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I am suddenly overcome by a relatively urgent question that wants to be solved. please help.

Having looked for many years, I am faced now with an unshakeable feeling that the 'me' I am trying to look at is at the root of all (my?)fear. more fundamental than root. Like it is the life behind all fear. A sense that actually behind all my previously unwelcome and welcome feelings is the 'me'. I cannot seem to be able to separate the feeling of being 'me' and the neurotic 'push away-pull closer' relationship with my thoughts.

The difference to the past (before I started looking) is that now I am not afraid to put my attention on this new (newly discovered?) feeling anymore. To be very specific, I don't seem to be afraid to move my attention to the feeling of being 'me' even if it feels to be at the root of all my fears. That's a bit of a curious thing in itself.

So what now? Any new action or understanding needed, or is this one more of those fleeting things and there is no useful substance to this 'insight'?

It is pretty fascinating actually and makes me kind of become silent and observe myself more.

I'm actually feeling very, very calm, but my base curiosity has been ignited.

I appreciate any inputs on what I could do now, or maybe some understanding that could help...

I am not sure I understand. I try to reformulate what I grasp from your words. So, you mean that the fear of life keeps the me imprisoned because a liberated me leads to the imagined disaster, exposing all the wildness and rawness of life? Which, ironically is exactly what we all want and need and which happens when the fear is gone?

Hello Cytex,

Thanks for responding and also asking for clarification. Means a lot that someone takes the time.

When I composed this question I was gripped by a sudden confusion. I was not sure where the focus of my thinking should be. And this precisely is the problem. I am (we all are) conditioned to look for suitable thoughts to focus our thinking on. So I was trying to define the 'me' and the 'fear' and see if the definitions matched. Anyway, all a product of confusion and simply a way for my mind to pass time. I think it is normal for me to have such confusions in the course of the looking and they get fewer and far in between.

But nevertheless there was an insight in that. That in my mind, the act of selecting between the desirable and undesirable thoughts and the feeling of being 'me' definitely seemed to have a connection.

Nowadays I am more clear so I find this question not very useful.

To answer your question, I feel there is no choice to be made between an imprisoned me and a liberated me. Or that this is a false choice. In my experience, the fear of life drives you reflexively away from yourself. This movement away is usually accomplished with the act of actively looking for and choosing one thought over another (trap one's attention). When the fear is gone, one is at home with oneself which is also life. So the me is the wildness, rawness. Also these are only words we have to describe life. The important thing is not get lost in getting the feeling of liberated or imprisoned or any other adjective that one hears applied to the me. The characteristic of the me is beside the point.

The main point is to move one's attention towards oneself. That act of moving attention constitutes the looking. All else is just everything else.

Also it helped in my case to see that the mind is the instrument that describes everything, and that made it easier to move attention away from really complex, detailed thoughts.