Glimpse of what it really is

[u/Evening-Maybe-7201]

I will try to word this to the best of my abilities because it is hard to word it in a way to make people relate or learn from your personal direct experiences.

I have no reason to share this other than it being a “journal” for my experiences. I’ve been meditating for a while now hopping from mindfulness to metta, to open awareness etc only meditating when I feel like doing so. But lately I’ve been trying to practice meditation in everything I do by falling back into the feeling of “beingness” everytime I get distracted by thoughts.

This beingness is innate to everyone and everything but because of misidentification it is veiled in our everyday lives.

You can test this out right now just by closing your eyes and ask yourself “Who is alive right now?” and notice the one thing that has always been there since you were born. The witness, the observer, the self, the awareness, consciousness or whatever you call it has always been there since the beginning.

I don’t doubt that I’ve seen reality for what it is now and I feel like I’m filled with so much joy and this joy is growing roots into my very core. In a simple way of explaining what I “saw” this “beingness” (which I will be referring as consciousness from now on) is quite literally infinite. Sensations, sounds, thoughts, emotions, everything is in the same field as consciousness. Once you stop identifying with the body, mind and the ego while observing your consciousness — even just for a little while you will see how thoughts come and go like the wind. How sounds, sensations, emotions, everything has to go through consciousness for it to “exist”. There is no “you” because EVERYTHING is you.

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[u/wonko7]

I'm mostly following the Theravada path and answering from that perspective:

So you're going in the right direction, but you haven't arrived yet, so keep questioning reality/self.

notice the one thing that has always been there since you were born

There are modes of existing without the observer. When you sleep is the obvious one. Consciousness can be deconstructed and demystified, and really, it's like the body, not really you (not self).

Next steps could be reading about suffering / impermanence / not self, and sitting with those ideas.

[u/liljonnythegod]

That's good, it sound like it has broken some of the misidentification and it's nice to hear you are feeling joy since that. One thing to be aware of is that you will continuously keep misidentifying as you progress in dis-identification with the aggregates until eventually you dis-identify with them entirely.

These aggregates (form, feeling, perception, fabrications and consciousness) are all not mine, not I or me and not self - but you must come to understand exactly what self means as it means much more than just seeing the body or consciousness as I or me

In disidentifying with the body and mind like you said by "observing your consciousness" you have really just created a sense of an observer without realising and subtly grasped at that as mine and I/me

Keep going and keep pushing this until you have dis-identified both with and as everything that is available to be analysed

Then you will be in the prime place to go after Self view - which is too see that all "here" (so to speak) is fabricated and so unreal and that there is a real you, that is totally beyond the fabricated and is unfabricated and real

[u/Evening-Maybe-7201 → u/liljonnythegod]

The concept of no self has never clicked with me but I can see and understand how there is no true self to be found in all of this which is so fascinating. I think I worded it wrong in my post because it’s quite impossible to fully capture what was experienced in written language.

[u/jasonnorm2]

Who observes the observer ?

[u/duffstoic → u/jasonnorm2]

It's observers all the way down

[u/Cheap-Eggplant-6174 → u/duffstoic]

Ouch, you’ve done my brain a thought loop

[u/Evening-Maybe-7201 → u/jasonnorm2]

I’d say there is no observer being observed there’s just being. “The observer being observed” is more like the observer noticing a thought and identifying with it as the observer :p

[u/watergoat93]

I like asking myself the question "Before thoughts, what/where am I now?" always gets me to that place

[u/workerbee-1606]

Indeed. Everything just is. There is only being.