Exercise during the week: 'Contemplate what assumptions you have about life. Discover as many assumptions as you can, you should be able to find a lot. Do not stop on the surface, consider the life you live as an experience, what assumptions generate that experience?' I have a life assumption that to live as a modern human, (i.e. a person) is to suffer other people, as if coming with the package. The agendas of other people, the loss of other people etc. My assumption as a person with language and a life story is like a self-fulfilling conceptual loop, seemingly affecting my body interacting with other people with their own conceptual loops. Seems like we also want our loops to be consistent and predictable, easier to handle...again assumptions. I'm considering life as a person as distinct from human life (separate biological entities) where the body does its job to navigate with sensation, like my body inherently sees, hears, feels, perhaps physical loops (like cells, looping and morphing into other cells etc.) Getting clearer on biological life, there is something very silent and trustworthy about it, nothing to worry about, body heals, breathes, digests, takes care of itself as change occurs, peaceful actually. Looked up the English noun compassion, meaning "to suffer together with". I'm allowing the possibility of living as a person generating compassion for the suffering of other people. Another person is just like me; we are suffering together as people. Seems more effective for life in general, maybe Buddha et al. had a point with compassion and unconditional love etc. Thanks for listening.

Good session today, clarity is clearer now :) I'm getting clarity as a principle as experiencing each distinction as just that and not confused or conflated with any other distinction. An experience of ___ is an experience of ___. Not the concepts about it or anything added or projected onto___. A concept of___ is a concept of ____ not it itself. Getting the vibe of 'the chair' exercises from the ENB. These early morning sessions (in Australia) are very helpful for staying on track during the week. Thanks, and see you at the upcoming workshop! Robert

In today session, I realised that the thought that I have of another is obviously just a thought but strangly enough appears to become my very experience of them. As if, all their behaviours, talks and actions were filtered by this very thought I have about them. Like a matrice or a interpretative framework which shape all the emotions, réactions and feelings I have when being around them. It recall the idea which says that the observer influences the person which he observe. And brings back to us the power to change our experience of another by changing our thought of them. Thanks to @Viktor Balogh for this session and to @Ethan Martin for joining us tonight and bringing great value to the class.

At the end of the community session, earlier, @Viktor Balogh and @Lilia Hrabar briefly talked about grasping what another and another person's experience is. That sort of stuck with me and I contemplated on that question, trying to grasp what my girlfriend's experience is. As I was working on this, many things came up, images of how it might be to live life as her, how it is for her to work, how she is caring about her sick mother and how being with me is for her point of view. I could notice all these images as concepts that I have and that they are not, what her experience is. I kept wondering and investigating about what that thing is, that I call her experience. It also became clear, that grasping what her experience is is not becoming her as if looking through her eyes, because that would be my experience, then. Imagining all of that is just another concept, not her experience. I saw, that there still is something in my experience that I call "her experience" and as all of the other things (I just mentioned) dropped away, it suddenly became clear that it is just that, her experience, and I became conscious of what that is, as I dropped all those concepts. Now writing about this I realize, how mind-boggling all of this is, especially when trying to put it into words. Like trying to unsee an optical illusion but within my actual experience. Working through this self vs. other distinction feels very fruitful, though. Having had this realization and seeing through those workings of my mind at least for a brief moment, gives me confidence that this work actually leads somewhere. Thanks for that community session today! Any thoughts? Is anyone else working on this?

I had an insight regarding discipline today. Normally I think of discipline as something I use to accomplish something new. But today I realized discipline isn't limited to "something I can't do yet". Discipline can also be used to STOP doing something I am already doing that's just causing mischief and suffering. A habit of mind that comes from a bottom line belief, backed by an assumption, usually about me. I can hold a vigil. Notice the habit whenever it comes up. I can learn to be a grown-up and just stop doing it. And I can contemplate the bottom line if it's super strong and just won't go away. All of this takes discipline. In case you're all wondering, the habit I have that I'm now working on is social (of course!). It's where I try to be "helpful" to others by offering advice, then I feel hurt or disappointed when my advice is rejected or dismissed in some way. Then I fester and obsess over it for days afterwards. It always passes, but then something else always takes its place. Maybe some of you have something like this going on as well. Somehow knowing I can bring discipline to this problem has already changed my relationship to the matter. I am committed to ending this type of suffering.