I am that

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Paul Rezendes

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Sep 20, 2025, 10:09:05 AMSep 20
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Diehards,

I would like to share with you an excerpt of an email I sent to a friend recently. See below.

I'm going to try to share something with you. It's going to be difficult to put it into words. It seems to me, at least for some people, when they wake up, they wake up to a false self, and they wake up thinking that there is this essence/awareness that is above the "dream-fray". To exaggerate it: I'm not the body. They get to a place where they think they got all their questions answered, and they've come to a final resting place where they are above the dream. I got to that same place and was there for a while, but kept poking at it, and was curious about it and open. As I kept poking, it became clear that there can be an identification with essence or awareness as a place where you go where you think you're above the fray, above the dream. At some point, that can come crashing down, and it opens up to a wider universe, a universe where subject/object collapses into this experience. At that point, you're holding it all: the dream where you’re back in the body, and your essence. One is not above the other, one doesn't have more value than the other, and there's no time where one is prior to the other. Even this physical essence collapses as subject/object into this experience. When I look at this computer screen, it is what it is because I am who I am. I am that, actually, but I'm not experiencing that physically. I can't understand how it can be separate, how anything can exist in a vacuum. The observer is the observed. They both arise together, co-creating as this being/experience. Even the separate self cannot be what it is without the whole universe coming and focusing down as a sense of separate self. You would have to create the whole universe first before you could have something showing up as a separate self. I could go on and on, but I often find it falls on deaf ears. I'm having difficulty communicating this. It doesn't quite fit into the whole non-dual perspective very well. It fits better into the some of the Buddhist perspectives or ways of articulating and seeing it. I could say a hell of a lot more, but I better leave it there.

Paul

Janet Asiain

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Sep 20, 2025, 11:11:35 AMSep 20
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Diehards,

Believe it or not, Paul, I sympathize with you. It’s so frustrating to feel the need to be understood. Just remember the parable of the sower!

Anyway I appreciate what you said about “waking up” to a false self, although I wouldn’t call that waking up. I’d think of it more like discovering one of the many other selves in each of us. As long as there’s something that identifies with what looks like awakening, it isn’t awakening —

Speaking from experience,
Janet

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Paul Rezendes

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Sep 20, 2025, 11:47:46 AMSep 20
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Janet,

LOL, I had to look up, "Just remember the parable of the sower!"

I couldn't agree more, in what you said here: "As long as there’s something that identifies with what looks like awakening, it isn’t awakening —“ 

💜
Paul 



On Sep 20, 2025, at 11:11 AM, Janet Asiain <janet...@gmail.com> wrote:


Janet

Dan Kilpatrick

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Sep 20, 2025, 12:30:03 PMSep 20
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Paul, Janet, and All,

Paul, I felt what you shared here was very clear. And even if it may sound familiar, it also feels spontaneous to me. It brought up the Zen parable of the man who said before enlightenment, chopping wood etc, after enlightenment, chopping wood etc. Which is really saying what you shared in a simple way: there is no before or after. This is what is awakened to. Life as it is.....

Another thing hits me as well. What you shared is not static. It is in flux. It may change its form in any moment, or open up into something unknowable at this moment. This seems to be the beauty of the pointing. It has no real direction to it......  -Dan

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Paul Rezendes

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Sep 20, 2025, 1:10:36 PMSep 20
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Dan, yes, there's just this as it is.

Paul

Rob MacDonald

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Sep 20, 2025, 5:56:35 PMSep 20
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Thank you for sharing this, Paul.

As Dan said, it is very clear.  Experience late from here has been just as you write - not as expected, leading to more opportunity to be curious about what is here, and disappointed that as things clarify slightly more, it isn't what "I" had hoped it would be (which actually just points back at that false sense of self, as you say, when there is an investigation of that disappointment.

I also resonate with the 'I could say a hell of a lot more but will leave it here'.  I suppose if someone wanted to talk with me about the process,  could relate to my experiences, but all the insights seem to appear and then fade as quickly as they come, and what is left is just experience.  It's like a flash bulb that pops, shines light, and fades away, or a stroke of lightning on a dark night - radiant, electric, but eventually just returns to the flat scene of darkness.  But these momentary insights do change us, while also leaving experience just as it has always been.

At least how it has been appearing from here lately.

- Rob M. 

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Paul Rezendes

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Sep 20, 2025, 6:26:02 PMSep 20
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Rob,

Yes, there is something (insight) that is affecting our reality. You can't experience that insight or “know" it in any way, but you can't deny it either, as you can see how it changes our lives. Can we say it's known by its action. It is a direct action that is not of thought, but is affecting not only thought but our whole lives.

Thanks for your input,

Paul

Jeffrey Angelson

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Sep 20, 2025, 6:32:22 PMSep 20
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Paul , Rob All

If anyone can give an example of how this affects their life it would be helpful.. if it’s too personal I understand 

Paul Rezendes

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Sep 20, 2025, 6:54:25 PMSep 20
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Jeffrey,

Here is a very personal example: when I was about 30 years old, I had read every K book that was written at that time. K. was saying pay attention, pay attention. And that's exactly what I was doing as I was walking in the woods outside my yoga ashram. I was paying attention to every bird sound in the canopy, paying attention to every thought, every foot fall, the smells, my heart beating. I was paying attention. I was the observer. Out of nowhere came an insight that revealed that that observer was the thinker of the thought which was created by thought which was watching thought. As thought tried to observe itself, it was dividing itself and it couldn't see that it was dividing itself. It was blind, but there was something seeing and revealing the blindness and putting thought in its place. That seeing, that insight was its own action, and there no longer could be a belief in the thinker of the thought. That definitely was a life changer for me, and I didn’t do it!

Paul

Jeffrey Angelson

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Sep 20, 2025, 7:55:42 PMSep 20
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Paul

Wu Wei?
It sounds like you had an insight after which life just started flowing through you. There was nothing to do. Nothing to know. The reality revealed itself. Is this what you point to when you say emptiness collapses into present moment experience? 



Paul Rezendes

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Sep 22, 2025, 10:40:55 AMSep 22
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Jeffrey,

Yes, Wei Wu Wei— this is what I was pointing to. There is action without an actor, or one of the other interpretations would be action without action.

Paul

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