Today sent this to another person, this one is at Thusness Stage 4 and asking me for guidance. His guide from LU (Liberation Unleashed) led him from I AM/Eternal Witness to Thusness Stage 4 through the first contemplation on challenging the sense of a border/division between awareness and manifestation.

Telling him to focus on the second contemplation to realize 5 (anatta).

As I wrote before a month ago:


There are two lines of inquiries that helped my progress after I AM/Witness realization.

1) contemplating 'where does awareness end and manifestation begin' or 'is there a border/dividing line between awareness and manifestation' until Witness/phenomena collapses into a borderless one mind, one field of awareness where mind and manifestation can no longer be distinguished. This is *NOT* anatta. At this phase, the One Mind is still seen to be truly (inherently) existing, changeless


(Thusness Stage 4)

2) contemplating Bahiya Sutta -- in seeing only the seen, on hearing only the heard, (no seer or hearer besides) and same for all other senses. Until it is suddenly realized that the whole structure of Seer-Seeing-Seen doesn't apply and there is no seeing besides colors -- no seer, no hearing besides sound -- no hearer, no awareness besides manifestation. This is not just realising the lack of borders or duality but realizing the Absence of an inherently existing Self/Agent/Awareness behind manifestation. This is the realization of anatta.


(Thusness Stage 5) 


Do these contemplations simultaneously while practicing
Thusness's Vipassana

As Thusness wrote before, a good approach should provide an
"effective way to allow practitioners to have adequate experience of the vividness, realness and presence of Awareness and the full experience of these qualities in the transience. Without which it will not be easy to realize that "the arising and passing sensations are the very awareness itself." A balance is therefore needed, otherwise practitioners may experience equanimity but skew towards dispassion and lack realization."



Read through these following articles as they will help your contemplation on Anatta:

(Perhaps start by reading the links marked in bold)


**Important: Thusness/PasserBy's Seven Stages of Enlightenment
**Important: On Anatta (No-Self), Emptiness, Maha and Ordinariness, and Spontaneous Perfection
**Important: The Wind is Blowing, Blowing is the Wind
**Important: The Buddha on Non-Duality (read the article by Ajahn Amaro followed by the comments by PasserBy [Thusness] in the Comments section)
**Important: Nothing other than the sun, the moon, and the stars
**Important: How is Anatta and Emptiness not Nihilism? / Suchness / Weather Analogy
**Important: Fully Experience All-Is-Mind by Realizing No-Mind, Conditionality, Unreality and Non-Arising
**Important: Realization and Experience and Non-Dual Experience from Different Perspectives 
**Important: Vipassana
**Important: Emptiness as Viewless View and Embracing the Transience 
**Important: Advice from Kyle Dixon
**Important: A Sun That Never Sets (Written by Kyle Dixon)
**Important: Fearing No-Self 
**Important: Actual Freedom and the Immediate Radiance in the Transience
**Important: Airplane and Flying 
**Important: Quotes by Dogen 
**Important: Zen Patriarch Bodhidharma on the Inseparability of Awareness and Conditions
**Important: Actualization in Mundane Life and Encounters
Difference Between Thusness Stage 4 and 5 (Substantial Non-duality vs Anatta)
Rigpa and Aggregates
My commentary on Bahiya Sutta
Sun of Awareness and River of Perceptions
What Is The "Me"?
The Breakthrough
Joel Agee: Appearances are Self-Illuminating
Zen Priest Alex Weith’s report on his realization of Anatta
Nothing to Abide In, Anatta as Dispersing into Multiplicity + Spontaneous, Disjoint and Unsupported
Alan Watts: Agent and Action
Nouns and Verbs
The Trouble With Agency
Dan Berkow's Writings
Beyond Awareness
There's No Such Thing As Awareness / Redditors Who Realized Anatta
No Awareness Does Not Mean Non-Existence of Awareness
Non-duality of Essence and Form
James M. Corrigan's Writings
Greg Goode on Advaita/Madhyamika
Excerpts from the Jewel Mirror Samadhi
Realization, Experience and Right View and my comments on "A" is "not-A", "not A" is "A" 
Man on Cloud Mountain
Putting aside Presence, Penetrate Deeply into Two Fold Emptiness
Leaving traces or Attainment?
A casual comment about Dependent Origination
Reply to Yacine
The Key Towards Pure Knowingness
Flowers Fall: A Commentary on Zen Master Dogen's Genjokoan (Soto Zen/Dogen)
Just Manifestation or Just Mind
No Self, No Doer, Conditionality
Possessed by Conceit
Some Remarks on Conceptualization and Transcendent Experience
Phagguna Sutta: To Phagguna
The Different Degrees of Non-Duality (Post anatta insight progression)
Self-Liberation by Khamtrul Rinpoche III (Mahamudra)
Resolving That Thoughts and Perceptions are Buddha-Mind (Mahamudra)
Nobody is running this show (luminousemptiness blog)
Where did by breath go? (luminousemptiness blog; read article + comments by PasserBy/Thusness) 
All Experience is Mind (luminousemptiness blog; read article + comments by PasserBy/Thusness)
Self-Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness by Padmasambhava (Dzogchen)
True Mind and Unconditioned Dharma
The place where there is no earth, fire, wind, space, water
Early Forum Posts by Thusness
Part 2 of Early Forum Posts by Thusness
Part 3 of Early Forum Posts by Thusness
Early Conversations Part 4
Early Conversations Part 5
Early Conversations Part 6
+A and -A Emptiness
 
...........

Along with the two types of nondual contemplation, also practice to experience the intensity of luminosity and bring it to the foreground.

I wrote in 2011:

Good insight. Stability of experience has a predictable relationship with
the unfolding and deepening of insights. For example how seamless and
effortless can non-dual experience be, if in the back of one's mind, subtle
views of duality and inherency and tendencies continue to surface and affect
our moment to moment experience - for example conjuring an unchanging source
or mind that results in a perpetual tendency to sink back and referencing
experience back to a source.

For example even after it is seen that everything is a manifestation of
awareness or mind, there might still be subtle tendencies to reference back
to a source, awareness or mind and therefore the transience is not
appreciated in full. Nondual is experienced but one sinks back into
substantial nonduality - there is always a referencing back to a base, an
"awareness" that is nevertheless inseperable from all phenomena.

If one arises the insight that our ideas of an unchanging source, awareness
or mind is just another thought - that there is simply thought after
thought, sight after sight, sound after sound, and there isn't an inherent
or unchanging "awareness", "mind", "source". Non-dual becomes implicit and
effortless when there is the realisation that what awareness, seeing,
hearing really is, is just the seen... The heard... The transience... The
transience itself rolls and knows, no knower or other "awareness" can be
found. Like there is no river apart from flowing, no wind apart from
blowing, each noun implies its verb... Similarly awareness is simply the
process of knowing not separated from the known. Scenery sees, music hears.
Because there is nothing unchanging, independent, ultimate apart from the
transience, there is no more sinking back to a source and instead there is
full comfort resting as the transience itself.

Lastly do continue practicing the intensity of luminosity... When looking at
tennis ball just sense the tennis ball fully.... Without thinking of a
source, background, observer, self. Just the tennis ball as a luminous
light. When breathing... Just the breathe... When seeing scenery, just
sights, shapes and colours - intensely luminous and vivid without an agent
or observer. When hearing music... Sound of bird chirping, the crickets...
Just that - chirp chirp. A zen master noted upon his awakening... When I am
hearing the bell ringing, there is no I and no bell... Just the ringing. The
direct experiencing of no-mind and intensity of luminosity.. This is the
purpose of the practice of the four foundations of mindfulness that is
taught by the Buddha.


............

Thusness just wrote today, “In anatta, self is negated and D.O (dependent origination) is realized. In emptiness the idea of "negation" is further refined to allow the mind to see how conventions are mistaken to be "real" and "true". Understanding how conventions and reifications (mistaken to be "real" and "true") can be intellectual but seeing through requires direct experiential insight and anatta is the actual taste of that in relation to the convention "self/Self". Once this is understood "emptiness" is realized to be the natural progression of anatta. The direct taste is beyond description, often expressed as +A and -A.”

Related: http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-and-emptiness_1.html


............

Some Q&A regarding anatta realization -



Someone asked, "How do you do this? I just end up repeating the words over and over again. Or focusing on trying to see clearly what the [two] stanzas [of anatta] are saying and getting a little tense lol. Should I just observe in a relaxed state and try to directly perceive the stanzas? Did you require samadhi for a breakthrough or just persistence?"


Soh replied, "for me there was an element of investigation

seeing if awareness existed as some standalone seer or seeing besides colors and so on, challenging them and investigating until these constructs are seen through and there is direct realisation that awareness is precisely these appearances, sensations, always already so

more an investigation but meditation can help

http://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2015/12/self-liberation-by-khamtrul-rinpoche-iii.html

 "At that point, is the observer—awareness—other than the observed—stillness and movement—or is it actually that stillness and movement itself? By investigating with the gaze of your own awareness, you come to understand that that which is investigating itself is also no other than stillness and movement. Once this happens you will experience lucid emptiness as the naturally luminous self-knowing awareness. Ultimately, whether we say nature and radiance, undesirable and antidote, observer and observed, mindfulness and thoughts, stillness and movement, etc., you should know that the terms of each pair are no different from one another; by receiving the blessing of the guru, properly ascertain that they are inseparable. Ultimately, to arrive at the expanse free of observer and observed is the realization of the true meaning and the culmination of all analyses. This is called “the view transcending concepts,” which is free of conceptualization, or “the vajra mind view.”"


Another person asked, "I am very interested to hear about how "your life" has changed due to these realizations?"

I replied, "Life is now experienced in the most vivid, clear, free, alive and spontaneous way without gaps or division. The luminous taste of existence like 'I AM' is now experienced in everything, colors, sounds, etc. This is blissful. The release of all self/Self is liberating.

For the most part, life goes on. As the Zen saying goes, before enlightenment, chop wood carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood carry water. But now without duality/self/Self/contraction/identification, and so one is free to face each situation with increased clarity, acceptance, intimacy with life, and transcendence. When I talk to others I do not feel myself as someone talking with someone else, there's just the whole activity talking and exerting, I am not I and other is not other, all dissolve into an interplay. One becomes fearless, non-attached and yet fully engaged in all experience and activities.

In terms of how emotional life has changed, pretty similar to how Kyle Dixon described after his anatta realization,

"...The anatta definitely severed many emotional afflictions, for the most part I don't have negative emotions anymore. And either the anatta or the strict shamatha training has resulted in stable shamatha where thoughts have little effect and are diminished by the force of clarity. I'm also able to control them, stopping them for any amount of desired time etc. but I understand that isn't what is important. Can I fully open to whatever arises I would say yes. I understand that every instance of experience is fully appearing to itself as the radiance of clarity, yet timelessly disjointed and unsubstantiated..""


............


Someone wrote: "ive read the first link. Suzanne Segals story and the two types of nondual contemplation after I AM.
i have to admit that just reading the contemplation spikes some panic in me because it implys i have to go further into no-mans land. Things like "theres no seer, just seeing". it makes me feel even less existent. As if thats the missing nail in the coffin to destroy me once and for all."


I replied:

Fear and panic arises due to the misconception that 'I' have existed in the first place and has to dissolve. This is a misunderstanding. There is no 'I' behind the seeing which is none other than colors, no 'I' or 'hearer' that is behind the hearing which is none other than sounds. Nothing needs to dissolve, it is seen through and realized to be always already the case. You think that hearing and seeing is the job of an agent, a perceiver, a doer, and you are some detached perceiver, but in reality scenery sees and sound hears. The agent never was. It only appears to be real, and while the delusion is there, the appearance is very strong and hypnotic. There is a constant self-refencing, a tiresome and tedious process of referencing every experience back to a presumed agent out of ignorance, from 'just the seen' to 'I see'. The seeing/colors, hearing/sounds, action/activity happen first, followed by an unnecessary self-referencing to an imaginary agent. This sense of being a self, an agent, a perceiver, a doer, can however be challenged, investigated, and seen through. With the illusion seen through, the process of self-making naturally stops, it is not so much that a self is destroyed as it was never truly there. Nothing is lost, and in losing an illusion you 'gain' the world.

The old Zen koan goes:

The man sitting atop the hundred foot pole:
Though he's gained entry, this is not yet the real.
Atop the hundred foot pole, he should step forward:
The universe in all directions is the whole body.

Nothing is destroyed any more than seeing through the belief in the real existence of santa claus actually destroys some santa claus. You just wake up to reality. Oh, life is happening brilliantly without a center, without the need for the fiction of a center, and life is much more marvellous, wondrous, alive, boundless and free than the tiresome and fearful holding and grasping on to an unnecessary self-contraction and imagined entity and all the related sufferings. It's like holding on to hot charcoal and yet strangely not willing to release it due to fear of the unknown. Once the illusion is seen through and released there is a sense of freedom, release and fearlessness in facing life (see: https://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2018/08/fearless-samadhi.html )

Then there is no fear as this is realized to be always already the case. The notion that 'I' had existed at the center, experiencing and coordinating everything is unnecessary and unfounded. The absence of self and agent is also experienced positively as everything is brilliantly alive and self-luminous, the quality of 'witnessing' which was once seen as a background observer now is felt as a quality of everything revealing itself to itself. The seeing is seen-seeing, colors and sounds and sensations are just felt vividly where they are instead of being experienced from some vantagepoint of self. It is not a static state of detached uninvolvement in life, there is complete engagement and intimacy in all actions, chop wood, carry water.

What is called pure consciousness experience becomes effortless and natural: http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/library/topics/pce.htm , and in this state there can be no dissociation. If you do not experience the aspect of intense luminosity then joy and liveliness will not be felt (see: http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-importance-of-luminosity.html ) The intimacy is not the intimacy of two entities meeting each other but the sense of gaplessness, when hearing a sound the sound is as if 'you', closer than your breath, when seeing the blue sky the blue sky is as if 'you', closer than your heartbeat. Everything is alive and vivid. So how can there be dissociation and derealization?

For a theoretical understanding of no-self also see http://www.ted.com/talks/julian_baggini_is_there_a_real_you

For the experiential realizations involved check out: On Anatta (No-Self), Emptiness, Maha and Ordinariness, and Spontaneous Perfection

William Jeffery Pratt:
Dear AEN,

Poignant and veracious.

Yet, the organism that hasn't awakened and the awakened organism will both automatically recoil when it unknowingly touches a red hot fire.


The recoiling as a pure bodily function and activity will happen spontaneously without self-referencing. It is necessary and useful for the survival of this organism, be it awakened or not. It does not come with the kind of self-contraction and fear and grasping before awakening.

Some people will have glimpses of this 'spontaneous happening' even without realizing anatta. For example they may wake up from sleep and experience the body coughing by itself, too fast before the sense of self kicks in as they just woke up (the structures of subject/object, identity, selfing, takes some time to kick in after arousing from sleep). But then the sense of a detached observer then quickly kicks in, and there's a sense "oh I was just watching this thing, the body is doing its thing and I'm not the doer, I am the watcher". This is an experience of non-doership but NOT what I call realization of anatta, therefore dissociation still happens. Most people who have certain glimpses of non-self are talking about an experience of non-doership, which is not necessarily a non-dual experience, or a peak experience of PCE, but even if he/she experiences a PCE it is still not what I call the realization of anatta. Even one realizes non-dual luminosity as always undivided, they may still fall into the case of Thusness Stage 4 - subject/object non-division rather than realizing true anatta or no-subject of Thusness Stage 5 - Thusness/PasserBy's Seven Stages of Enlightenment

As I often said (elsewhere) - for 8 years now, there has not been the slightest sense of agency, an agent, or subject/object division in any situation. Non-doership, no agent, and no subject-object division (vivid non-dual luminosity) all at once. Spontaneous and effortlessly so as a natural state. The aspect of no agent must be clear, not just non-doership, and not just subject/object non-division or non-dual luminosity either.

Like seeing a picture puzzle, once you see it and the insight stabilizes, you can't unsee it even if you want to.


----------


Someone else wrote:

even though my center dropped and never for a moment returned (ie, anatta was realized),


I should add that most people that I’ve seen describing the center dropping and never returning are actually not talking about the same anatta realization as me.

I was having a conversation with someone today (he had some history with various practices, vipassana, actual freedom, and recently came across a famous Thai ajahn, etc) who shared about an experience of dissolving into centerless space. I told him what I call anatta is not just being centerless, it is the effulgence and radiance of the transience. That is, regardless of any realization of no-self, and no matter how centerless one feels or how centerless is one's experience of awareness and so forth... still, anything short of direct realization of the radiance or luminosity as the very stuff of transiency is still not what I call the realization of anatta. (And that too is also just an aspect of anatta, and furthermore not yet into the twofold emptying)

Was reminded of a conversation with Thusness back in Aug 2010 and found some excerpts from the Actual Freedom site:

"(12:22 AM) Thusness: for u, u will not be clear now... what Richard taught has some problem...that focus is in the experience
u should focus on the realization
(12:22 AM) Thusness: the pce is what i told u, bring what u experience into the foreground
(12:23 AM) Thusness: Richard has a very important realization.
(12:24 AM) Thusness: that is, he is able to realize the immediate radiance in the transience
(12:25 AM) AEN: this is like ur second point of anatta in the anatta article?
(12:25 AM) Thusness: yes
(12:26 AM) Thusness: there is nothing to argue, it is obvious and clear.
(12:27 AM) Thusness: however i do not want to focus on the experience
(12:27 AM) Thusness: u need to go through a period of frustration first"

From the Actual Freedom site:
http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/…/selecte…/sc-relativism.htm
RESPONDENT: How do the qualities of ‘splendour and brilliance’ present themselves AS splendour and brilliance?
RICHARD: Directly ... as splendour and brilliance are intrinsic to the properties of this actual world they present themselves openly where apperception is operating: everything is literally bright, shining, vivid, intense, sparkling, luminous, lustrous, scintillating and coruscating in all its vitality here in this actual world.
.....
RICHARD: As I understand it (I am not a scientist nor have any scientific training) a photometer can measure how bright or brilliant something is in a more precise, reliable and universal way than the eye can sensately determine ... and one can then talk about the brilliance of that something if one wishes to convey to another what one is experiencing (the word comes from the French ‘briller’ meaning ‘shine’).
• ‘brilliance: brilliant quality; intense or sparkling brightness, radiance, or splendour; an instance of this’. (© Oxford Dictionary).
As for the splendour of something (the word comes from the Latin ‘spendere’ meaning ‘be bright; shine’) ... it is related to a brilliant display:
• ‘splendour: 1. great or dazzling brightness, brilliance. 2. magnificence; sumptuous or ornate display; impressive or imposing character; a magnificent feature, object, etc. 3. distinction, eminence, glory’. (© Oxford Dictionary).
Therefore, when I wrote that ‘as [the qualities of] splendour and brilliance are intrinsic to the properties of this actual world’ and that ‘they present themselves openly where apperception is operating’ I am reporting that literally everything is ‘bright, shining, vivid, intense, sparkling, luminous, lustrous, scintillating and coruscating in all its vitality here in this actual world’ ... thus it is not the imposition of subjective attributes (which phrase may very well equate to what you called ‘internal percepts’ in the previous e-mail) that I am talking about.
Rather it is the absence of such subjectively imposed attributes – due to the absence of identity – which reveals the world as-it-is.
...
RESPONDENT: This is what I meant in my question ‘present themselves AS splendour and brilliance?’
RICHARD: Okay ... incidentally, I do not go about seeing things in terms of their properties, qualities or values (such classifications never occur to me other than when having a discussion such as this) ... I simply delight in the wonder of it all and marvel in the amazing display.
Once experienced apperceptively – as in a pure consciousness experience (PCE) – one will never again settle for second-best.
http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/…/selected…/sc-sensation.htm
RICHARD: Yes ... ‘how amazing’ indeed, eh? I am particularly pleased to see you say that you had a ‘clear and unequivocal PCE’ as, of course, I have no way of ascertaining the intrinsic quality of what any body experiences other than what they describe – and I have no intention of setting myself up to be to arbiter of another’s experience anyway – so I cannot adjudge the exact nature of what you experienced. The rule of thumb is to ask oneself: is this it; is this the ultimate; is this the utter fulfilment and total contentment; is this my destiny; is this how I would want to live for the remainder of my life ... and so on. It is up to each and every person to decide for themselves what it is that they want ... as I oft-times say: it is your life you are living and only you get to reap the rewards and pay the consequences for any action or inaction you may or may not do. [...]
Having said that, and I am not inferring anything either way by what I am writing here, it may or may not be relevant to report that one must be most particular to not confuse an excellence experience with a perfection experience ... and the most outstanding distinction in the excellence experience is the marked absence of what I call the ‘magical’ element. This is where time has no duration as the normal ‘now’ and ‘then’ and space has no distance as the normal ‘here’ and ‘there’ and form has no distinction as the normal ‘was’ and ‘will be’ ... there is only this moment in eternal time at this place in infinite space as this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware (a three hundred and sixty degree awareness, as it were). Everything and everyone is transparently and sparklingly obvious, up-front and out-in-the open ... there is nowhere to hide and no reason to hide as there is no ‘me’ to hide. One is totally exposed and open to the universe: already always just here right now ... actually in time and actually in space as actual form. This apperception (selfless awareness) is an unmediated perspicacity wherein one is this universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being; as such the universe is stunningly aware of its own infinitude.
In a PCE one is fully immersed in the infinitude of this fairy-tale-like actual world with its sensuous quality of magical perfection and purity where everything and everyone has a lustre, a brilliance, a vividness, an intensity and a marvellous, wondrous, scintillating vitality that makes everything alive and sparkling ... even the very earth beneath one’s feet. The rocks, the concrete buildings, a piece of paper ... literally everything is as if it were alive (a rock is not, of course, alive as humans are, or as animals are, or as trees are). This ‘aliveness’ is the very actuality of all existence – the actualness of everything and everyone – for one is not living in an inert universe.
It is one’s destiny to be living the utter peace of the perfection of the purity welling endlessly as the infinitude this eternal, infinite and perpetual universe actually is.
...
http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/…/selected…/sc-sensation.htm
RICHARD: Put simply: as there is no (subjective) experiencer there is no separation ... no ‘inner world’/‘outer world’.
RESPONDENT: If the images (presumably) are identical in quality, do you see them differently (e.g. in terms of clarity)?
RICHARD: Yes ... and just as the moving picture is visually brilliant, vivid, sparkling, so too is the sound track aurally rich, vibrant, resonant.
...
• [Richard]: ‘The whole point of actualism is the direct experience of actuality: as this flesh and blood body only what one is (what not ‘who’) is these eyes seeing, these ears hearing, this tongue tasting, this skin touching and this nose smelling – and no separative identity (no ‘I’/ ‘me’) means no separation – whereas ‘I’/ ‘me’, a psychological/ psychic entity, am inside the body busily creating an inner world and an outer world and looking out through ‘my’ eyes upon ‘my’ outer world as if looking out through a window, listening to ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ tongue, touching ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ skin and smelling ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ nose ... plus adding all kinds of emotional/ psychological baggage to what is otherwise the bare sensory experience of the flesh and blood body’.
...
• [Richard]: ‘I am speaking of the immediate perception, of this body and that body and every body and of the mountains and the streams and of the trees and the flowers and of the clouds in the sky by day and the stars in the firmament by night and so on and so on ad infinitum, without the affective faculty existent operating ... which reveals actuality in all its purity and perfection. This applies not only to ocular perception but also to cutaneous perception, to gustatory perception, to olfactory perception, to aural perception ... and even to proprioceptive perception, for that matter. There is no mystery where there is such direct perception of actuality as described ... all is laid open, as it already always has been open just here right now all along, because nothing is ever hidden. One walks through the world in wide-eyed wonder simply marvelling at being here doing this business called being alive on this verdant and azure paradise called planet earth. This is what innocence looks like’.
As immediate, direct perception (sensuous perception) does not involve either the affective faculty or the cognitive function the thinker (‘I’ as ego) and the feeler (‘me’ as soul) do not get a look-in ... hence I call this direct perception ‘apperception’ (perception unmediated by either ‘self’ or ‘Self’). Thus what I am is this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware (sans ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul) ... which means that the actuality of the physical can indeed be known, each moment again, day after day.
I do not know if I can put it more briefly or succinctly than this.
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
......

 

Breakthroughs to Anatta

Two persons realised anatta recently in AtR group:

 

Jayson MPaul shared:

Hello friends. I have been reading the blog for a few years now. It was suggested to me back in 2017 on the DhO, but I wasn't ready for it. Looking back I was definitely in stage 1 and I can trace my way through the first 4 stages. Something dawned on me 2 days ago and all things became unstuck. It became clear to me that every moment is just the thoughts, scenery, sounds. Nothing has ever been obscured! I was trying to find what I was missing but then it dawned that I was missing the fact that "searching for what was missing" is also just thought, sensation, manifestation. I still very subtly believed I was a non-dual awareness having a non-dual experience. I was trying to expand awareness to include more and more sensations. The size isn't the problem, it is realizing that there isn't anything more than just this and digging up subtler and subtler views that support this reification of awareness as a formless thing or ground of all experience. The last couple days have been effortlessly no-mind because all experiences are and always were no-mind. Finally most of the words on your blog speak to my direct experience. Thank you for the pointers! 

 

Td Unmanifest shared:

 

Soh Wei Yu suggested I post something about my experience after our email conversation.

I emailed to thank him and John Tan for their writings, resources, and pointers that have helped me immensely in my progress.

Many years ago I had a powerful, "accidental" I Am experience that compelled me to search for what it was and how to make it permanent. Over the years I have explored many teachers, practices, systems, and techniques. Some more helpful than others.

I actually encountered AtR several years ago via a DhO post, but honestly aside from some of the I Am posts and discussions, none of it made much sense to me. I now know that's due to the fact I was stuck in the I Am phase, yet I thought I was much further along in my progress.

Earlier this year, I rediscovered AtR, and began to read and study the Journal and Guide, along with the associated posts. It all was much clearer to me this time -- maybe I was more ripe for the teachings now 

Realizing I had been stuck in I Am, I followed the recommendations from the guide. The contemplation of "where awareness ends and manifestation begins" was especially helpful and propelled me into a nondual realization. It was all very clear. The luminosity and clarity, descriptions, and experience, all lined up with what was written. It was extremely helpful to have my insights and experiences line up with writings from someone who had been down the path. The insight/shift from no-mind, to anatta was the most powerful, yet ordinary thing. As I said in my email to Soh Wei Yu:

Though the earlier anatta experience shifted to a "no center, no background" emptiness of no-self, there was still a sense of a doer. This current shift/experience has left the doer and the "agencylessness" seems the default view.

Dogen's Uji, and the insights of being-time have also been very powerful for me, along with Tozen's "place where there is no cold or heat," which was recommended by Soh Wei Yu. It's amazing how the suttas and teachers make so much sense now and help clarify and stabilize realization and insight.

Just writing this short post, it's difficult to describe these insights. It makes me appreciate how well the AtR team and other teachers have been able to describe and present the material in a clear way.

 

...

 

TD Unmanifest:

 

I got stuck in I AM for a long time due to clinging to dissociation and the experience as Soh mentioned above. The focus was almost entirely on the mind. When I shifted to other sense doors (hearing in particular) something "popped" and the nondual experience moved from mind to body to everything (not really the best description, but the only way I can think to explain it). Contemplation on where the nondual Self ended and manifestation begins shifted my experience again, and began the process to a taste of no-mind then to annata. 

 

The issue wasn't the dissociation, it was the clinging to the experience that was taken to be something more transcendental than it was. This stuff is hard to explain, so hope that makes some sense 

 

Labels: AnattaJayson MPaulTd Unmanifest 


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3 Responses
  1. Anonymous Says:

    The path is long, but self-surrender makes it short; the way is difficult, but perfect trust makes it easy.


  2. Soh Says:

    Merry Christmas.

    2009:

    (9:50 PM) AEN: icic..
    but thats a form of practice rite
    like surrendering
    (9:50 PM) Thusness: nope
    (9:51 PM) Thusness: surrendering requires u to have higher power
    (9:51 PM) Thusness: requires to identify a higher subject for u to surrender to
    it is an object of practice
    (9:52 PM) AEN: oic..
    (9:52 PM) Thusness: experience whatever is requires non-dual as pre-requisite
    (9:52 PM) Thusness: there is just this empty luminosity
    it is already whatever is
    anything dual is not it
    (9:53 PM) AEN: icic..
    (9:53 PM) AEN: i remember david carse was saying surrendering is the way to experience non dual
    something like that
    (9:53 PM) Thusness: then it is surrendering
    (9:53 PM) AEN: but he din say to a higher power or anything i tink
    (9:54 PM) Thusness: whatever arises is mind that is why it is direct experience
    (9:54 PM) Thusness: it is the highest form of insight
    (9:54 PM) Thusness: u don't call surrendering self liberation
    don't any mixed up
    (9:56 PM) Thusness: when i experience whatever is, i breathe hard, i breathe soft, i rub my hands and legs
    (9:56 PM) Thusness: what has that got to do with surrendering
    surrender to what?
    i eat, i blink my eyes
    (9:56 PM) Thusness: what has that got to do with surrendering
    don't anyhow say
    (9:57 PM) AEN: oic..
    (9:57 PM) Thusness: totally different
    i walk, i jump
    (9:57 PM) Thusness: all experiences are the ground
    (9:58 PM) Thusness: all vividly present and spontaneous 'there'
    carry water chop wood
    (9:58 PM) Thusness: are all just marvellous activities
    this is experiencing whatever arises
    (9:59 PM) Thusness: nothing to do with surrendering
    (9:59 PM) AEN: icic..
    (9:59 PM) Thusness: swallowing saliva
    (9:59 PM) Thusness: don't talk about spontaneous perfection
    (10:00 PM) Thusness: it is because the mind is already non-dual and deep realisation that all is already the ground based on these 2 insights, all experiences becomes that
    (10:01 PM) Thusness: because one has already penetrated to the deepest most of insight that is why he can in all actions and movements, he is one with Tao.
    (10:01 PM) AEN: oic..
    (10:01 PM) Thusness: not because there is something to surrender to, that is to the liberated still a form of illusion.
    (10:01 PM) Thusness: but as a skilful means of practice.
    (10:03 PM) Thusness: what i told u is to tell u that it is wrong to say that but i don't want u to go tell ppl it is like that
    (10:03 PM) Thusness: this is the problem with sentient being
    (10:03 PM) Thusness: what said and advice is not followed but what told not to say is spoken
    (10:04 PM) Thusness: ended up misleading ppl
    like zen
    (10:04 PM) Thusness: becomes mouth talk and a path of highest profundity becomes mouth talk
    (10:04 PM) AEN: icic..
    (10:04 PM) Thusness: don't do that
    (10:04 PM) AEN: ok
    (10:06 PM) AEN: wat do u tink about this:
    (10:07 PM) AEN: "Finally, ultimately, the surrender and the Understanding are the same, even if they are apparently, in perception or experience, separated chronologically. The very concept of 'the total Understanding' necessarily includes surrendering for it begins with the willingness, "Thy will be done", and ends in seeing that one is not."
    (10:08 PM) AEN: by david carse
    (10:09 PM) Thusness: that is surrendering the self when the self is not thoroughly seen through
    it is a way of practice


  3. Anonymous Says:

    Merry Xmas