I second that! Absolutely nailed that it with resistance, avoidance, it’s just an Absolute head wreck here for no reason. Just greatful for these clips and guides , ❤
And, at least in my experience, then I notice the sneaky ways of using the idea of non- resistance as…another way to resist! As in, “Ok, now I’m going to be accepting, to not resist.” Until I begin to notice that I’ve just made a shifty lateral move, and now I’m resisting my resistance, and not accepting my non-acceptance. The identity’s will to survive is so clever! 🤨😳🤬😁😂😂
I see how I buried my head in the sand and pretended I was not suffering. It’s hard to be brutally honest with myself , but everything has to come to the light and dissolve. I don’t know how many more layers I have to go through! 😂 Thanks for this clip. Very timely.
Oh I 100% feel this. That “no” has been very obvious to me for a long, long time. I even remember being super young and realizing all the “bad” things that could potentially happen in this life, and I was super pissed at my parents for having me. Like pissed that I didn’t have a choice in the matter. So much resistance.
Gosh, I’ve seen this video in the past, but somehow stumbled on it again today. The sense of ‘I’ just feels like resistance, and it’s a resistance to everything. Once seen it can’t be unseen and I think because I’m seeing it clearly now, it feels like the most disjointed and uncomfortable thing. Resistance even resists itself!
Yes! I feel this resistance strongly in the body. It’s fallen away a few times, there’s a feeling that “something let go” and the body relaxes so much, feels like a rag doll. But the resistance returns, it’s physically painful. And it seems that all movements toward distraction, addictive patterns, are to avoid feeling this. It is painful. I’ll watch the other video. Thank you.
Oh, the best part is,it gives you solutions how to resolve itself 🙈 You think your finally doing something that will get it resolved (relaxing into it,beeing with it,accepting it,ignoring it...)..And than you see,its just the same "no" mechanism. Damn 😅
Life is such a mysterious wonderful beautiful thing. And yet living it is a total drag. I have felt like this for a very long time and it's frustrating that nobody can relate. I was always labeled a pessimist. I came to know I was right all along, and most are just blindly living the life they're told to live. Aaarg the resistance, from morn till eve. And then the resistance to the resistance. What a discomfort.
I found myself crying and laughing in turns watching this. It is so spot on... Today I was on a walk and had this feeling of ME deep down in the core of the body, and then a thought popped up, saying: Hey, what if that feeling of me really just was a thought, what would be underneath that? - And sure enough, there came emotional pain and a physical contraction, the pain of being fundamentally wrong. I was suprised, as this topic had been spinning about the last few weeks (maybe months and yeah, definitely has been something I worked on for years) but now it feels like it is circling in on this point. I feel I need to be aware of not clinging to the story of this hurt (where did it come from, how did it develope, when was that, what was before that?). That was what I usually did around the experience, experiencing it and then constructing and analysing. It's still happening but I feel somehow something is shifting into saying: "Oh, that's just a thought, too". Your videos and your book definitely helped with that. Thank you so much! - Shame seems to have such strong gravitational pull, and it seems so real. Is there anything specific you can recommend working with this for letting the identification go? It can, as I described above, feel really physically or emotionally painful underneath it all, without a clear thought. Is thought then what latches onto it to get identification going? And is just seeing that over and over a way to move past that? Thinking out loud here, sry for the long comment.
Biggest most surprising Santa Clause story ever ……….❤❤I’ll have to watch the Alma video, but this describes it exactly for me. Hits the nail right on the head!!
OMG this is where I am at. So helpful. Right on point. Thank you again and again. No self, no pleasure, no no no that was yesterday. Clearly about pretending to be a person. But then I got stuck… Life is unsatisfactory. Life is suffering. Yep. Yes there is that.
True in my experience. I would not believe how much suffering is in me,if i hadnt come in direct contact with it. And at the base is a contraction of energy, saying no (or never again), full of strategies how to avoid or make things better...its the so called I. That is why it pulls you in your mind,trying to find solutions and get the reality it wants. Ive been feeling this fearful contraction for so long ...its so intelligent its amazing. Maybe somebody can relate. Angelo thanks for the video,always helpful to hear 🙏
I feel like I've been circling this for months.....it shows me different trajectories that all lead back to this root no. I can feel where it hangs out in the body. I can see the identities (some of my favorites) that spawn from its root. I can't get down there so I just keep looking, just keep engaging with the body work that is touching it somehow, just keep watching my dreaming hoping to feel into it and open it into a yes (or let life do that through the body being since Lord knows "I" can't). Holding space for it to blossom as soon as it finds its way to opening.
It is control. We don't accept what is. We are afraid to feel, afraid to live, afraid to take risk, because we are always trying to control the outcome through our Ego, which has been developed as a protection mechanism by evolution - better safe than sorry. And we never take risks. And, therefore, we never live. Because life is always a risk. Universe makes you suffer to make you realize that you can't control it and Universe is friendly and loving towards you, so no reason to fear. I am still learning to trust the Universe. But I have made the vow to trust what universe brings me and to trust that is is benevolent thing have brought to me.
yea i notice a very deep insatisfaction towards everything. resistance to resistance and all that. but i see no way out of it. all i can do is resist. it all falls into resistance as the ultimate truth of "me"...
"Life is suffering/unsatisfactory." Well... not really what the first noble truth of Buddhism says, though it's commonly taught this way (thanks for sharing clarity around this). A more clear concise description of the 4 Noble Truths that is less likely to cause misunderstanding and further resistance is: 1. Dukkha (suffering/unsatisfactoriness) exists (and it is to be investigated) = Angelo's point about this being the initial step in awakening is salient. Without recognizing there is a problem, why would I have any interest in investigating whether or not there is a possible resolution? (I can't believe a solution is necessary if I don't believe there's any problem.) 2. There is a cause of suffering--namely, craving and clinging (which is to be abandoned) 3. Suffering ceases with the relinquishment of that craving (this is to be Realized) 4. There is a path leading to the cessation of suffering (this path is to be developed) More briefly: 1. Suffering exists (and it can be understood) 2. Suffering has a cause (and once the cause is removed, there is no longer an effect/result) 3. Suffering can cease (and this "cure" needs to be experienced) 4. The cause of suffering can be resolved (and the experience of wholeness can be restored). -- OR -- There actually is a way out (and it's possible to find and follow it) -- or better yet -- There's a way to get from here to there. Follow that way. Another way of saying this is: The underlying mechanism of "NO!" to everything (resistance to what is, as it is) is so disturbing that it gives rise to further disturbance (additional resistance, craving for things to be other than they are, and clinging to experiences that provide temporary--and only partial--relief) =NT2. Once I give up (in any given moment) the craving, the resistance, the "no," the distress that was caused by that "no" ends. = NT3. As this truth is apprehended experientially (grokked), one can no longer fully believe that temporary band-aids will lead to enduring peace. This is the death knell to the mechanism of resistance. Once I realized this, the power of the mechanism to persuade me that IT had "the answer(s)" began to erode. It doesn't have the answers. It is the very problem itself.
Hmm. I just checked one of my sources, which has this to say: Dukkha is often translated as suffering, but a better translation of this rich term would be "frustration, since suffering often has physical connotations, and, in addition to referring to physical pain, dukkha, perhaps primarily, is the frustration that follows from the attempt to find permanent satisfaction in objects of the senses and mind that are by their very nature temporary." (Bryant 2009, page 204). Dissatisfaction (dukkha) stems from a misidentification -- a clinging to the notion of I and mine. It is of three types: 1. Dukkha-dukkha - the suffering of suffering is the mental stress added by resistance to physical and emotional discomfort. The Buddha called this the "second arrow." 2. Viparinama-dukkha - the suffering of clinging to what is always changing. 3. Sankhara-dukkha - the inherent stress of continuous conceptualization. The efforting of compounding mental phenomena. (from study notes written by Cliff Wallshein) I have personally found each of these three kinds of experience to be stressful, and I feel much more peaceful when they cease.
Angelo, thank you for your kind message. I can recognize how resistance makes suffering. Yet there appears to be so much pain in the world (as distinguished from suffering). Is it possible to go beyond all pain? It seems to do this one has to surrender all time and form to experience eternal gentleness.
Is questioning resistance? And why aren’t people with no inner monologue at all (aphantasia) not automatically awake if the ego structure is built on that?
I have a question for you! I think this question comes from doubt in my mind, but I’d like to ask it anyway: Is it possible that, in our dissolving of the self, we’re actually dissolving something that shouldn’t be dissolved? That perhaps there’s value to? I mean, it would be foolish to assume that just because something can be done, it should be done. Otherwise, why were we created? Is not our capacity to appreciate creation a result of a self that perceives duality? I’d love to hear your response to this 🙏
I would suggest really sitting with whether this process really deeply resonates with you. Perhaps read the first chapter of my book and all the cautions and see if it still sounds like “right path for me.” If so great, then don’t worry about no-self as a doctrine but rather just pay attention to immediate experience and take one step at a time. If not then no worries, go enjoy your life ❤️
The self doesn't actually perceive anything. To awareness, the self is seen to be an object-- believed to be somehow (also) the subject-- of sensing, feeling, thinking, etc.
Would you like to have the background of his videos not spiraling or moving around with a disorienting and dizzying effect? I don't think it's just me. Please vote so that he may consider. Great content, and I wish people do not skip these just because of the moving backgrounds.
Hey Angelo, I'm at a weird point on the path. The I Am sense is crystal clear, it's like staring at a robber who's robbing my house and watching him while he sneaks in, but he doesn't go away 😢. Also any technique or answer given to me just becomes another narrative to postpone fully letting go. It's weird 😦
@Simply Always Awake I've been feeling better after I made that comment. My gut tells me that the I sense is perpetuated by trying to let go, it's essentially resistance. I find that letting go occurs automatically already, and creating a sense of urgency hinders the letting go.
It feels like there's a layer of permanence/impermanence, satsifactoriness/unsatsifsctoriness, substance/emptiness which seems to be overlayed over every every experience despite the absence of a subject. It's like a baseless foundation from which self keeps trying to launch off. Like trying to create a place to stand even from emptiness 😂. Is just noticing this overlay and the urge to keep applying it, enough to work with fetter 9? It's a bit different from Kevin's explanation but sure rings the emotion body.
“Discover that what you’re made out of is avoidance.” Say it, Angelo! I think you may have just discovered your path to mass-market appeal, because I’m pretty sure this exactly what everyone wants to hear! 🤨😳😁😂😂😂 In any case, it is certainly what is being revealed in my experience. Thank you, as always… 🤬🔥😂💜🫥⭕️🦋
