be recognised, to quote Jill, as a 'giant soup of sensations'. No room for 'you' then to form. Don't linger on one sense door as that leads to sectioning off a part of the field of experience. Let the whole entire field of experience be the giant soup. All sense contact occurring simultaneously. The sectioning off of a part of the field of experience leads to fabricating off of it.

I really like the way you've explained this, it points to how useful being more aware of how language works can be and may even be of use to those struggling with balancing effort. Nice!

i think trying trying to be totally receptive is the same as trying to pay attention. it's the trying which is at issue. I think tarin was saying that you have no control of anything even the process of trying to be free and that there is no way to gain control. and i speculate that this understanding can be good some of the time and not understanding that (still believing that you have control) can also be good in other circumstances.


just my 2 cents,

jon

I think I finally had this happen the other night. 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. Then I checked my thought-stream and it was uncharacteristically quiet. This lasted for the rest of the evening. The "I" that was checking was a witness or observer. It was extremely peaceful and pleasant. Before this occurred I had been doing some sort of Direct Mode practice, looking at the trees against the evening sky. I then got distracted--made a conscious decision about turning this way rather than that way, noticed the traffic light. And then I became aware of the sensations of the body, and realized they weren't mine. Don't know if it was a PCE, but it was nice.

The all-doors soup--simmer in it. Awesome!

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."



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.