Just One Look Forum Archives

Hi, this is my first post on the forum and I have been practising looking at myself for a few weeks now, since a friend suggested the practise.

I have read 'Look at yourself' which I really loved and have been listening to a few of the podcasts and watching some of Johns videos on youtube. I have found relief as it was an alternative to non dual teachings which starting to really confuse me and found myself very frustrated.

It was so inspiring to read so many positive reports about the looking but then i came on this forum and discovered a post by someone who had been doing it for four years and had found no relief. So instantly this really worried me as I kinda want to know if i could be wasting my time with this and should go back to non dual awareness teachings and so fourth. I have felt fairly dissatisfied with my life for 10 years now as I struggle with social anxiety and feel very angry and depressed at times. I obviously want these things to go away so thats why i started looking into non duality and now this.

It would be nice to hear from people who have worried about this stuff working or not and maybe get some positive feedback from the inquiry! and is there anyone else who has been doing it four years and years with no results? so to narrow this all down i could of just wrote 'Is it worth doing'? really? is it worth it? i want relief from suffering! i am only 23 years old so i want to start loving my life and i hope this looking is worth it!

Love to all!

George (uk)

Hi George,

It took about three years for me to actually start to feel the results of this. The first was about a year and a half ago when I sensed a subtle feeling of safeness like I had never felt before, but was familiar in a way. Nowadays I can see clearly that there was no way I could have had the subtle yet unimprovable sense of my actual nature when the fear of life was present. I could understand ideas about it, which I tried really hard to do for 25 years, but all those learings and teachings turned out to be useless when it came to trying to end the cause of the problem (they obviously had and may still have other uses).

I was lucky enough to be desperate and feeling suicidal when I met John, so when I heard him mention that "nothing worked" to affect a cure, I threw the baby, that was all my old beliefs, out with the bath water out of spite and poured my effort into doing what he asked. I can say honestly from experience now that John is right when he says that "this is nothing like anything we have ever done." The outcome is also unlike anything I could have ever imagined. All the old teachings make some sense but are like grains of sand compared with being fully immersed in the magic and splendor and wonder of life as it is.

Bits and pieces of the cocoon that protected me from life are still slowly falling away. The recovery process has been slow for me because I had a huge arsenal of weapons tied to an automated philosophical, psychological, spiritual defense system, which takes time to fall apart on it's own. Things felt a little crazy when it did start to come apart, but mostly awkward. Today it's almost like I am learning how to talk all over again, from scratch, naturally and without any effort, four and a half years in.

Stick around and give this a try with all your heart! The only thing you've got to lose is the fear of life! After that, I suspect that life will slowly reveal itself to be intrinsically delicious, as it always has been.

Best

Mike

Hi George,

First I congratulate you on finding your way here at such a young age. From an older perspective, as someone who tried a myriad of different paths before finding John, I can suggest that you may find more philosophically distracting avenues and perhaps more devotionally stimulating roads, but you will not find a straighter way to a more fulfilling and satisfying life than looking at yourself.

If you followed (not just read) John's instructions to Look at Yourself, then you have not wasted your time. From here you can choose to do this or that, and also probably find that you will think to look at yourself from time to time. This process is very uncomplicated and is not dependant on what you think or feel or do after looking, not in the common way of thinking we have to follow some practice to obtain some goal.

I may not be qualified to respond to your question since I knew right away, after sampling so many others, that John was onto something true. I started following John's podcasts almost 5 years ago and I had many doubts about whether I was looking correctly. I am satisfied with the results even though I have had a long recovery period which I am still involved with on some issues. I have full confidence that those issues will resolve successfully as has so many others.

John has suggested, and I concur, that those of us who came on board before he had refined his message seem to have had a longer recovery period. Also those of us who have had more learning and practice in the realm of spirituality seem to take longer. At your age, you have an advantage on both these points.

People starting to look at themselves now also have another advantage. Lately, John has been offering insights to make the recovery period more effective: training of attention, moving of attention, and using skillful ways of dealing with life during the recovery period to reduce suffering. Do what you can to ameliorate your suffering and speed healing during the recovery period, just like you would if you had a physical injury. Stay with us, George, so you will be able to tell others yourself that, Yes. It is worth it. Lera

Dear Mike and Lera,

Thank you very much for your kind responses.

Lera; When you say that John has stated that it has become a faster, more easy process since he has developed the training of attention, do you mean the breath exercies and the sensation of the tongue followed by the looking? I have seen his short youtube video where he goes through this process.

I am wondering, do you think its necessary to go through the breath and such sensation before looking evrytime or can it be just as affective without them? I would guess the answer is yes, we can easily do it without those exercies because I believe I have found that to be the case. I just wonder if everyone who does this goes trhough the mindfulness thing first.....

I find it can be just as easy to sit here right now and do it straight away without the breath exercise although I see how it could help at fisrt

Thanks,

George

Hi,

I would like to also congratulate you for finding your way here. I am in my early thirties and was a follower of Sri Ramana. I took up this effort because it seemed to be what Ramana was saying, but much more clearly. My gestation period (so to speak) was about 8-9 months. After which i noticed a substantial change in terms of things dropping away.I suspect other changes had happened but they hadnt been noticed upto then. It was when something big and obvious happened, that i noticed. So please do stick with this. Life is still peeling away, but its lovely to be here.

Much love.

Hi George

Good to see that you have discovered Just Looking. I liked the honesty of your post and your comment: 'so to narrow this all down i could of just wrote 'Is it worth doing'? really? is it worth it? i want relief from suffering! i am only 23 years old so i want to start loving my life and i hope this looking is worth it!'

In a similar way to you I felt a bit like this, up to about 2008 when I stumbled upon John and Carla's work. In my search to end suffering I did the usual dabbling into self-help methods, Buddhism and so-called non-dualism. Some of it made sense, some of it helped me temporarily. But when I read an online transcript from one of John's meetings and followed his advice to forget all the 'spiritual' stuff I'd done before, or words to that effect, and when I followed his instructions on how to look ay myself I suddenly clicked into place as it were. I've done a recording of how this happened and it is in the reports section with a transcript also so I won't bore you with it in this post!

Anyway, it was the simplest thing ever once I really LOOKED, grabbed hold of the thing by the scruff of its neck and got a taste of the me-ness of, as John says. Just the simple ordinary feeling of being, of never NOT being here. And you know what George, I re-fell in love with life. Not that I hated life, just that I was hacked off with things sometimes, happy with things other at times. Much like everyone else, the usual ups and downs of life, not that they are really ups and downs...those are only names we label experiences with, in place of just immersing in whatever experience is happening. You are never not here. If you stop and look at yourself for just a split second then you'll see that no matter what is the experience right now, it is all it could ever be. It IS. Every possible conceivable experience can be here, they all come and go but you are always here. That is the vital thing, seeing that you, the real You, are never under threat from all that comes and goes.

The crucial thing is to look for yourself, not just follow what someone else reports. You will only make this wonderful discovery if you look at yourself. John's instructions say it very clearly. Please do not assume that you will be in a pink and fluffy state of bliss after you've seen. In a way you will be, but maybe not in the traditional, hackneyed spiritual, new-agey way. Do it and see what has always been here and maybe you too will re-love life!

Hi George,

What I love about looking at yourself is that there are no "have to's." We are all different and we all find our own way in this. I see the tongue example as just a way to realize that you have the power to move your attention when you choose to. Once is usually enough with that.

The breath exercise is like push-ups for strengthening your ability to move your attention with ease when you choose to rather than letting your old habitual mechanisms pull your attention to things that result in suffering. Some people practice the breath exercise "whenever they think of it." Other people like to do the breath exercises as a regular practice for a few minutes each day which is beneficial if you have never trained in moving your attention before. These push-ups will make it easier to remember and re-direct attention to something neutral like the breath when dysfunctional patterns show up during recovery. After you have looked at yourself at least once, moving attention from dysfunctional thoughts and habits causes these defense mechanism to withers away faster so suffering drops away faster.

Looking at yourself is a simple movement of attention and does not require any preparation. As you discovered, you can look at yourself anytime you think of it; regardless of what you do with the breath exercise.

Feel free to continue to ask any questions that come up during your recovery.

Lera