Could You Stop It Completely?

This is not an interview and not a paper review. It is a 45-minute guided self-hypnosis, narrated by Ariel, built from a short passage he wrote about self-consciousness and the illusory nature of self. The session sets up the conditions the passage points at: a steady, gladdened mind first, then direct investigation, then total non-doing. About thirty of the forty-five minutes are silence over a low ambient bed, on purpose. The silence is where the work happens.

How to listen

Sit rather than lie down, with headphones, somewhere you will not be interrupted for forty-five minutes. This is a waking session with a real emergence at the end, not a sleep track. Not while driving or operating anything, and not after alcohol or sedatives. If you have a history of psychosis, a dissociative disorder, active PTSD, severe depression, or you are in acute grief, do this with a clinician or teacher who knows you, or not at all. If spaciousness turns to dread, or a sense that nothing is real persists after the session, stop using it, put your feet on the floor, name five things you can see, eat something. Effects that last beyond a day warrant a meditation-informed clinician.

Chapters

0:00 Frame. Permission, nothing to do, and a grounding line you can use at any moment.
1:59 Settling. Breath, release, softening behind the eyes.
6:58 Less to Manage. A countdown, and the manager is offered a break.
9:27 Gladdening. Gratitude opens into warmth, and the warmth is left alone until it grows on its own.
17:48 Noticing. Where was the manager just now? Self-consciousness as a felt event that comes and goes.
22:10 Be Curious. Time, space and the feeling of lack, examined directly as sensations.
31:43 Be Ruthless, Be Honest. Six questions, each shorter than the last, each followed by a longer silence.
42:40 Eyes Open. Emergence, with the looking still in progress.

The passage the session is built from

Notice how much self-consciousness is a variable and transient property.

Notice how, in moments of gratitude or openheartedness, you are less fixated on history and narrative.

Notice that in moments of flow, the management of self is temporarily forgotten.

See if you can practice noticing, appreciating, and extending moments like this, via meditation and other means.

If someone who was further down the path wanted to investigate the illusory nature of self, I’d say: be curious. Examine the basic architecture of selfhood. Time, space, the feeling of lack. These are sensory phenomena that arise and dissipate. When you investigate them directly, you begin to notice that they are tensions that sometimes relax, leading to startling feelings of spaciousness, timelessness, wholeness, and so on. Keep going.

If someone who was even further down the path wanted to investigate the illusory nature of self, I’d say: be ruthless, be honest. Confront yourself. What exactly is the “awareness” in your sense of “non-dual awareness”? Are you holding onto subtle conceit about “your” spiritual accomplishments? Have you checked in on your sense of superiority/inferiority lately, that most basic see-saw foundation of the limited sense of self? What would still be scary to you about giving up control? What do you think you’re doing when you meditate? Could you stop it completely?

The voice is Ariel's, cloned and read at its natural pace. The pacing comes from the silence between lines, never from slowing the voice down. The bed was chosen by measurement from several candidates for warmth, stillness and the absence of anything to follow. What is found in the session stays found. There is nothing to remember.