INVISIBLE GURU FORUM

Jed Sir's crab theory is a great teaching to see through the challenges one encounter in the journey.

Crab theory being, when all the crabs are put in a bucket.. everyone pull down the one trying to get out. Result being no one can escape.

It's a personal journey and every attachment to people, idea and family pulls you down for sure.
Definitely my experience, can't detach completely from the family dream. Gets caught up in family drama too often now.
You can't wake other up for sure until one has completed the journey and if one is not on similar journey.
All effort to wake or even stay together with closed ones ends up with lot of effort wasted.

Salutations to the Master.

When you realize that there is no you seeing anything, then the nothingness is going to stick.. but don't ask me to what....
 

Love ya, Jed

Ken was right, that's exactly how it went down.

I’m glad you asked this. The Jed that I knew had mixed feelings about Spiritual Autolysis. For all that it is held up in the books as the ultimate practice, as far as I know this idea came from the actual authors/editors of the text, and not from Jed. Jed supported anyone attempting to make use of the practice, but he recognized that it’s very difficult to do well. I know you've had some dialogue with Jed about SA already, and gotten some of his ways to cut through to the heart of the practice, but let me add a bit about how I think it works.

Mostly, what people do in the name of SA is the equivalent of journaling, and in fact that’s what’s demonstrated in the books. Journaling can clear the mind, or it can further clutter it. It can be a tool of discovery, or merely a way of recycling and rehashing mental activity. Journaling is not really what SA is about.

If you want to get closer to the real point of SA, it helps to remember that the idea came from Descartes and his Meditations. Here’s how he started his first “Meditation”:

“Several years have now elapsed since I first became aware that I had accepted, even from my youth, many false opinions for true, and that consequently what I afterward based on such principles was highly doubtful; and from that time I was convinced of the necessity of undertaking once in my life to rid myself of all the opinions I had adopted, and of commencing anew the work of building from the foundation.”

Pretty bold, right? He then gives some suspect reasoning about why he waited until he was so old to make the attempt (though he was only 43 when he started - ha!), and says:

“Today, then, since I have opportunely freed my mind from all cares and am happily disturbed by no passions, and since I am in the secure possession of leisure in a peaceable retirement, I will at length apply myself earnestly and freely to the general overthrow of all my former opinions.”

That is spiritual autolysis - the systematic overthrow of all the nonsense that has come to comprise your world-view. You interrogate absolutely every belief to see whether it’s actually true. And the punch line, of course, is that none of it is.

Descartes’s basic tool of skepticism was that everything that seemed real to him could be an illusion spun by a malignant demon trying to trick him. There just wasn’t much sci-fi around in Descartes day, or he would have gone on about simulations and implanted memories. Instead he went supernatural and decided that no matter what tricks that demon was up to, there was still some thinking being (Descartes himself) having the experience of being tricked. Cogito ergo sum: I think therefore I am. That was the only thing he could be sure of. At least it was until he got into some nonsense about the necessity of God’s existence (with a capital G). He was, after all, a creature of his culture and his time.

Your job as a universal skeptic (more universal than even Descartes managed to be) is to try to find something that you can know is actually true. That’s the reason for the exercise - to be rigorous enough in your questioning to try to discover the difference between Truth and everything else. To not stop until you get there.

As for your starting point about suffering. I am personally certain that you aren’t suffering. Not because we can get all non-dual and say there’s no “you” there to suffer. Even if we imagine there’s a you there, that you isn’t suffering.

Something is happening. That’s for sure. That something seems pretty unpleasant, and you’ve learned to interpret the something as “suffering”. But you want to find out what that something is really made of. What is occurring that you’ve learned to call “suffering”. Pop the hood and look inside. Really dig around in there. What’s it actually made of? What can you know about what’s actually happening and why it gets experienced as “suffering”.

Question every answer you come up with. Is that really what’s happening? Could you break it down even further? Can you discover an interpretation that is at least more “truthish”?

As you mentioned, logic can only get you so far. Coming up with an intellectual answer won’t be satisfying for very long, unless it dramatically alters the nature of the experience, or of the experiencer. That’s how you know when you hit upon some Truth!

There’s a trick to dreaming that I want to tell you about and this is it, “Don’t believe anything, just don’t believe it, point blank, plain and simple, end stop.”  No belief and I do mean no, just none, absolute zero, belief is true.  All your life up until the time you really do wake up is believing things, any thought you can ever have will be a belief, even if you say my drink is on the table, that is a belief, just you believe it’s there and so it is.  Things have a way of seeming real in the dream even when they are not.  This is the best news ever because if anything looks or even hints that it is going against “you” or just your life or your physical well being or any type of well being, for sure do not believe it, do not give it even a second thought, just if you have to take my word for it then do so, but what I’m telling you is that no thing, no situation, no idea, no manifestation whatsoever no matter what, no matter what the thoughts would say about it, how they would interpret anything at all can actually be against you this is simply not true, not now, not ever well it’s not one of the possibilities.  Whatever goes down in this dream does so for your benefit just you can not know how that is until much later, one day you look back and think “Oh, I remember those days, now it makes perfect sense, just it wanted to get from here to there and that’s the only way it had of doing that and just wow I thought maybe things were going to **** but actually that was very clever”, that’s how it will go. 

Just when I say we are dealing with infinite intelligence here, that’s infinite, it’s a completely different type of intelligence that has a view from sides that you quite frankly can’t actually know exists, it’s very intricate and everything is under it’s direction and discretion at all times, no slip ups at all, not even for a split second, none, this is not a type of intelligence that any lowly thought form at all has anything to do with, just those type of thoughts don’t really factor into it, it’s above that, well maybe not above but let’s say beyond and let’s say even the arising of thought is under it’s explicit direction, just don’t believe the thoughts unless you like them, and even then maybe not, just it’s not about liking thoughts or not liking them, it’s about knowing that you are life and life does not ever seek to harm itself, that’s not a thing here so as much as the dream that may be unfolding could at times seem to be some sort of detriment, it isn’t, there’s always a silver lining whether you know it or not, well, now you do just keep in mind that you may not know what it is until you do and that can be whenever, this life or even much later, it simply is not always for us to know.  All we can ever know is that the movements of awareness are good whether one is surrendered to it or not, zero resistance to what is, is always best but either way it works with whatever is there so that also equals to the best that can be, no matter what it looks like just actually appearance is not important in a dream.

This dream seems to work on time, just time is somehow a factor in the dream, it is a fabrication just of course it is, your life, your day may seem very long but that’s just so you can enjoy yourself here and for no other purpose whatsoever so once again, no matter the circumstances of your dream do not ever believe that they are true, everything is just coming and going and it just takes some “time” in the dream for things to blow clear of all the lies that you believed but they all go eventually.  What looks like muck today eventually settles down and only the silky clear ephemeral quality remains.  That’s how it’s most beneficial for anything to let everything be as it is, never reacting, or resisting or believing another fearful thing ever again, of course if you find yourself helping in some way without any expectations of having done so than that also may arise. 

Thoughts create the circumstances of your life so just anything can show up there but what is mistakenly called matter is really only a lasting or persistent thought for instance everyday you wake up in the same house, that’s because the thought of this house is persistent, it’s 100% believed that you live there and if you moved into a new house a new belief would arise to support that just a new persistent thought had replaced the old one, hence you now fully believe you live here in this new one now. 

Most beings believe the world of matter just the physical world is solid but it is only perceived this way because the thought formations that say it is are lasting, it’s believed beyond a shadow of a doubt, in fact the belief in the physical reality of the world is probably the most deeply ingrained and persistent thought there is so everything revolves around it but it’s not like this, even physical reality is only a thought and things appear or present themselves to you according to how deeply the belief in it is held as true and since consensual reality does hold this belief as undeniable or indisputably true or correct the world appears finite and solid to all of us, except that it’s only in our perception that it is when it really isn’t in fact dare I say it, there isn’t one.  This would not be an issue at all just you need to hang out somewhere but when we create things along side this belief in the unchanging nature of the world of form it makes them extremely difficult to dissolve.  That’s what’s behind Einstein saying, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them” you see even he realized apparently that we are the creators.   

Well, you’ve heard it said I’m sure that people are “set in their ways” but all that means is the thinking has solidified and is unchanging which is how nothing changes.  We just use the same old tired worn out assumptions that the world is finite to solve problems but when we do all we have really done is added another layer to obscure the real issue, because the real issue to anything always lies first in the belief that there is one, just we think about any issue already as if it is real that’s the reason there is an issue in the first place and that’s how it stays that way, the solution is real as well, but all we’ve done is skirt the issue that nothing was ever wrong to begin with, not even possible, since all form is but a thought, just a persistent one.  If and when one does see this entire creation as existing in thought form only and therefore completely unreal nothing more than just a passing phenomena one’s life is bound to change as concepts and ideas fall away, as the thoughts we had about our life, thoughts that said this was real, solid, or fixed somehow begin to lose their hold, just the thoughts themselves are emotionally charged that’s how so many bothersome ones are reoccurring to begin with, there’s fear attached to them which is how the same underlying issue’s arise and repeat, how history repeats even just there’s always been wars, to face the fear of any falsehood is to dissolve it, and when it’s dissolved it ceases to arise so is no longer persistent, meaning we no longer think of it, when it has slipped out of our awareness it has literally ceased to exist for us and only then the outer forms begin to change as well, because what we see or experience is dependent on them. 

The character, just who you think you are is really a collection of fearful thoughts but in the end after you’ve gone through all the thoughts and all the fear based patterns that were embedded in them, your thoughts become gifts, just who told you not to think, to maybe shut up already, settle down, no talking, well remember when you got in trouble for talking, what the ****, talking isn’t wrong, **** that’s how we communicate, just there was never a reason to settle down other than some fearful being who didn’t know what the **** was going on was acting out and imposing their fearful pattern on to the unsuspecting boisterous, playful child, well that’s how the ignorance gets passed on but now, ahh, yes now, the thoughts become a gift again, tell me what isn’t a gift, do you want to be a silent lifeless expression sitting alone in a meditation pose for hours on end, I don’t think you do.  You didn’t come here for that either. 

It may be hard to come to terms that whatever is, is right, that wrong is simply not possible in this dream, this can be a hard nut to swallow, that no one has ever acted out of character just when you don’t know that who you think you are is only a character dreaming itself up according to what it was taught to do and how it was taught to operate based on the beliefs that were passed down there just that in fact even the victim and the victor are only two sides of the same coin, the school shooter is awareness and the doing is also awareness, in fact even there what looks like an atrocious obscenity is still what was destined to be, you see the shooter doesn’t hate his victims, he is his victims, only awareness, and to that end he has set them free.  They are freed from living out a life in total ignorance, gone home even, for whatever reason we can not know but to be sure, that even there all is well, it is the only way it ever could be.

That’s how even on this journey, whatever comes up in your life is there to facilitate your ultimate release from believing anything about it, this dream is some sorrow for sure from the ignorant perspective but the movement of awareness is correction and all things point towards home even if they are dragged that way kicking and screaming.  The real reason we have so much death in this dream is because awareness demands freedom and in a dream like this that’s sometimes the only way to get it. Of course, if the characters all fear this one thing more than anything else they can come across just they flock to the doctor at the first indication of some bodily malfunction with no awareness that the whole thing is only imagined, well just look at how the body itself has been turned into some sort of enemy, you need to alter it with the man made vaccine or you are filthy, not worthy of going anywhere outside your own home, this focus of “attention”, the idea even that sickness should be vehemently resisted has already had it’s consequences in fact it’s the reason you have a Covid virus to begin with just it doesn’t start in “nature” at all but in the imagination.  Hard to believe I know and what’s worse is that you may be held to the collective conditioning as long as you are a part of this dream. 

Yes, to some extent you may bypass all the foolishness just to do that you must distance your mind from being “aware” of things you prefer not to be “aware” of, ignorance is bliss because something just anything at all only arises if you first “think” it does, the thought process alone is responsible for producing the world and nothing else. To realize this deeply is to be “in the world but not of it” whatever you see appears as if a dream, and judgements as to the value there of whether any event, person, place or thing is good or bad cease for good. This does not mean you will be catapulted into some dreamy life, to the contrary, all it means is that whatever life is still had there will not be resisted and to that end anything can happen but the reactions to it will be completely natural, whatever does arise to be felt is felt, there may be a great sorrow even for there’s no way to not know it could have gone another way if ignorance had not been touted as knowledge , but sorrow isn’t bad because nothing is, in a dream it is all just dream stuff after all you were always going to die, just now you might make the most of what’s left to work with instead of adding to the insanity. 

The idea that there is something there, something called “you” or “me” that anything can happen to is what goes, this is the false construct, this identity, in fact most beings don’t just have one identity they have thousands of them, it’s like a “who” you think you are in relation to everything, instead of seeing that there is nothing here to be in relation to, it is all only one thing, no barrier exists at all between what you see and what you are, the subject object relationship is what ends and when it does so does the sense that anything needs to change, only if it wants to it will, whatever you find yourself doing is exactly what needs to happen just the infinite intelligence is behind all actions which is a far cry than having the doing of conditioning which in essence thinks it’s a person who needs to get this and avoid that all the time, there’s always an apprehension there in relation to the deeply embedded sense of good and bad, right and wrong, and just some idea that you can get from here to there or enhance or benefit yourself in some way.  No one is ever going anywhere since you’ve never actually been somewhere.   Even the body is seen as a non thing, like a garment, no more significant than the coat you put on in winter, now you put it on and take it off realizing that this too is only imagined so what harm can come to it.  There was never a need for protection against anything.

Love your writing, thank you for sharing . When I read 3 or 4 times, I begin really understand, regulerly.