scared moment with nothing to hold on to

This post may sound even more crazy than usual. At one point I felt a little crazy, but still it also felt like the right direction.

So I've been very intentionally and consistently putting energy into this practice of dissolving everything, seeing everything as the clear light, as my mind. I really mean everything, not just tricky moments, but every piece of experience, as often as I could.

To me it seemed "logically" that it must be true that everything I perceive is my mind, just working through logically how I understand the perception process to work. And whenever I applied the Fivefold Teachings, or various Dream Yoga practices, my direct experience also confirmed this. So, being stubborn, and having maybe too much pride, I decided I will do this, I will eventually succeed 100%, nothing will get in my way, no matter how difficult or how long. I also continued my studying. After having at least read almost every book Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche ever wrote, I had started the same with Chogyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, whose books and presentation I also heartily recommend.

I had gotten myself to a place where I could directly know and really feel that objects I saw in front of me with my eyes were really just me looking at my own mind. For many moments, I really literally feel like I was looking at myself. Everything I see is literally my mind. One could debate about the reality behind that which my mind is reflecting, and one can debate where the line is between my mind and the rest of reality, but regardless what I am directly seeing, is my own mind. Or you could say my mind's reflection, dream, or reconstruction, of some inputs it receives, mixed with past memories, expectations, and associations. The words and concepts about this don't matter. I keep repeating words like "directly", "know", and "feel" because that's what I mean. I'm not talking about just walking around, thinking or saying to yourself, "this is a dream", "this is my mind". Though you can perhaps do that to trigger the actual feeling, the feeling and experience itself is important, the words and thoughts are not the point at all.

So I was getting much more familiarity and experience with this, but still not consistent, and quite far from continuous and stable. But, at least now with better familiarity I understood what I was at least trying to do, and I could see clearly where I needed to improve. As one example, I could tell, ironically, that even though I could easily recognize my thoughts arising, and I know by definition that thoughts are mental events only, they "felt" very solid and real. So even while feeling everything around me as emptiness and light, my thoughts seemed solid. Even "solid" thoughts about "spacious" phenomena. So I had to do something about this.

So, many of my thoughts are verbal in nature, I "hear" them in mind, playing out as speech, the words representing the content. I clarify this since there are people for which that is not how most or any of their thoughts manifest. So in my case, there is an audio/sound representation to much of my thinking. So I decided, OK, I'm always dissolving vision of my eyes. It's time I focus hard on "vision" of my ears, as a stepping stone to better dissolving my thoughts. So I listened to some music, eyes closed first, opening to the place where I felt I was listening not to some external sound source, but rather I was listening to my mind. I directly felt the sounds of music I was hearing were my own mind. After some experience of this with eyes closed, I opened my eyes. I opened to feeling both everything I saw, and everything I heard, as me, as my own mind. I was not stable at all in this, but I could do it, for many moments repeated again and again.

And then, the result. After stopping the music. I heard outside noises, traffic, birds, as my mind. And the goal, the "sound" of my thoughts, not as solid existing things anymore, but as the sound of my own mind. I'm sorry if this sounds crazy, silly, or too obvious. But there is a huge difference in logically knowing "yes, of course my thoughts are my mind" vs actually feeling them as constructed sounds, exactly like the sound of car traffic.

And then, fear, real fear. It didn't last very long for me, at least this time, but I truly lost my footing at that point. Nothing to hold on to. Everything was unreal, inner and outer.
I had read about this kind of thing before and could sort of imagine it, but I had still mostly took it just as poetry, not a literal description. I realized I was mistaken.

I feel like things are doing what they should. I'm sticking with it.

Thank you for sharing your experiences of this search, Bob! You are really diving deep into these teachings!

Yes, I also heard about the fear of nothing to hold on to.
Alexander Chaoul once said "we have to GROUND in space, that really struck me although I am not sure how to do that. I guess he meant through awareness...
Marijke

Thank you for sharing, i must ready several times to go deeper. Yes It happend to me something similar, including the dear. It's only that we have to get used to this "ground in space" or it's only a passage waiting the great bliss?

I want to add something about what I wrote about GROUNDING in space. I remember Rinpoche talked about it in the dreamyoga course. He said that matter is shakable so even though it may help you feel temporaly grounded there is no real stability.When you are GROUNDED in space you are grounded in what is changeless and unshakable and that is the real experience to groundedness.
He made it very practical when he said that if we look at our experiences in life when many things are happening and you can still feel grounded in space where everything is flexible and recognised as dreamlike, then you will know you are grounded in what is changeless.
Marijke

Very well pointed, many time, even in those days i was thinking the same. Yesterday, for example, i was talking to a friend of mine who was very sorry because my mother, that Is 86 years old, did'nt reconize him.
So i said to him that,on the one hand there is the body, emotions, thoughts, the ego which is constantly changing and which is destined to degrade. On the other hand there is the awareness that remains unchanged; there is a subtle part of consciousness that is always stable. Investing in the self is like building on sand, in the end the building crumbles.