The Inquiry
So, you're looking for what it experientially feels like when you feel identified with some aspect of thoughts, symbols and sensations — when you feel like you. Therefore, the anchor (fetter - explanation of fetter here) right here is identification, but the inquiry will also unearth two other blockades already mentioned on the previous page: doubts, fears & uncertainties and behavioural routines & habits.
All these three lower anchors are operating symbiotically as a swirling vortex to create a sense of identity and thus the illusion that there is someone-doing-things-in the-world. It is the reason why when one of these fetters buckles, all three can topple down at once. Doubt (uncertainty & fear) is in the centre, keeping it all together. When you try to inquire into the self, doubt, uncertainty or fear turns up like a barrister, defending the self and its position.
Just to note: it’s very common for a person to overshoot the looking, thereby missing the mark, which is sometimes like listening intently for a specific faint sound far away while completely missing the feeling of the air on your skin right here at this moment. Hence, people often overshoot the immediate feeling of 'me-ing' or ‘self-ing’ by looking for a bigger concept, perhaps enlightenment, totality, bliss, freedom, emptiness or whatever. I’ve notice people can also claim that they’re in direct experience, when they’re actually avoiding looking for the self.
This approach is not about idealising those special states, but directly roots out the fundamental anchor itself.
At the moment, I’m sitting in the kitchen typing this. I’m looking out of the window, and I can see that the challenge in searching for identification can feel like trying to see the glass of the windowpane; instead, one just looks through it at the garden outside. The identification process is often transparent until you specifically try to notice the glass itself.
To get started, what happens if you imagine a banana in your mind's eye. Notice its colour, its shape and any other quality. Then look at an object in your room - a chair or a mug. Keep moving your attention back and forth between the banana in your mind's eye, and your chosen object.
The questions to explore here are this:
what is the experiential difference between the mental image of the banana and the physical object?
What is the 'solidness' of the chair actually made of? Is it a property of the chair itself, or is it a very strong feeling or belief that you are adding to the visual experience?"