Just One Look Forum Archives

Dear all, I am very new to this method. I discovered it a week ago, by googling "fear of life", when I was in a crisis. I tried it and felt immediate relief. The feeling of me provided the ground I have been missing, stopping the anxiety, which was sending me down, deeper and deeper. Whenever I repeat the exercise, it helps.

I have been watching the videos from the 2011 retreat. It feels like I finally found the solution, the truth I have relentlessly been seeking all my life. John emphasizes several times that the method is just that, a method, like medicine (John quotes Ramana's image of a stick that gets burned by the fire, step by step) and by itself has no value, nor exposes some desirable state of being or such.

Rather, it would actually be some sort of a trap to fetishize the method. Now, given my impression that I feel immediate relief, did I fall prey of an illusion? Did i fetishize the method?

Today, when I explained the looking to a friend of mine, I spontaneously used a comparision that I find useful. It feels like recognition of somebody I have always known: me. And I did never age, in all these years, I am fresh and present and true. This fills me with joy and confidence.

This image has a lot of power to me.

Please look at my reply to a similar post in the Grassroots forum.

Thank you again Cytex.

John

There is great relief after just one look. You cannot fail to see you. This is simply what happens. Period. Thoughts continue. Are they not part of you.

Hi John

Based on your teachings, I had the impression that the benefits of looking only unfold with time, acting almost silently in the background, because the "psychological apparatus" goes on doing its old job for quite some time.

For me, each looking helps. Whenever neurotic behaviour sets in, or anxiety, successful looking helps, almost immediately, to calm me. It just helps to be reminded of me. (And I do not confuse the looking with some desired state of bliss or whatever.)

Is this observation another old trick of the mind trying to find escape?

Thank you, Bruno

Dear Bruno,

This is really a very good posting, because it suggests something that, strangely, I had not considered before. It is also a good example of what we most value here, which is the intelligent participation of members of the community in the development of our collective understanding of the perplexing matter of the nearly universal human dissatisfaction with life--its cause and its cure.

Thank you,

John

Dear Bruno,

John also read your posting and talked about it during the Open House Meeting on January 15, 2014. He read it right at the beginning of the meeting.

Thank you,

Carla

Dear Carla and John

Many thanks for integrating my input into the evolving method of the looking that you discovered and developed. It feels good to be heard. Actually, I got this understanding from you, especially from Ramana's quote of the stick repeatedly stirring in the fire (acts of looking) till it is burnt (constant awareness of me?). Also, John, you kept saying: look at yourself. Even to people who already did so earlier.

For me, the fear of life was not a mere background feeling, but needed constant efforts to prevent it from overwhelming me. I tried to outrun it and temporally suceeded. But eventually the strategy failed, and I am at the end of the rope, so to speak. Now, all fears grown from the fear of life seem to have materialized.

Interestingly, these fears are not mine alone, but I absorb them from other humans; they seem everywhere. I assume this is an aspect of the compassion you speak about.

The looking sets the reference point to me, instead to the fears and hopes around me that resonate in me. But fears and anxieties are still threatening, overwhelming at times. It is hard to imagine that they will be gone one day. I assume this is indicative of the phase after the honeymoon period.

I hope all this human madness and suffering will stop. It has been enough. Thank you for your work, Bruno