Is There a Body? 

What about how it feels to have a body? The subtle pressure on legs, glutes and back from the chair. The feelings of my feet sandwiched in my shoes, the slight afterglow of recently used muscles, tension in my neck and shoulders. How should one orient to such stimulus in an exercise like this?

Standing on a chair at age 5, looking at the face in the medicine cabinet mirror, an indelible question arose, "Who or what is looking through these eyes?" The answer came as an unforgettable feeling. I called it my Real, my Home. As cultural and traumatic conditioning thickened, I desperately wanted to escape and find my Real, my Home, my Feeling beyond description...out there somewhere. My greatest grief has been losing my carefully created fantasy selves, relationships, and promised spiritual "Pure Lands" in order to be Home again and to numb excruciating existential pain....to keep busy and distracted from surrendering control...to feed my addiction to playing characters in boring dramas...to shore up an inevitably fading dream. Is there a body??? Do I exist? The Feeling Knows and laughs. Thank you, Angelo and sangha for seeing through the masquerade. (Claire)

I don''t feel nothing but when I was a little kid I imagened there was nothing, no world, no color, no seeeing, no parents, no air, the color black wasn't even there. Totally nothing even I doesn't exist. Then there was an intense fear comming up a very deep fear. At that age I couldn't handle it. I don't know what was happening. 30 years later I came in to contact with non-duality I can now see why. Thanks Angelo I think i need to make the jump

This is exactly what I didn’t want to see, what was avoided. I’ve heard a lot of folks say that no part of ‘you’ can want this, and that feels very true. Just dissolution of what was never there. Nature unfolding

This is a tough one for me to 'get' -- this body-less-ness. As I stare at your face, I see and feel my glasses on my face. Because I am 'blessed' 😂 with a spinal cord injury, I feel bodily pain just sitting here. I'm elderly and think I should surrender to NEVER getting it (awakening). But, I won't give up 😵‍💫 Love your videos, Angelo. Thank you. 💙

I feel like writing to this. I feel I may be fooling myself, or otherwise that some subtle sense of fixation might be pointed towards through reflective interaction. Is there a body? Am I a body? If I access thought I can vaguely remember -- a memory is a thought too -- a moment of recognition looking in the mirror as a child. I don't feel that way anymore. I look in the mirror and I see Radiance Unfolding as colour. Is that person in the mirror really me? There are subtle thought-forms of sticky sensation that say so, a subtle sense of possessiveness around qualities that thought says this body possesses such as sight or sensation or liberation to move. But these are thoughts reaching out like sticky tendrils to wrap around the radiant colors just floating there effortlessly. Is there a body? Am I a body? Sensation erupts effortlessly as fingers flick against the keyboard -- fingers and keyboard are labels of color. And am I these colors-and-feelings-called-fingers? A thought says so, but where really is the power to move the hand -- or to arrest movement? A thought says I am the one who makes the fingers type these words, but in direct experience the hands move whenever they will. Words come or don't. Doubt manifests or doesn't, and the thought-called-doubt is believed or isn't. Is there a body? There is color-called-body. There is sensation-called-body, and a sort of subtle thought-form that wraps these two maps together. But I really can't say for sure there's a body at all. I can't actually find sensation, sensation is a thought -- but there's seemingly Radiance-colored-as-sensation, but even Radiance is a thought. I'm not entirely sure I even exist. Which is an odd feeling because existence seemingly Is. There is a sense of Isness, of Doubtless Radiance because how can I doubt this blossoming colour immediately in front of me or the tingling stream of sensation calling itself my heartbeat but also is Radiance real or is that just another thought? This is an odd space, a paradoxical feeling of simultaneous being and nonbeing.

The illusion of time has disappeared. It hit me so hard. Reality is unfolding right now, moment by moment, but even saying "moment" is not correct because it presupposes that there are past and future. The whole notion of time has completely collapsed, and things lost their previous material and solid flavor; it is as if reality is fluid, without solidity. My ego tries to disorient me with the fear that people like friends and my family don't exist, but I trust my gut and keep going. Now I can finally understand the impermanence that Buddhists talk about. Things are kind of empty, impossible to grasp. It's been a "month" now, so I guess something fundamental really happened to me. There's still a sense of separation, but it's clear that time is a mental construction. Thank you, Doc!:)

So profound, this kind of subject is so rarely discussed but completely fundamental. After my first shift, one of the main ‘experiences’ was wondering what this moving, feeling thing was that we call the body. It just felt unknown, unknowable like you said. The only thing I really knew about it was that it wasn’t me, wasn’t self, but I had no idea at all what it actually was. I spoke many times to my fellow practitioners about this but none knew what on Earth I was going on about 😂. Thank you, great teaching.

Trippy ! Just felt like I lost all boundaries of my body and melted into the environment. Thank you for this profound pointing 🙏

I can so relate to this. As a child i remember looking at myself and my skin and really feeling that it wasn't right, that why was I appearing as a human? So dreamlike, and I could not wake up even though I tried.

My body pain wakes me, but as I’m falling asleep I can be in a state of not feeling it and it is very freeing

When I was laughing 😂 the word safe appeared . ( that it was that ) But then I looked what that was made out of. Noises in the head . Noises cannot mean anything can they ? If you look at what its made out of there is a beaty to what makes up the noises sure. But its just vibration and pointy parts that stick out and smooth parts. It exists for its own sake not to " mean " anything . And its all bunched up together with sensation if you look right at it with magnifying glass.

This is a major hurdle , its hard to express everything clearly in a RU-vid comment but how can it be explained that if a hammer hits my finger nail the pain im feeling is real and comes from my finger. I can't just say its an idea, the pain is there and it clearly corresponds to something that is in my immediate experience. Sorry dor the example as it my just reflect my frustration. I wish i could "get it" and let go of the body idea. Thanks for your amazing videos and your kind transmissions!

This had me thinking I wonder if this is why I've been so frequently running into the edges of things lately? 🤔The body is still there but it's like I forget where the edge of my physical body begins and ends and the objects begin and end or I forget that there's a difference between the two. It's hard to explain.

One time in the middle of the night walking to the washroom feeling like my legs and arm were not mine .

I have been on this “pathless path” for a long time and I’m at the point where even typing that feels so weird and contradictory, but for the sake of explaining myself, I’ve “had” enlightenment “Experiences” and have been absolutely swallowed by Unity before. To a point that it actually made me feel very alone (I see that indicates a sense of self, somehow) but this facet of non-duality (being discussed in this video) is new to me. And now I’m seeing it a lot. It feels so foreign, yet I catch glimpses of it. I had kind of thought I “understood” what “enlightenment” was/is, as a state, but this is not what “I” had in “mind” 😂

Not sure what to conclude. Visually, there is a luminosity everywhere and objects appear only after when you think about it. But at the same time, the body appear as an immediate object. Like, in your line of questionning, if I have to go to sleep to ask a question, it add a condition. If it add a condition, it create an object. In this case, the body. Can anybody deny the experience of sleeping ? Rene "body" Descartes : "I sleep, therefore I am"

Thanks!

It's all a story, but it's harder to see the cracks if your a good story teller.💜🙏

so if the body is not real, what else is also not real? i have an intimation that what *IS* real cannot be defined, only pointed to with words like "awareness" or "being", but those pointers don't cut it. it cannot be spoken, only lived. and if the body is not real, why can injuring your sense organs cripple your conscious experience? i'm not actually expecting an answer, i'm just thinking out loud. or as Paul Hedderman would put it, i got my ass up my head. what is awakeness even? humans are the only species that worries about that question. (can i get a biscuit for being so meta?) sorry for being a smartass, i love you all ❤❤

Five stars out of five.

I'm going to play around with question #2, and it's something I've already noticed unconsciously before seeing this vid! There's definitely something which precedes all conscious knowing of "me" ; before the mind comes online. It's something very immediate and simple and already here, before you even awake in the morning and register where and what you are 😂 I've also had very vivid dreams where I've seen that the sensation of being in a body feels just as real in dream, as in reality. No discernible difference. Sensations feel real in dreams. I've performed a reality check in a dream which mimicked the rules of this reality, and so I thought I was awake in my dream. I've similarly had fantastical flying dreams which I also felt I was awake. So the boundaries between what is real and not real seem blurry. Sensations feel real. I keep coming back to your bit in the book about stages of awakening. You gave a great matrix analogy of being plugged into a VR headset, and awakening being like the goggles being yanked off. The VR analogy is awesome. This body-mind is the conduit, the perceiving apparatus through which experience is registered. A portal. A peephole. The filtering of perceptions and sensations. The beautiful imagining mind creating a world, and a story too. The power of the mind. Powerful creative tool. Amazing! As another anecdote, I got to see this in another light recently, when my sis sent me a cute little vid of her 4 month old baby plonked in front of a mirror. He goes to a baby club where one of the exercises involves babies looking at themselves in a mirror to teach them body-awareness, and self-recognition. He fell asleep during class so she was doing this particular exercise with him at home. I smiled when I saw it because this is how far back this all begins. Anyway, he clearly is oblivious that the little baby in the mirror smiling back at him is him. 😂 He seems to have learnt how to stick his tongue out, because he's being doing it often to his mom 😂 and it seems to be a deliberate action he's discovered he's capable of. In the vid, at one point he sticks his tongue out at his mirror reflection and beams when his little friend in the mirror sticks his tongue out 😂. He smiles at faces and seems to recognize his family. I suppose this is where it all begins! 💛 Thanks for the brilliant vid, Angelo!

Wonderful! Great meditation for before awakening too. The emptiness of form. Thankyou Angelo. Love the ocean sound too.

It's amazing how precise you are with language. Every time I watch you, your pointings are better, clearer. Or is just my understanding getting better? Oh look, this sentence, just another thought I guess.

I can feel the body energetically - the sensations, feelings, are they just thoughts?

Thank you, very synchronistic, I was just investigating this earlier today... We learn that what we call "physical" is more "real" than other aspects of experience, and that the closer an object is, the more we can determine its reality... And we also seem to learn that some senses are more real than others, like touch being the "proof" that something is "solid" (just experience), and therefore physical, three-dimensional, real... Also, that the more we can experience the same thing through "different" sense gates, the more real it is - if you can touch, smell, see etc. something, it means it's "real"... We talk about components where there is no separation, about elements when there is only the whole, which word doesn't even make sense, as it implies parts. Like a "body", being composed of many parts, but there is no part and no body 🤯

I’ve been waking a couple of times a night, gratefully conscious, but no real awareness of body. Very very comforting. No idea what this is…. 🙏🏽

A question I’m contemplating for weeks now “Am I inside a body or is a body inside of me?” - ❤ your video.

Wow - this has impact. Provokes a different feel to presence. Like an undertow. Awesome.

Wow! The sense of the body is so tenuous but it holds up so much. I'll definitely be continuing this inquiry for awhile.

It is so strange how often Angelo addresses something I am experiencing. This morning I was exploring this in inquiry and seeing that what I thought was a solid body was in fact imagination giving meaning to sensations. Wow.

I love this inquiry. It reminds me of Douglas Harding’s Headless Way experiments. Thank you 🙏

What if you have blurry vision? It suggests that you have eyes that are not seeing clearly. How do u get past that evidence?

As always, thank you for sharing the good news 🙏

All weekend I felt completely out of my body. Do I need to get more grounded? What is this body? Who is Laura? Is it just the experiential Laura Body? Today, “Is There a Body?”Thank you Angelo.😊

Yes to the physical world, but only a simulation of it. Yes to a body but I am not the body, nor thoughts or emotions. One might ask, Did I become before or after the body?

after listening to this video I’m sure there is a very subtle belief/conviction here in being the body. Only while doing a wonderful 30-minute-breathing-meditation with wonderful music and staring at the ceiling while doing it, I can let the seen and the sound just be without reconnecting anything back to the body as the accommodation of a “me”. Kind of frustrating the existence of this subtle believe and not knowing how to get rid of it. So sometimes there is a doubt of being able to ever get rid of the ego. It’s so clever, so much more clever than “me” and so sneaky. I will continue to ask my koan „what am I?“ and now the question „is there a body?“ too. Now I know where the fetter is bonding me. Thank you so much Angelo 🙏❤️

Thank you for this!! ❤❤Feeling a bit stuck.

Good point, it's just energy after all that I'm calling 'the body '! Thanks that was helpful 😊

Wonderful, I could really relate to this Angelo and experienced no body 🙏😊

I love this so much. So obvious 😊

Jumps and spasms, with these questions, around the central question, "Is there a body", jolts of freshness. Thanks. Great question to practice throughout the day, or on retreat- re Take This Journey Inwards, yesterday's talk. After years of not going on retreats, you have me seriously considering attending one, best, john

Descartes is calling--he's followed your guided meditation and now thinks he's made a terrible mistake in his "Meditations" that probably has screwed up science, economics, philosophy, ethics, and countless other modern endeavours.

It's kind of hilarious the way one can't see one's own face or head, yet we constantly run this overlay of an image from the mirror or photographs. Why do we have to do that?? Also, the reference of 'where' around body sensations - the overlay thought comes in so quickly, it's hard to see any gap.

Is this separating from the body? Bypassing the body? And what’s in the body? I feel it’s very important to be careful with not getting attached to separating from the body. Embodied non dual awakening is the next level of evolution. Keep going. But yes, true on one level, we are not the body, and yet paradoxically we are the pain, the body, the trauma, the bliss, all of it.

Do you need to believe in a body to see?... a newborn infant sees, yet has no idea of the body. The visual experience doesn't need evidence, it just is. This was the moment it clicked into place yesterday after watching this particular clip. Brilliant 👌 My teacher, The Mindful DJ, David did a wonderful zoom guided meditation this morning on just this. Very grateful for your input Angelo 🙏 Seeing = knowing, as do all our senses and perceptions. Its all knowing/awareness/consciousness

Isnt this all a thought experiment? As much as its pointing towards the unpointable, its still prescribing a view. You can look and not find. But when theres a stubbed toe, theres a whole system reaction of sensation, vedena and survival, even if theres no added thought. The more theres looking, the more i dont know if theres any distction between not having and having a body. It just is.

I love these type of practical videos. Thanks my friend 👍🏽

I can't stop laughing 😂 This is like when I was a kid I remember pure sensation. There is like a weight lifted off .😂 It's not serious at all is it ? Because whatever happens. Happens ( times we label something and then say its happening) It never was like that . It is just right here all condensed and packed together in a bundle of sensations . I can't stop laughing because the wholethibg is not anything at all is it ? There is nowhere else wow

Lately, these two questions have been coming up naturally: Is there actually a me? and Is there a body here? Or, maybe more like, how could there NOT be a body here when the body seems so obvious? Thanks for pointing a way into this. I’ve heard it before, but something seems more ready now. And yes, I’m one of those kids who stood in front of a mirror one day and asked, “is this actually me?” 🤨🫥⭕️🌻

thank you so much for this experiment!! actually it's the only one it clicks me, just looking if there is a face or somebody here. just the scene with not observer, it seems to be the answer, but it's still something week or soft, it goes away in two seconds, so I keep doing it, to be in that state of alerness as you say

I heard Rupert Spira say he can only see about 2% of his body now. Can you see your body?

Wouldn’t the evidence be apparent through recognizing patterns of other apparent bodies as being other perceiving vehicles? Does the recognition of these “forms” (bodies) being “perceiving vehicles” still count as delusion?

I do remember, I was very small, on the floor and trying to remember something that was just outside of my memory, trying to grasp something, though I would not have thought that in words. Also, I had just started school and I recall hearing my name, but not really associating it with me, I remember that I kind of heard it as a sound just floating around above my head.

How about touching the solid form? Can't deny that but closing my eyes I don't have evidence for form...

Love this one, Angelo. Thanks for everything you do ❤️

So there is no body when I gaze outwards, there is just the seen, but if I look down at the body , touch the body, feel sensation in the body....there seems to be a body....?

Holy crap! ❤❤❤

So on the level of inquiry - when I try this I can see in the seeing is just the seen. The see-er is just a thought. But regardless of in the seeing is only the seen - there is simultaneously and continuously a flow of sensations aware of themselves in an energetic flux on the material plane of reality. I see body is simply a designation (aka a thought) but the energetic flow of sensations does not disappear when the visual field fixes on my Buddha statue. Am I missing something? Also - does this inquiry suggest you posess an Idealist worldview from an ontological and metaphysical perspective? Or is this just an inquiry tool?

I'm pretty good at multiple choice especially with two options. I'd say Yes, but this is what you think I'd say, so No. Can I print a certificate?

💖

I swear to god. All this time, I thought I was an organism. I'm not. I'm an organism's self-aware simulation. What the--

It may sound cliche, But it's all how you look at things isn't it??

Where do you get these backgrounds?

🚷

Like # 404 - Body Not Found 🙃

There is a body. But there's no person. There is an organism, but there's no you/ me/ I

Beautiful! This is exactly where I’m at right now. The timing couldn’t be more perfect. Thanks Angelo 🫶

🙏 blessings and peace