I'm wondering what your take on this is.  I have heard that what we are is life living through us.  Do you think this life or consciousness can have the desire to live through us in a different way, or is it completely neutral?

I have a question that I have been chewing on for a bit.

It goes like this.

Where does the "understanding" often spoken of, happen?

It seems to me that it would have to happen in the "system" also spoken of.

And the skill or ability to observe or witness the thoughts and feelings that come out of the system, would also have to be trained into the system would it not?

Maybe even the realization that there is no self, would be something that would also have to be trained into the system, regardless of where that realization originated.

Then with that realization and those skills or abilities, the system would take that in and use it if it makes sense, therefore changing the system and allowing for more possibilities.

Continued from 8 July 

I've just been listening to your podcast which was responding to a listener's question about the above. If I've got it right, I think your response was along the lines of our actions being beyond conscious control, with our perception of free will etc being an illusion. So how do we avoid slipping into determinism with this outlook? It's an old conundrum I know, but why have a penal system which punishes people for actions over which they had no conscious control? If nobody's responsible for anything, anything goes and that surely can't be right. We can go along with Hamlet and decide that "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so", but I can't accept that someone like Ian Huntley (the Soham murderer) thought that what he was doing was 'good'. If what he did was 'good' then I don't want to live in a 'good' world. To conclude that, in separating the action from the actor and to condemn the former but not the latter, removes any sense of agency from what we think human beings are. And that means we're all automatons. Well, do you think we are?

Do you see any value in things like somatic exercises that calm the nervous system or is that just nother way of avoiding and not feeling ?

The body-mind, the system, the robot, the unit... Wonderful Words 

I've just been listening to your podcast which was responding to a listener's question about the above. If I've got it right, I think your response was along the lines of our actions being beyond conscious control, with our perception of free will etc being an illusion. So how do we avoid slipping into determinism with this outlook? It's an old conundrum I know, but why have a penal system which punishes people for actions over which they had no conscious control? If nobody's responsible for anything, anything goes and that surely can't be right. We can go along with Hamlet and decide that "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so", but I can't accept that someone like Ian Huntley (the Soham murderer) thought that what he was doing was 'good'. If what he did was 'good' then I don't want to live in a 'good' world. To conclude that, in separating the action from the actor and to condemn the former but not the latter, removes any sense of agency from what we think human beings are. And that means we're all automatons. Well, do you think we are?

I’ve been pondering the experience you often described of sitting with a feeling and inquiring into what arises as a healing space of awareness, where a shift happens. 

And while I’m sometimes aware that there is no me to do it or anything, I wonder what actually happens when a shift occurs and how whatever happens takes place? When I think there is a me doer, I wonder how best to inquire into it, to see through it, make it transparent?

This may be the result of way overthinking it, and if so it wouldn’t be the first time.

An example might show my pondering:

I talk on the phone with my darling, beloved sister. She shares with me what’s been happening in her life and I note an edge in her voice when she tells me of something particularly good that has happened to her. I hear this “edge” as bragging, a subtle putdown, and feel annoyed and jealous. I’m aware that I’m feeling this and then add on top of this a level of self-recrimination and guilt, as annoyance and jealousy aren’t “good” emotions. I love my sister and feel I should be happy for her, period.

So I feel all of this and sit with it. I feel diminished and I feel icky. And then I inquire about what’s going on. I see old childhood rivalries and competition for parental love and attention. I see where, sometimes when I talk with her, I am annoying and bragging. I own it.  I allow as we’re both human we’re entitled to express human emotions. I see that our reactions come from our body/mind systems of how to be in the world. I allow as what I heard in her voice was my own projection. I’ve taken an endless deep dive into my psychology. 

This may be well and good, but it feels like drowning in concepts and beliefs. Every “rational” explanation feels like another card in a house of cards that is built on vapor, going nowhere. How is this healing?

I wonder who is doing this diving and feeling and inquiring? Is this the body/mind busy defending its existence? Is this a process, a practice, for 

healing that, like Bryon Katie’s The Work, becomes steps to be followed when a constriction is felt? Or is this inquiry description only of what happens when feelings are felt with inquiry, not a prescription? 

What makes the shift, the flip from personal to impersonal? Sitting with the feelings and inquiring into them can feel like endless, pointless suffering. What is it in feeling the feelings, asking in curiosity about them, that shifts to the allowing of it, the accepting it, the witnessing it? 

I’d love to hear your reflection on these teachings. They assume free will, duality, and mastery are our best intentions. 

'If there is no doer does that mean there is no doing?' Listener question 

If thoughts create our reality what do we do because we do not choose our thoughts and we cannot change our thinking.  What do we do to have a better experience.  When we are in depression our thoughts are constantly awful negative and dark. They are on a loop and you don’t get a break from them. How do we change them.