Just One Look Forum Archives

I am trying to write this down as quickly as I can so as to not lose the flavor of it. It is nothing new. I have heard (known) this for some time now but never experienced it like I just have now. It started last night and peaked this very early morning as I awoke from a nightmare. Nothing new there, what was different was my reaction to it. Out of desperation I remembered (felt) what it is I am and the panic of the dream and the panic from the previous day vanished. This may not make a lot of sense because I am putting it down on paper before the feeling fades. I am borrowing from John and others who I thing are pretty close to giving us the answer to life. If everything is a noun, our bodies, thoughts, emotions, memories, dreams, etc., then what we really are (the thing that is looking) is a verb. We are that verb. And that verb always feels the same to me. That is to say it does not feel like anything, it has no emotion. It has no location but seems to be everywhere. Now I am guessing but I think this is what gives light to everything else. With out this nothing else would exist. I have had glimpses of this for years now. Yesterday was about the most desperate day I have ever had. I felt like I was going to have to harm myself to stop the pain. In this desperation I tried the looking. For once the verb/noun thing stopped being a concept and became very real. I fell into a very deep restful sleep (drug and alcohol free) for the first time in quite a while. When I woke from the nightmare I immediately saw the dream as a noun and became aware of me the verb. I was compelled to get this down on paper to remind (reinforce) it to myself. I offer this to all of you in it's raw form. Soon it will fade and I will more than likely return to my all too normal miserable state. I can only hope that I can try to feel like a verb again. It is so liberating. I can only hope I am conveying the sense of this to myself and to anyone out there that may read this.

Fred

Dear Fred,

I'm really happy to hear from you again, especially in this euphoric way. Yes, I know what you mean by the verb versus nouns metaphor. And I totally agree that we are "what gives light to everything else" and that all existence is coming out of us. I like to say that we are the IS of everything. Not some concept or idea of IS, but the actual indescribable "is" that is the uneraseable quality of everything. It's even simpler and more immediate than that of course, but what can words do? When I look at me, I see that I am everything and beyond everything and yet I am no 'thing'. Even more intimate than the word "God" is the word "me".

I'm glad that you have seen this. I hope so much that things only improve for you. For me I have found that relentlessly choosing to only think positive thoughts and not negative ones as much as possible is what has worked the best by far for me ever since I started that strategy.

With love and hope for you,

Gerrit

Dear Fred,

Thank you for this sharing. It has the flavour of spontaneity and truth. Thank you too for your generosity in sharing it with us in the hope that it may be of help. In my case I can certainly say that it is a helpful, beautiful exposition of the looking.

Best wishes and be well,

Emma ~

Good Morning Fred,

I just read your dream notes about your noun/verb experience. My eyes were burning with unshed tears as I read your writing. I am so happy for you. What a wonderful experience to prove to you that you are alive and you are so much more than your feelings and misery. I also have been experiencing deep levels of relentless negative chatter in my mind loop. I understand that I am not my thoughts or feelings, however, it can be really difficult to clearly see that and remind myself when I am in a tizzy.

I have had tiny glimpses nothing like you are talking about experiencing. Can I be really bold and ask you a few questions? Did you just take yourself off to bed to stop the misery for awhile? or where you just exhausted and fell asleep? the reason I ask is because sometimes I just tell myself I am going to nap to stop the intrusive and constant mind patterns. Also, the next question is difficult for me to verbalize, but here goes, when you say you felt like or understood that you are no emotion or nothing wheren't you afraid of that feeling? I have had that feeling fleetingly and it scared the shit out of me.

Can you tell me about that? Sorry for the million questions, I am not trying to pry just very curious.

Thank you,

Paige

Dear Gerrit.

Good to hear from you and good to be back. It's still a hard road as this personality fights on to keep control but rather than fight back I allow it it's run and the light (actually more like a knowing) comes back on it's own. It is getting easier to go with the looking. At times it does not seem to be there but I don't fight it and soon my attention is back on it. I've been tested a couple of times the last day and so and I have been surprised that these bad moments pass. The first one occurred when I tried sharing this with a friend who is not at all into this path. Pardon my French but she cut me a new asshole, Basically she called me a loser which left me quite shaken. I got over it. She and I have been sharing a pity party for some time now and I think that her angry reaction was that I was trying to break free of this downward spiral. I can only hope that somewhere deep in her psyche that she realizes I was only trying to give her the only real gift I can offer any human being. If not so be it. I must move on.

The other disturbance (test) came from listing to John's latest pod cast posted yesterday. Give it a listen if you have not already and John I hope you are reading this and maybe comment on my take of a couple of things. John suggested to (Eric?) that maybe he should take a break from looking. This sort of threw me for a loop and it sounded like poor Eric had no place to go. Upon reflecting on this I kind of understand where John was coming from because (excuse me Eric if I am misquoting you) Eric mentioned that his motivation was driven by desperation. While this has definitely been true of me in the past it is not so now. What I feel is more like relief. Whatever is bothering me passes, if not right away fairly soon afterwards. I am spending a lot of time doing it not out of fear but because it seems very interesting. Also (and I am addressing this to John) although I would very much like to see your experiment about getting a tenth of the population to get to look at it's self later this year, is it really that important if that happens or not? Strange new thoughts are occurring to me and one of them is that what we are, what is looking, will go on even if humanity does not survive. Maybe it will find a new vehicle to express itself or maybe it does not need one at all. I think I may be going off the deep end here. What do you think John?

Any thanks again Gerrit for being here on these forums.

with love,

Fred

Thank you Emma. I was surprised when I noticed the time of my posting, some time after 4:30 in the morning. But had I not done it right alway and quickly I would have definitely lost the 'flavor' of it which continues to have staying power and bringing in new thoughts and feelings into my life.

I am glad that is was a help to you.

Fred

Give it time Paige. I have been trying this looking for over two years now. At first I had immediate success with it and was like living in the clouds. Then it faded. I felt I had fooled myself once again. I became quite angry at John and sent him an email claiming that he was selling us cool aid as in Jim Jones. For some reason I kept at it and it was not until just now that I feel I had a break through. No feelings of ecstasy this time but more of a knowing, a relief. Also as John says this is an on going process. I expect that I will have to work at this for the rest of my life and maybe beyond?

As for your questions. Usually when I fall asleep it is out of pure exhaustion and it has to sneak up on me. TV (I am ashamed to say) has become a sleeping pill to me. I try to find some old drab movie (something without commercials so they won't suddenly blare out at me) that will not stimulate me and put the sound so low that I can't really make out what they are saying but I need the distraction. Even then the sleep lasts a very short time and I feel tired most of the day and repeat the cycle.

The sleep I had the other day was of a entirely different nature. The TV was not on. I just drifted off. I slept maybe 6 hours which for me is an eternity. I dreamt (something rare for me). It was a disturbing dream but it just took me a moment to realize it was just a dream and dismissed it because I remembered the feeling of looking the night before immediately. It was awesome.

As for your other question it is kind of eerie that you picked something right out of my brain. Yes I was sort of scared (more sad) that I realized that this looking, knowing whatever it is I am, IS NOT FRED. Fred and all of his thoughts, emotions, memories, mental and physical feelings will not come along with me when the looking moves on. As much as the effects of me feel so real they will not follow me and I suspect I (the looking) will immediately forget that they ever existed. Sad but only to this temporary construct. In the same way that I would feel sad when I gave away a favorite toy when I was a child. it may sound silly but as George Harrison sang all things must pass. At the same time as this body grows old, wrinkly and achy I won't be that sad to see it go. Also the end of emotions and feelings is something that I don't think I will miss.

If this did not exactly answer your questions ask me more. I like your train of though and don't be afraid of the end of things. You might be pleasantly surprised at what remains – you!

P.S.

I get nostalgic when I see your name. I had a friend named Paige who years ago pretty much saved my life and then a few months later she died of cancer. I hope that does not make you feel sad but I felt the urge to share that.

Fred

Gerrit,

For some reason your settings do not allow personal emails. Mine did not either, but I did not realize this and have since updated my preferences. If this is so your choice so be it. But if it is a surprise to you as it was to me update your preferences and I will respond to you. For whatever reason my replies to you have been suppressed. I suspect Twitters has had an hand in this. . Having had cats of my own I know how they the like to control things. Joke! Joke! Please John let us have our say.

Fred

Fred, I spoke with Eric directly about this yesterday at the end of the online intensive. He found that he actually could not stop, and we had a good laugh at that. The podcast of the first meeting of the intensive will be published in a few days, and the others will be published as they get ready. It might take a month or so before the last meeting is online, but you can listen to it then if you remember and are still interested.

As to your questions about the need to save humanity, I will post something in this thread about that next week when I've caught up with the tasks that need to be done at the beginning of the month. It's not a bad question, and might be worthwhile to consider.

Thank you,

John

To all,

In my original post on this subject I said that I was borrowing ideas from John and others. Someone picked up on the verb/noun thing. I don't think John intends his site to become a clearing house for other folks' 'teachings'. So I just want to make it clear that the verb analogy came from someone else. I used it because I felt it went so well with what John's looking means to me. But again that is just my opinion and you know what they say about opinions...

By the way Gerrit I don't even remember posting about the email settings and Switters. I think that was intended for Christopher as I have emailed you in the past. I must have been really out of it that night/morning after I woke up, a little bit too giddy I guess. My apologies to Switters and all.

John good to hear about Eric. I am looking forward to listening to the podcasts of the online intensives.

Fred

I am at that stage right now. I'm trying to be an adult and have a little more patience before launching into a tirade about John being a false messiah who, believing himself to be true, is feeding people well-intended lies that are hard to disprove. I guess it's also anger at myself for believing in something that every sensible person would agree is a too good to be true proposition. What Eric talked about in the Open House Meeting (2012/04/18) seemed like further attestation that nothing is really going on here other than circumstantial experiences. Still, by John's own admission, the pudding cannot really be tested for proof until about 4 years in, so I'll just have to withhold any conclusion for some time. As I said, the only thing that is helping me (which has NOTHING to do with the looking) is positive cognitive thinking, so I endorse that.

Your last sentence is more along the lines of my own view of death. However, I guess I disagree very much with the popular feeling that something will be lost in death. Nothing will be lost. It's not exactly true that "knowing whatever it is I am, IS NOT FRED". Yes, you are prior to these things, but nevertheless Everything is you. All of life is coming out of you. It's not "you going for a ride", you Are the ride. There is nothing apart from You to be lost. The mystery of this divine drama is that somehow we experience it through one of its characters and so feel that we are a separate entity, but we are the whole drama and its source at the same time. We fear to lose the mind & the memories & and meaningful experiences, but all of that meaning is coming out of us as if it were holographically projected, haha. You cannot lose meaning because meaning comes from you, it's already complete inside, whether manifested or not.

Being a former musician, I guess my experience of music is the best analogy for me. Take the example of a musical note (maybe the tonic note). Now, the whole piece of music is filled with varied meanings & experiences & emotions etc., but somehow when I come back to that final tonic note, all of the meaning of the entire piece is somehow encapsulated by this singular expression. It is as if the whole piece had expanded out of this singularity (which itself is infinitely loaded with potential meaning)...like the Big Bang or something. So that's how death is. We return to the tonic note...from whence all of our loves and joys and experiences came in the first place. We don't lose the things we love....we lose our apparent separation from them. And who knows, maybe we're "reincarnated" in some way (as a Martian or a photon or kinetic energy) and the game continues. Either way, as you said, YOU (the brimming note) can never be lost.

Hope that offers something.

Gerrit