Trouble Sensing Myself Via Questions In Self Inquiry

[Viking]

I usually have to ask myself a question a shit ton of times before I can genuinely answer it, and even that comes pretty rarely. for example my last inquiry i did 1 hour and i had a sense of myself about 20 times max, the rest was monkey mind and trying to set up the mood to answer a question because i cant just answer it because i ask it and there is no answer.

does it come with time? or is there a more efficient way to ask questions?
I heared people talk about visualizations and looking at who you are. Can you elaborate if you know the technique and are there any more techniques?

[Nahm]

@Ilya It's simple but not easy if you're thinking a lot and are not well practiced in meditation / allowing thoughts to go bub-bye.....

All you have to do is surrender to the fact that you may never get a single answer.

 

 

[cetus]

6 minutes ago, Ilya said:

I usually have to ask myself a question a shit ton of times before I can genuinely answer it

What is a genuine answer? Does such a thing exist? Will a genuine answer today be the same in a week. Or a month?

[Viking]

@cetus56 there are unconscious answers for example i ask "who is aware?" and then my brain just plays along with the words and says "sure, me" but I dont feel anything, just like your spouse for example asks you what do you want for dinner and you say "i dont want to get a new couch". on the other hand sometimes I ask myself "who is feeling this leg" and I get kind of an emotional response that I feel is what i really think, and then what I do is realize this is not me because its just a perception. but this happens rarely.

[cetus]

20 minutes ago, Ilya said:

I ask myself "who is feeling this leg" and I get kind of an emotional response that I feel is what i really think, and then what I do is realize this is not me because its just a perception. but this happens rarely.

@Ilya Even rarely is a good start. It takes time and practice to override a well engrained response. For example. Warning: graphic content!! I went to the dermatologist last week to have a cancerous growth from the sun removed from 'my' arm. When I seen the DR. heading at me with the scalpel in hand I got a little apprehensive at first. A perfectly natural response of course. But than I override that automatic response and it became 'just an arm'. I than watched as he carefully removed the tissue in a detached manner. His assistant actually asked me 'How can you watch that?' 'Are you going to be O.K?. I guess she was afraid that I was going to pass out or something.  I just replied 'Yea, I'm fine. it doesn't bother me'. I even made a little joke about my dog scratching my leg with her claw, just to reassure her I was fine. But what I was actually doing was putting practice to the test by overriding the natural response that it was 'my arm'. I than watched as he sown it back up again. It was really cool to remain so totally detached from 'my arm'. It was almost as if I was watching a mechanic working on a car.

[Afonso]

Adyashanti teaches a "pathless path" to Enlightenment which is composed of two parts: True Meditation and Meditative Self-Inquiry.

Meditation helps you uncover the silence within and not get distracted by your thoughts so much. It clears up your mind and exposes awareness.

With that silent background, you can then inquiry with the mind, but with the intention to go beyond it. Simply ask "Who am I?" and feel your sense of self.

If you find yourself just going into monkey mind, then ask yourself or try to feel who it is that is having all those monkey thoughts. If you meditate consistently, those thoughts tend to dissipate faster and faster.

[Erlend K]

In my opinion: before moving on to more advanced meditation one should do concentration practices (samatha/anapanasati) for 6-12 months to build up the capacity to stay focused on you meditation object long enough to actually accomplish something from it.

Do you want is to strengthen the sense of there being this 'Self' in your mind that stands outside of the mental stream looking into it and making decisions, while meditating? To increase this you can trigger activity in the parts of the brain responsible for what Buddhists call 'Selfing': The minds process of creating the illusion of there being a Self. According to neuroscientist Rick Hanson these brain regions seem to be the upper portions of the thalamus and rear regions of the default network (including the posterior cingulate cortex). There are certain techniques you can do: looking straight forward decreases selfing, while looking downward increase it; full body breathing decreases it, while focusing your attention at the breath at the nostrils increases it. There are a couple others as well, but I don't remember them all. If you are interested, Rick Hanson have a great lecture series on Dharmaseed  called something like 'No-Self In The Brain' where he talks about the neurological and phenomenological aspects of the illusion of there being a Self in our mind.

[Dodo]

9 hours ago, Afonso said:

Adyashanti teaches a "pathless path" to Enlightenment which is composed of two parts: True Meditation and Meditative Self-Inquiry.

Meditation helps you uncover the silence within and not get distracted by your thoughts so much. It clears up your mind and exposes awareness.

With that silent background, you can then inquiry with the mind, but with the intention to go beyond it. Simply ask "Who am I?" and feel your sense of self.

If you find yourself just going into monkey mind, then ask yourself or try to feel who it is that is having all those monkey thoughts. If you meditate consistently, those thoughts tend to dissipate faster and faster.

This. Also I want to add that becoming aware of awareness is like building new muscles. At first it may look like nothing special or that you're not doing anything, but if you do it diligently and long enough, the results cannot do anything else but sneak up on you. @Ilya

Also with this analogy,  at first it may be a pain in the ass to do it, but later it becomes the most joyful thing to work out.

Edited August 3, 2017 by Dodo

[Telepresent]

23 hours ago, Ilya said:

or is there a more efficient way to ask questions?

Some people recommend writing.  I find this a highly useful way of working because it keeps your attention focused on what you are doing, and you are forced to try to communicate it in clear terms