And then a few seconds, minutes, hours pass and the habit of looking/attending starts up again.
Conversation
I'm not sure what you mean by stopping looking.
Does your attention stop moving to objects?
Or do you stop looking for a self at all?
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When I'm selfing heavily (lost to thoughts, stereotyped behavior, emotion), the world feels very constrained, tight.
When it disappears, it gains a strong sense of dimensionality, that is yet very fluid. Staring at something far away, my world grows. Close to a wall, it shrinks.
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There isn't really any sense of being locked to anything. My perception constantly changes vectors.
Attending to sensations around the eyes, the world gets a weird downward slant (if looking ahead). Attending to back tension, it balloons backwards...
Etc.
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Often this effect ends when something blows my mind a bit and I get preoccupied, lost in something specific.
E.g. there is a kilometers-long main street in this town. I was walking down it and it looked like one of those street-warping scenes in Inception - warping as I looked.
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hrrrm. Yeah, I dunno. I have little to no sense of self most of the time, but it's been very boring and pedestrian. Guess I read too much awakening-porn or something.
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oh, I dunno. Not sure that's the case. I have no idea. You could be further along than I am, or on a different road, or... yeah, who knows.
Probably spending a few weeks on retreat on this stuff would shove you thru, if the door's there, which I'm guessing it is.
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Most prep work I did years ago was in (poorly understood) Zen and Theravada.
Spent some time chatting with Arhats and Roshis now. Feel it's time to apply the training properly.
But part of that is supposed to be "get a clear idea of what you're doing" & "raise energy", so...
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Since I started applying this filter to things, my practice has been very crisp.
Very little confusion, but the occasional "oh, that's not what I need to do?"
Still a clear sense that there's a bit of work to get done here, though. Clearing up delusions, improving abilities...
It feels a bit like, in a martial arts analogy, I know most of the moves & techniques but have little appreciation for when & how to apply them.
In a real fight, I'd get my ass kicked - so a lot of sparring, with supplementary instruction, is advised.
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And yeah, a retreat is in the cards. Hopefully start of next year sometime.
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