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I am confused about what 'me' really is. I have a lot of memories, feelings, etc about me, but I am confused by your use of the word 'sensation' in context of 'me'.

I have tried to do self-inquiry such as Ramana writes about and the whole concept baffles me. I have been meditating for a number of years and practicing mindfulness for over a year, but this 'looking at yourself' seems very nebulous and ill-defined. Recently, I have been asking myself"¦who is it that looks through these eyes, etc"¦things like that, that have provided some real, what I would call a sort of direct experience of me, or altered consciousness that has been new"¦but as far as a 'sensation of me'?

Could you please elaborate"¦I'm confused by it. Recently, I have intuitively felt I need to step back, in a sense, from my search and am now trusing whatever is emerging, while still continuing my practice of meditation and mindfulness and inquiry as I understand it.

The me that I look at is just a sense of having been me for as long as I remember, but it's not anything that I can hold onto and look at"¦it's lightening fast and fleeting and reveals itself as feeling, emotion, gratitude, love"¦all those qualities (emotional qualities?). As far as fear goes"¦I know I am not living fully because of my fear of life"¦never have lived fully because of my fear of life ever since I "grew up".

I am practicing this inquiry (yours and Ramana's) in spite of my "confusion", and trusting my 'inner guru' to lead me. This is all I CAN do.

I can relate to what you are asking here budhaful as I am not clear either on what me or the sensation of me actually is.

When I consider me or the sensation of me I become too intellectual. I find it impossible to observe a sensation 'me" that can be fully known as a sensation by another part of "myself".

Possibly mind wants security in a defined understanding in order to feel better?

Life is full of mystery. I think mystery(or the unknown and unknowable)is an integral part of who we are as conscious and evolving life.

If this act of self looking is a true step towards sanity and self-reliance confusion could be a good sign that you are onto something worthwhile.

Thanks for the courage to write this post.

Love and Respect,

Ian

So are you able to do both versions of inquiring? If so, then my recommendation is to just keep it experiential. Instead of trying to intellectualize it and trying to find the answer from teachers, just do the looking and try to get the answer from your own experience.

Or do you have confusion about how to feel the sense of me? If so, just keep reading the forums and watching John's videos.

Or does your confusion arise from comparing the methods? If so, don't intellectualize too much and compare them in your experience rather than intellectually.

I didn't really understand what your specific confusion is about. Can you try to describe it again and I may be able to clarify it further?

I think John says the uncertainty is caused by the fear apparatus. I was uncertain about what was me as well. I fretted over it quite a bit, actually. Even now after 4 years I'm not always sure what the sensation of me is.....I do know that I stopped worrying about it somewhere after 2 or 3 years in. Rather than compulsively look several times a day and judge the quality of the attempt, I often just forgot about it as my fear, anxiety and neurosis fell away. Now it's a curiosity when I look or feel me, a quick return home, nothing more. The repeated looking is not the salvation, it seems, but rather the clearing of the structures of fear.

Here's a way you can see what you are;

If you have someone who is willing to participate, ask them to stand directly in front of you, look into each others eyes and then.... Try too see what your friend's eyes are seeing. this is an experiment I saw someone do on YouTube and I thought it's a really cool way too get someone to look at themselves and it's fun as well which knocks out the seriousness of it.

Whether this way works for you or not probably doesn't matter as I am sure you have seen yourself if the intent is there. I also worried for a while whether I had done the looking 'properly' but after a while it was obvious that after so many attempts, there's no way I could have failed.

Jackx,Jackx,Jackx, I say to you that you have always been me. Yes the you that you're are right now has always been me. Me is you without fear. You whoever you are do not need to do or be anything else. Fear is not needed anymore when it is not around.

Yup.....almost there....

I believe the sensation of me that John is asking us to try and recall is this sense of recognition that is always present although subtly. I tried the childhood memory method a good many times without any noticeable success until one day out of the blue I recalled this old gas stove my parents used to have in the kitchen, what i really recalled was the switch or knob that used to turn on the oven, it was made of brass and had these indentations in it from many years of use. I could see it so clearly for an instance like it was in my hand, there was also a recognition that 'I' was the exact same then, some 50 years ago as I am today, a certain nearly undefinable clarity that has never moved.

I've tried explaining what I am looking for to someone the other day, got completely jumbled in language, and gave up. It made me appreciate John and Carla's struggle to find the simplest language to describe something that is super simple but almost impossible to describe intellectually. I agree Niall it does seem to be a sense of recognition of something that has always been there. You just wouldn't look if someone didn't point you in the right direction. I'm almost 5 years in now. In the beginning I looked all the time and worried that it wasn't working or I wasn't doing it right. That distrust has faded. Now I feel like the looking happens spontaneously on its own. I'll be going about my day and usually a mundane memory from the past will appear for a moment then disappear. It seems to happen randomly with no real effort on my part. Sometimes I intentionally look for fun, but the underlying old structure of fear and desperation that drove me in the past has faded.

Just too be indifferent, that being my nature, I'd say that the 'you' or 'me' that we supposedly look at is not always there at all. Only when we put attention there. Too think there is some thing that is constantly there, something eternal, is just more hopeful spiritual speculation. I don't think anything is there when we don't put attention there. Like any part of our body. It's all just thoughts. But the language used too instruct people to see 'themselves' is understandable, so I am not knocking the instruction, I'm just stating a new way of thinking about it, which might be more sane.

Jim glover,

Not that I disagree with you, but I am curious, what makes you posit that the ' you 'or ' me' isn't there when you are not looking? Quite a curious statement. I wonder what you can say to support this.

To think there is anything permanent at all is a hopeful notion. To say that there is something always here, fixed and permanent is speculation. I won't listen to teachers who preach this kind of thing anymore. i find them very boring and repetative. They are just repeating what they've heard and making a nice living from it. The fear for me has gone, and that's all there is to it. I can now get on with my life and enjoy it I hope you do to!

The way I look at it is once you strip away all the ego and learned bias, unexamined and unsupported beliefs .... beneath a lot of what you think of as "me" is the base consciousness that experiences each moment without thinking, before the cognitive part that jumps in with judgment. In essense it is the experiencer in this moment ... all that opiniated, judgmental, overthinking part does is bring suffering. Without thought there is a "me" that just is .... all the learned experience, knowledge etc is the clothing (or baggage) that attaches to the real me. Don't get me wrong ... I fret and react but most of that is due to expectation or wish thinking that seems to separate me from the pure experience of being .... I'm a work in progress but this is how I see it and the reality of being will align with that the more I just "am". All the "things" I've learned over the years isn't me ... deep down there is an entity that experiences life that mustn't be confused with all dust balls gathered over time. Now I'm starting to ramble ...