Awake: It's Your Turn

This is about waking up in your life exactly as it is.

We're not trying to change anything, we're just trying to be here and accept everything. Then we can make changes if we feel it's appropriate.

In fact, you will face every distorted belief and repressed emotion that is hidden inside you at one point or another. What’s more, the old strategies of avoidance, distraction, and resistance will become less viable options as realization deepens.

Don't remember why I highlighted this. I think I recognized that for myself, as I became better at acceptance it wasn't necessary to avoid or distract or resist. That doesn't quite line up with the way he says it but it's in the same ballpark.

You will never be given more than you can tolerate

I absolutely loath wooshit talk like this. Who's making that choice? Who's overseeing this process and knows what my secret limit is? He makes a lot of nonsense statements like this and I can't tell if it's an artifact of language, or he's sloppy with his wording, or he genuinely believes some silly nonsense like the universe won't give you more than you can take.

You are voluntarily coming into contact with forces that are vastly more powerful than you (or anyone) can begin to imagine.

This sounds like wooshit intended to impress the rubes.

This is your life, so doing what feels most authentic and relevant to you regardless of social expectation is what will be most fulfilling.

More talk in a style I don't care for. Talk about authenticity is very often (and ironically?) fake in that it's there to fool the rubes. There's only you, so whatever you do is authentic. If you cave in to social expectation and say the expected thing then that's authentic. There's no secret you at the center of the tootsie pop waiting for the third lick to set it free. When people talk about their “authentic” self what they usually mean is an inauthentic, imaginary, better, version of themself that they wish they were.

And that wishing is the source of their suffering. This is duhkha, and to fix it you start by accepting your authentically flawed self and then, from acceptance, you can start to make changes.

be meditated!

I like this phrasing, don't meditate, rather be meditated.

Or not, further reflection makes it feel a bit woo. Or not, I can't decide.

Late add: This reminds me of this morning when the universe was drying it's face.

fallacy of false alternatives

The fallacy of false alternatives is binary thinking and non-dualism is the antidote.

embody your deepest truth

I hate talk like this. There's no such thing because someone would have to decide what's true. You can do that _for you_, but that's just _your_ truth. If you act like that makes it special, or “deep”, then you're putting yourself on a pedestal and that's just your ego talking.

You have every right to answer its call.

More woo talk. You don't have any rights and there's nothing to call you. This phrase might be an artifact of language but could, and should, be avoided.

your yearning for truth

Your yearning for truth is ego bullshit.

The universe is huge and terrifying and it doesn't know or care that we exist. That leaves us in a constant state of anxiety because WE'RE NOT IMPORTANT and we desperately want to be, we want someone to care. That's perfectly natural and there's nothing wrong with it. Our yearning for “truth” is just us looking for something stable to hold onto so that we can be a little less afraid. It's our ego pretending we're special, that we know the “truth” when really there's no truth to know. There's only the way things are and our little ape brains couldn't hold it all even if we could somehow sense it. We are limited, and we'll be a lot happier when we learn to be okay with that.

I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I’ve been knocking from the inside! — Rumi

This. There is no truth. There's just what is. The Tao. The Dharma. The way things are. But we'll never know more than a tiny fragment of that because we're apes stuck on a rock circling a single star. And that's okay. It's just fine and even with our limited vantage point and capabilities there are infinite miracles to behold. We just need to stop making up stories and look around.

When I’m finally enlightened, it will be like this and that, you can remind yourself of this simple truth: “It’s already here. Even if it isn’t a moment-to-moment reality for me right now, I trust that it is here, not there, or something that will come later in my life.”

Truth. This story about “when I'm enlightened” is duhkha. It's wishing things were different instead of living in reality.

What we are looking for is what is looking. — St. Francis of Assisi

Thou art god.

Thou art god, I am god. All that groks is god. ― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

What this really comes down to is recognizing and reversing the ways in which we habitually reject life at various levels through perceptual distortion. By experiencing reality through layers of perceptual filters, we subtly, and at times not so subtly, reject our momentary experience. We do this through habituation, and we don’t realize the cost. This rejection is human nature, or at least it is from the collective human delusion of separation.

We tell stories. Those are source and means of our distortion.

The Universe is on your side

🤢🤮 The universe doesn't have a side, it just is.

This is more anthropomorphizing bullshit, pretending that universe has attention, that it's watching and that it cares about you. Your ego needs this to feel important, to be less scared and lonely, to pretend it's safe. Your ego needs it, you don't.

It is more common to use spirituality as an excuse to run away from our responsibilities or to avoid acknowledging truths that we find to be inconvenient or uncomfortable. Everyone has this tendency to some degree, but for some people this is a prominent distortion in their life.

Highlighted without note. I think I liked the idea that our stories create “distortion”. That's a good phrase.

So, consciousness is that mutable, flowing space that is always there when you are awake, that feels like you.

I marked the page here. I believe it was because this page starts the analogy of the reflection in the pond, which I liked.

This doesn’t mean there will be no thoughts. What it means is that your identity isn’t threatened and fractured by fluctuating and inconsistent beliefs about yourself and the world on an ongoing basis.

Highlighted without note. I assume because it's so very true and accurate.

If you do this in the right way and with some persistence, something might happen—something surprising, something life-altering, something radical. What can happen is that all of a sudden that corridor, with all of its facts and experiences, can suddenly be seen to be what it is: merely a collection of thoughts. When this happens, there is far less interest in these thoughts. When that occurs, the entire timeline and identity tied into it is suddenly seen to be quite illusory. It’s as if a hole has been blown in the side of that timeline, and you are able to stick your head out the side and see what’s really going on. What’s “out there” is wholly indescribable, but let me just say that it’s unimaginably vast and radically intimate.

Highlighted without note.

It’s quite clear that there’s been a fundamental shift into a way of being that is not subject to time in the way we think about and experience it. That being the case, coming and going doesn’t even apply.

Highlighted without note.

Not subject to time… because we know there's only now so we're not concerned with time?

Peace is not the absence of anger, sadness, or discord. It is full acceptance of these and all other experiences with no resistance whatsoever.

Highlighted without note. I assume because it's an excellent definition.

resistance to these emotions and experiences

Highlighted without note. I assume to emphasize the truth in the statement.

birthright

Suspect. Sounds like the universe owes us something. It does not. We are privileged to exist as part of it, that's enough.

Life is simply what it is, and it makes no excuses for that. It is not embarrassed about any part of itself. Life never holds back. Life doesn’t second-guess itself or think that part of itself should not be there. Only the divided human mind can do that.

Highlighted without note. Truth. Life tells no stories, it just is. Humans make up stories and then decide to be unhappy because the story doesn't match reality. That's on us.

be fully authentic

Drop all your stories.

I don't like the word authentic because it implies there's a correct way to be when there really isn't. Just be. Don't let yourself make up stories and then act from the stories. That's false, fake, inauthentic. Just be. Look at the situation with no stories and do the thing you /have/ to do.

the deepest peace that is what we all really want

…hmmm. We want security. We want to feel safe. Does peace cover that? Maybe it does.

Our little monkey brains are in a near constant state of terror and anxiety. Peace is acceptance. Peace accepts that the universe doesn't know or care that we exist. Peace accepts that our life as the exact same value as the life of that fly we killed because it was annoying. That we are no more important than fly and can be snuffed just as easily something larger finds us annoying. Peace accepts that we will die soon. Peace accepts that everyone and everything we love will change and be lost. Peace gives a serene little smile and says that's all fine because we had a chance to appreciate all the miracles around us.

not allowing

not allowing …yourself to feel something “negative”. Just be.

Awakening is not a new way of looking at life.

I kind of disagree. It's looking at life without the stories. Just life.

there are no actual boundaries anywhere. There are only apparent boundaries.

Highlighted without note. I assume because it sounds like wooshit.

PS I just coined the term wooshit. It's bullshit that uses woo to explain things. It's things like pretending that the universe has a plan for you when you know that it doesn't know or care that you exist and that you're just soothing your terrified ego.

birthright

that word again

unconditional love

puke now or later?

natural reality (how reality is experienced after liberation)

Reminded me of Steve Hagen, not sure why.

This knowing, which is not apart from the knower or the known, excludes nothing and has no boundaries.

Feels like a Steve Hagen paragraph.

Zen is life

Highlighted without note.

…life, just as it is, with no stories.

If it had a voice, it would say, “Here… Here… Here,” and “Now… Now… Now.”

Highlighted without note.

previous experience of being in an enclosed identity somewhere on a timeline

Highlighted without note.

I had no words for it because I couldn’t put my finger on what specifically had changed

Dropped stories.

I suspect that what changes is that we just experience life without wrapping it in stories.

imprisoning paradigm that some things are good, and some things are bad. That paradigm is rooted in the delusion of separation

Inspect this…

Good and bad are stories, not sure what that has to do with separation. I'm kind of inclined to think that just as your brain creates the illusion of separation, it creates the illusion of non-separation after enlightenment. Why would you automatically assume that your post-enlightenment world is any more real than the pre-enlightenment world? You experience both of them in the same consciousness and through the same sensory organs (including the brain which we know makes up a lot of shit). I get the it “feels” more “authentic” and “genuine” but those feeling arise in the same space that the old, false, feelings did. Why think one is more real than the other? More useful perhaps, but is it more real? I'd contend that reality doesn't matter so long as it's more useful.

My heart opened, and I stopped caring

Highlighted without note. Sounds right.

without having to think or worry about what did or didn’t get done.

I will do what I can and I will not do what I can't. And that's fine.

Acceptance.

natural and spontaneous perfection

puke

It's not “perfect”. Perfection implies a story about a right and wrong for a thing to be. This is nonsense. Lose the story and things are the way they are.

Perfection is a judgement.

Ultimately, we realize that suffering ends when we stop trying to end suffering.

Highlighted without note. I assume because it's true.

This is about waking up in your life exactly as it is.

We're not trying to change anything, we're just trying to be here and accept everything. Then we can make changes if we feel it's appropriate.

In fact, you will face every distorted belief and repressed emotion that is hidden inside you at one point or another. What’s more, the old strategies of avoidance, distraction, and resistance will become less viable options as realization deepens.

Don't remember why I highlighted this. I think I recognized that for myself, as I became better at acceptance it wasn't necessary to avoid or distract or resist. That doesn't quite line up with the way he says it but it's in the same ballpark.

You will never be given more than you can tolerate

I absolutely loath wooshit talk like this. Who's making that choice? Who's overseeing this process and knows what my secret limit is? He makes a lot of nonsense statements like this and I can't tell if it's an artifact of language, or he's sloppy with his wording, or he genuinely believes some silly nonsense like the universe won't give you more than you can take.

You are voluntarily coming into contact with forces that are vastly more powerful than you (or anyone) can begin to imagine.

This sounds like wooshit intended to impress the rubes.

This is your life, so doing what feels most authentic and relevant to you regardless of social expectation is what will be most fulfilling.

More talk in a style I don't care for. Talk about authenticity is very often (and ironically?) fake in that it's there to fool the rubes. There's only you, so whatever you do is authentic. If you cave in to social expectation and say the expected thing then that's authentic. There's no secret you at the center of the tootsie pop waiting for the third lick to set it free. When people talk about their “authentic” self what they usually mean is an inauthentic, imaginary, better, version of themself that they wish they were.

And that wishing is the source of their suffering. This is duhkha, and to fix it you start by accepting your authentically flawed self and then, from acceptance, you can start to make changes.

the movie Revolver

Highlighted so I'd remember to check out the movie. The internet says it's pretty shit but these are decent quotes.

free of suffering

…but not free of pain

Something discrete and short-lived, such that we feel we are always at risk and need to constantly protect ourselves.

Highlighted without note.

This is our lived experience courtesy of a monkey brain that's smart enough to understand the nature of life and dumb enough to pretend it's not so.

we feel compelled to defend its integrity

, this is me always explaining to myself why I'm doing things.

deeper selves

👅

Might be unintentional but many people will read woo into this statement and that makes it wooshit.

By adulthood

START_HERE I flagged the page and a couple more.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

FINISH_HERE End of the flagged pages.

Quite simply, we’re wired for it. The complexity of the human nervous system is such that rudimentary thoughts begin to form at a young age and develop in complexity as we mature. By young adulthood, we have built a complex thought-based identity in which we have taken up residence.

No… but yes. This is corretish but if you didn't have languarge would you still have thoughts? You'd have something but it wouldn't be the stories that we use to create.

Expanding: So what about a wolf boy, raised by animals and never learned to speak. I don't believe he's enlightened. He's just an animal. He's neither concious nor unconscious, but is that “better” than being a sleep walker? No, it just is.

Language gives us stories which let us dream amazing dreams. But those same stories can, and almost always do, trap us. Maybe we're like a wolf with a leg caught in a trap, but this wolf is able to live a full life and do all the wolfy things, but it's leg hurts. Not a good analogy but sort of and I'm not going to take time to make it better.

When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of Hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them. They show us the state of our decay.
— Brian Aldiss

It knows

I don't think it knows anything. It just makes suggestions and we run with them.

knows better

No it doesn't, it's not a person. It's an automatic process.

Still another assumption is that the realization of presence will be “not now.”

What? This feels mangled to me. If not now when are you going realize presence? It's always now so it can't be “not now”.

Can you walk into that memory?

Not physically, but your brain makes those stories feel pretty damned real. And why not, it's making up large chunks of reality anyway.

magician of the mind

Anthro. It's not a person in your head, stop talking about it as if it makes decisions to decieve you. It's just doing what it does and it probably does it because in some way it's been useful for human survival.

illusion of time

I think he means the idea of the past and present. That's not illusion, it's more like foreign lands that we don't have direct access to.

The past is a now that already happened and the future is a story about a now that might happen. We can't go to either of them so effectively they don't exist, except that they did or will. But the future that becomes now won't have anything to do with our story, although it might be influenced by our actions which might be influenced by the story.

any situation where our competency has been called into question

Fear, insecurity.

Highlighted because my recent thinking is that almost all human actions originate from fear.

the mind has to invoke time

The mind isn't an autonomous individual trying to fuck with you. It's you, trying to avoid the terror of existence by lying to yourself.

illusion of control

Truth.

The world is terrifying in part because we have no control and precious little influence. We make it less terrifying by pretending we have control over things.

Do you see how the magician of the mind has plucked you out of the peace and connection with your environment (that is always available in the present) and shot you experientially into the past and then experientially into the future?

Responsibility dodge. There's no magician, you did it to yourself.

You're the magician and you do the trick so neatly that you fool yourself.

led by this magician

THERE IS NO MAGICIAN. It's YOU, all the way down.

A thought has two jobs: to get your attention, then to redirect your attention to the next thought.

A thought has no jobs. It's just a thing that happens and WE run with it, mostly out of ignorance and habit.

Understanding and knowing how these mechanisms function is not the same as disentangling our identity from them.

TRUTH

Just because you know something doesn't mean you can do anything about it. Sometimes the thing is an elephant and all you can do it ride along and hope for the best… and continue to train the thing so that maybe next time…

unsettling, disturbing, and occasionally terrifying thoughts. Here are some examples:

NO. The real fear is the truth. We are meaningless and inconsequential. Nothing we do matters. (It matters to this one!) We will die and be forgotten and it will not matter that we lived.

This is the great terror that drives humanity. We know this is true and we flee in terror before it. But “fear is the mindkiller”, and we should turn and face our fear to find what remains.

The first is: “I am separate from everything and everyone else.

But this is our experience.

Even if it's a false experience brought on by our stories it's still a real experience.

The second view is: “There is a big problem to solve

Sort of, more accurate would be: There is something that has to happen for me to be happy.

It is our relationship with thoughts that is the core issue.

TRUTH

were there a lot of thoughts or few thoughts?

Objection, leading question.

We know what the answer is supposed to be, but you just said the problem isn't the thoughts, it's our relationship with the thoughts. (I know you said it because I highlighted it as TRUTH.)

For comparison, you can listen to the sounds in your environment and look at the colors and forms in your surroundings. In this way, you can compare the “flavor” of actual sensory experience with that of reflected (thought-based) sensory experience.

Highlighted without note.

“Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.”

I don't think morality has anything to do with happiness. Morality is about how we interact with the world.

Also, I'm not very impressed with Kant.

made up of auditory and visual thought-stuff

…It's made up of symbols.

The A/V stuff is all symbols.

Whoever built this prison

Anthro again, no one built the prison. There is no intent behind it.

the more identified we get with the thought stream

Highlighted without note.

Can you write it down in words? If you can, then it’s a thought.

Useful.

Universe simply wants to be seen as what it is

Anthro. It just is. It doesn't want anything.

When a thought is recognized as what it is, we are honoring its nature, and thus its presence becomes a gateway to our immediate and direct experience.

Puke now or later? Why not both?

We are powerfully imprisoned in these Dark Ages simply by the terms in which we have been conditioned to think.
— Buckminster Fuller

Good quote, I didn't highlight while reading though.

Everything just wants to be experienced as what it is.

No, and all this anthro is wrong and a very bad habit. It's just another story that traps us. The universe doesn't want anything. It just IS. It doesn't do anything, and yet “nothing is left undone”. There's no intent behind it.

“Nothing is left undone” is the Tao Te Ching.

It’s more like a relaxed but alert interest

Highlighted without note.

Curiousity? Ooh, what's this? How interesting…

Sure, it was a silly thing to do, and I might not have done it sober, nor will I likely repeat it, but it gave people a laugh (including me) so what’s the big deal?

This is just countering a story with another story. Drop all the stories.

Seriously, when you see the story that makes you uncomfortable see that it's a story and, exactly like the thoughts that pop up during meditation, let it go. “Hi story, welcome to the party, there's some chips and drinks in the kitchen, you have a good time.” Don't go with it though, just say “hi” and then let it be.

“Welcome to the party” is Jeff something, he's a friend of Dan Harris.

begin by asking

“Don't ask anything, just relax and let it be. This undermines both stories by not engaging them.

“Both” is the original story and the counter story that Angelo's recommending. No stories.

that it is perfectly welcome

Welcome to the party!

This is a term Jeff Warren uses and that I learned from Dan Harris.

someone might believe they have a high self-esteem and act outwardly confident based on that superficial belief

Rump

…and many other Republicans. Not that it's only them, just they're currently a great example. They're all terrified and pretending they're not, mostly to fool themselves but if they can fool others that makes it easier to believe the lie.

A belief will always carry with it a certain amount of baggage. This baggage comes in the form of assumptions we may not realize we’re making when we hold the belief.

Highlighted without note. Probably because it's true.

A day can be ruined
Is a day such a thing that can actually be ruined? Can you find the object called “day” to assess it’s ruined-ness in the way you can pick up a piece of moldy fruit and assess that it’s past its ripe period?

Highlighted for truth.

The quality of my interactions with others dictates how I feel throughout the day

Highlighted for truth.

It’s important to reflect on the conversation I had this morning (or any previous moment)

Is it? What would happen if you simply let go of that thought/memory/conversation? What would happen if you let go of the past altogether?

Highlighted for truth.

Letting go of the past doesn't mean ignoring it. It means knowing that it's not the present.

A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.
— Albert Einstein

I love Al, that guy was a genius.

We never actually chose to believe most of what we believe.

Highlighted for truth.

Although we never specifically chose to adopt most of the beliefs that define our experience, we have been actively adopting and incorporating beliefs into our views of ourselves and the world.

Truth, and we often mistake the belief for our self. “I'm a Christian.” “I'm a Democrat.” “America is the greatest country in the world” and it just a coincidence that the folks saying this are mostly Americans basking in the reflected greatness. Same thing for “the Green Bay Packers are the best”. They never add “and I'm a fan so that makes me the best too”.

This sentinel belief I’m referring to is our fundamental stance regarding beliefs themselves. That means it is a belief about the value of recognizing, examining, and questioning our own beliefs.

Highlighted without note.

This is very true and what he never calls it is open mindedness.

Empowering

This is open mindedness. If you're open minded you're willing to question things, even beliefs you hold dear. You know that YOU and your beliefs are separate things so a challenge to your beliefs is an opportunity for growth.

Disempowering

Closed mindedness. If you're closed minded you mistake your beliefs for YOU so a challenge to your beliefs is a challenge to YOU.

I am not going to question your opinion. I am not going to meddle with your beliefs. I am not going to dictate to you mine. All that I say is, examine; enquire. Look into the nature of things. Search out the ground of your opinions, the for and the against. Know why you believe, understand what you believe.

— Francis Wright

Good quote

When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities.
— David Hume

truth.

Belief Is Tied to Doubt

…and doubt is tied to fear. Fear that we might be wrong. And if we're wrong we'll lose face. If we lose face we'll get kicked out of the tribe and have to survive outside the safety of the cave, alone.

Bonus: Fear that if we're wrong about that belief then we might be wrong about others and then who are we?

we wouldn’t perpetrate maladaptive behaviors

Skeptical. I've watched myself eat the 8pm chips too many nights even though I knew I'd be unhappy when I weighed in. Just because you know a thing doesn't mean you can act on it.

But knowing does make it easier to act, more likely.

You will be taken care of.

Antho wooshit. There is no one to take care of you.

You have a strong sense of ambivalence about certain situations, or in general.

Why would this be a problem? Wouldn't ambivalence just indicate a lack of strong preference? Is he saying that enlightened people always have strong opinions? Seems like they would be more ambivalent but they could see through the stories that support strong opinions.

I hated this chapter. I don't think emotions are either important or unimportant. They're brain noise, just like thoughts. Sometimes they're useful, often they're the product of a system that evolved long ago and that doesn't understand the modern world. It's doing its best to help but a lot of the time it leads us astray because it's assumptions are based on life in a small group that lives in a cave.

Much like thoughts we need to learn that our emotions are not us.

An Emotion Is Never Wrong

Truth.

an emotion doesn’t have a truth value

Truth.

that it has a right to be

Untruth. It has no rights, it just is.

What you do know is that the emotion is valid and has a right to be a part of your experience.

Wooshit. It's not valid and it has no rights. It just is.

The correct question is, is the emotion useful or not useful?

PS. Just because it's not useful doesn't mean you push it away. It's trying to help you, it's just a bit mixed up about how to do that. (Anthro!)

When we trust the emotion of anger, we know intuitively how to structure our boundaries

He's saying anger is harmless and then explain how we can avoid it. Why do we need to avoid it if it's harmless.

When we understand this, we can see that there is nothing negative about the emotion of anger at all. If anything could be called negative, it would be our misunderstanding of the emotion and the disallowance and denial of its intelligence.

Wooshit. Could be AOL but then it would sloppy writing. Your emotions are not “right” or “valid” or “wrong” or “invalid”. He was correct earlier when he said they have no truth value and then he proceeds to say repeatedly that they're “valid” and have “intelligence”.

They're only valid in that they exist. They're only intelligent in that they exist for a reason, but, that reason is often total and utter bullshit and even when it's a good reason the emotion is often not useful.

IMO, emotions are brain noise just like thoughts. Emotions are primitive parts of the brain trying to nudge in some “useful” direction, but they're idea of useful is based on a small social group that lives in a cave and where getting kicked out of the social group is on very slightly better than a death sentence. You're emotions don't understand social media. They don't understand that they're watching a movie. They don't understand much of anything. They assume that every social interaction involves a small group that could decide to murder you if you don't treat the tree spirit appropriately.

“I always thought it was a story about something, about me, but now I see it’s just this, this purity. Water comes from the eyes. It’s so light! There’s nothing here, and it’s perfectly expressing itself as sadness.”

. Wooshit. Puke.

Why Do We Repress Emotions?

There is no why. This is a wholly unconscious mechanism. If we knew what we were doing and knew the cost, we wouldn’t do it.

Or… they're unpleasant and we don't like unpleasant things and we avoid them. Which is probably why they exist. We do a thing, feel an unpleasant sensation and so don't do the thing again.

Also, there are LOTS of examples of people doing things where they know the cost and do it anyway. I haven't stopped eating cookies even though I hate being fat.

Emotions are never a problem. Even when they feel like they are a problem, they are not a problem. Even when it feels like anger is raging on inside of you and you feel like it might burn you up; even when it feels like you are going to drown in an ocean of sadness; even when it feels like the shame and guilt are endless, the emotions are not a problem.

This is correct but he doesn't give you all the info. The emotions are not the problem, the story is the problem. We feel anger and make up a story about how righteous our anger is and how we're justified in smiting the “source” of our anger.

But that's just a story and we don't really know what the source of our emotions is. They're just things that happen in our head and we should treat them as if someone tapped us on the shoulder and said “pay attention”. But that's all we need to do with anger or any emotion, is just pay attention. Don't make up a story about it, just pay attention to the feeling and the surrounding events, but no story.

It’s the resistance to the emotions that is the problem. Well, even the resistance isn’t a problem in the grand scheme of things, but it is the resistance that causes the emotional experience to seem like such a struggle at times. Resistance is what causes us to mistrust emotions. It is what causes us to act out in unconscious ways and perpetuate violence.

I really feel like he doesn't understand emotions at all. We mistrust emotions when they feel unpleasant, and smart little apes that we are, we avoid unpleasant things.

Angelo's bought into the lefty stories about how important emotions are and on this the lefties are badly wrong. Emotions are speechless bits of your brain trying to help you, except that they don't understand the world we live in. So they're doing the best to help but it's like they only know how to play checkers and we're playing chess, they're not gonna be able to help much and they're going to mislead us a lot.

By pure I mean physiologically pure, undistorted by thought and interpretation. I could also call these “simple” emotions or “basic” emotions. They are:

Happiness/Joy
Fear
Sadness
Anger
Surprise
Disgust

I'm not sure there's any such thing as an unemotion that's undistorted by thought but it's an interesting idea so let's examine it.

Happiness/joy - Maybe. You will almost always immediately start telling yourself a story about how wonderful this is but the initial emotion just comes from things being right. Happiness is almost the abscensce of fear.

Fear - This is a good candidate, it's our most common emotion, but it's always trying to tell you something. It's trying to keep you safe. If the immediate cause isn't obvious you'll immediately start making up a story about why you're afraid.

Sadness - I'm inclined to think that sadness is a derivative of fear. Isn't sadness based in story? Someone dies and we're sad because they're not here any more, but isn't the possibility of them still being here a story? I think sadness takes more examination than I can do in a footnote.

Anger - Anger is a derivative of fear. We're only angry because we threatened in some way. No threat, no anger. The threat doesn't have to be directly to us, it can be to anything we identify with. Our children, someone elses chrildren (because they represent our children), an idea that we hold dearly. Anger comes from fear. No fear, no anger.

Surprise - This isn't an emotion. It's either a momentary reaction to something or it's cognitive dissodance because something didn't match whatever model your brain made up.

Disgust - Isn't disgust is a derivative of fear. It's fear of disease, infection, contamination, etc? It just manifests a bit differently but it's still just primitive brain telling you to stay away from things that can make you sick.

obvious that we’d been running from and resisting that which we most desire—wholeness

No, what we most desire is safety, security. The absense of fear. We're monkeys who understand very well how random and dangerous life is and we are consumed with fear and constantly lying to ourselves in order to _feel_ safer because we'd rather have the illusion of fear than deal with reality.

Wholeness is an idea that comes from other ideas.

deepest truth

Puke. He's got some bad ideas about emotion and it's brought in a lot of wooshit.

Situational fear is the type of fear that causes a fight or flight response when facing an immediate physical threat. This type of fear is necessary and adaptive. Psychological fear, on the other hand, is what we will be addressing in this section.

Psychological fear is also necessary and adaptive but I don't think he gets that. It was much more necessary and adaptive when we lived in caves with small bands that could kick you out if you weren't careful.

All of our defense mechanisms equate to various levels of protection to assure we never come face to face with this primordial truth.

This bit is confusing and I don't want to highlight three paragraphs. Is the primordial truth helplessness? That would fit with my view. In my original Kobo note I wrote:

He doesn't say what primordial truth. It's death. We know we die.

I believe that the thing we spend our whole life running from is… helplessness. I wouldn't have used that word a few minutes ago but it fits very nicely. We know we will die and we are helpless to do anything about it. We know everything we love will die (change) and we are helpless to do anything about it. We know we have almost no control over anything and we are helpless to do anything about it.

Rereading the next couple of paragraphs and I see I missed it the first time through. Yes, helplessness wraps in one word the sentences I used to need to explain. Nice find, Angelo.

inquiry, acceptance, and letting go

the chapter “Eight Contemporary Enlightenment Experiences by Japanese and Westerners.” The book was The Three Pillars of Zen by Roshi Phillip Kapleau

Highlighted so I could go find the book.

the first twenty-four years of life

, he was just a baby. It was about 53 for me. It's frustrating thinking that I'm going to find enlightenment right before I die. 😉

practice

I wrote “presence”, and I'm waffling about whether that's on target.

suffering is the match that lights the fire of awakening

I wrote: Don't think it has to be. I'm pretty happy, but I'm allso very curious… and there's project Better Dave.

But.. when I wrote this I was obviously looking at now and not the 50+ years of duhkha that spurred my eventual discovery of meditation and then Buddhist philosophy and philosophy in general.

My life wasn't horrible, but there was a lot of suffering, even if most of it was self-inflicted.

a little smile

Highlighted because I am a huge proponent of the little smile.

We often circumvent natural curiosity by moving our attention to a familiar but artificial mental construct when we find ourselves in the unknown. We do this to feel some sense of certainty. This means that when faced with the unknown, we often cling to old, habituated patterns of thinking to help us avoid admitting to ourselves that we really don’t know.

H w/o c.

One definition of empirical is, “verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or logic.” When conducting self-inquiry, it’s best to forego comparing your experience to any idealized experience or expectation. We’re here to discover. So any description we’ve read or heard about what is supposed to happen when we self-inquire is useless. We’re only interested in what we directly discover.

When we free ourselves from the bondage of the past

I think it was beside the point but I wrote: The past doesn't bind us, we bind ourselves.

I think that's a valid observation but it's nitpicking his point that we shouldn't be caught up in the past.

I also kind of hate the buzzwords in the second half of the sentence.

inner movie screen

Highlighted because of Mooji.

whatever images may come in the mind are just images on the screen of consciousness they do not affect you be like the screen on which images are projected if there is a huge fire on the screen, the screen is not burnt by it if there is a waterfall the screen will not be wet – Transcript excerpt from Mooji ♥ Nothing Here But You ◦ Guided Meditation
(quoted part is around 5:12)

You can consider the thought to be like a pad of paper with the message “I’m confused” written on it.

This is brilliant and should have been strewn through the entire book, especially that shit chapter on emotions.

Your thoughts and emotions should be viewed as if someone handed you a message with the thought or emotion on it. It happened so fast you didn't even see the person, maybe you just put your hand in your pocket and found a scrap of paper. Either way you wouldn't take the thought to be “you”, it's something that just appeared, it's not “you” or “yours” and you can take it's advice or not. The most important is probably that you pay attention. To what? Yes, exactly!

a looking that just keeps on going with no landing on anything solid or specific

This is the clue Sam Harris never gives us.

I'm blocked here by the idea that the camera can't take a picture of itself without a mirror. And now I'm reminded of the places where Angelo used the mirror analogy, and Sam used it the other day, and Mooji uses it in the same meditation where he mentions the movie screen.

The key is thoughtless looking-seeing-being. Neither rejecting thoughts nor getting entangled in their content. A pure movement of innocent curiosity. It might feel dynamic or it might feel quite still. Either is fine.

This is where I was this morning.

Part of it was noticing all the times when my body does things without me telling it to. Like typing now. I want to type a word and it happens. I don't tell it which muscle or for how long, I just intend to type. (Re-typing this I realized that my body knows how to spell.)

I brushed my teeth and as I my body was going to dry my face I noticed, and for a moment the universe was drying it's face and I was along for the ride.

Concluding needs context

H w/o c.

I think this is part of my issue and it's a great illustration of why you need more than one teacher. An in-person teacher might be able to read you and adapt, but a remote teacher, studied by book or video or podcast, can't adapt to you so you need more than one so that when one doesn't phrase it in a way that lands with you another will.

Angelo's talk about the “sense of me” connected. I'm intellectually hooked to the idea that there is no “me” in the conventional view. I need to move past that to the “sense of me” in my head, and coincidentally Sam mentioned it one of the daily meditations.

You can’t just make it disappear by adopting a belief that it doesn’t exist.

This is sort of me. As mentioned, I'm intellectually down with the idea of no-self, but I haven't had the experience of no-self. No, I think I have but it didn't register that way at the time.

here is an assumed, a felt “me,” that seems to be aware of that thought the moment it arises

H w/o c.

There will be effortless, brilliant clarity

Be careful that you don't want this.