Lost

From a correspondence:

- That being said, it seems like there has been something of a natural progression to this point, whereby setting up the subtle watcher I was able to push back and die to an exclusive identity with body and mind, leaving what I can only presume is an identification with the subtle soul-level.

The word soul ends up being misleading in all of this, at least that is what I found after a long time of looking at it and hearing it used - the way you are using it is closest, I think I heard it utilized in so many ways that had ’separate’ attached that even when I heard it used ‘correctly’, there was still a subtle thread of that past residue on it, and that in the back of the mind would still form a tendency to see something as separate.

Right here, how you describe it, is pretty much how it happens for a while. It is also about as far as the seekers who manage to make it to this point (which is few, even) appear to get - moving no further. I had and have no problem when the identification is utilized in this way with watching or the watcher. The issue comes in, and probably a big part of the reason that ‘progress’ seems to stop at this very point, is so few are instructed to then literally drop the watcher. There can be no separation - and there can be no expectations. The largest thing that held me up, even to the bitter end, was expectation. And one of the chief expectations is that ’something’ is going to happen to ’someone’, especially ’someone separate’. That notion is dead wrong on so many counts, because there is no separation and there is no one - yet because so many teachings, readings, and practices have implanted this into thought and practice, and not qualified it or moved to nulify it once a seeker naturally is pushed back (like you are being) to the point where then the watcher can be let go, it leaves an unresolved tension and people get stuck. Especially experienced meditators.

- I’m trying to find what is beyond the cycles

What it leads to is this,

- is an identification with the subtle soul-level

Yet with no ‘identification’ per se at all. No levels, no soul, just perception perceiving perception itself. This is a tough one to explain - you only know it when it hits you. In other words, you cannot at this point NOT identify with your body, mind or feelings exclusively much beyond the point of mentally getting accustomed to the idea, brief flashes, or perhaps some sort of experiential parallel through practice or meditation. There are a couple ways this identification seems to finally be broken - either through a dramatic direct encounter (with not just the emptiness, but the resultant fullness as well - in the end, both are ‘impossibly’ simultaneous at all times), through waking up and having the identification fall away, or through a long time process of getting used to anything that can, will and does happen to the human - no matter what - to the degree where no movement is ever made again to interfere with the life - it unfolds unhindered. Allowing that final portion (which is how the remainder of life is lived, regardless, in all the above scenarios - so has to be gotten used to and ‘applied’ to the fullest, regardless) is what puts awareness attention squarely back on attention - since the life in front is no longer being messed with. If you are cool with anything that can happen in front of you (which really means you can sit with any discomfort or desire or draw felt inwardly as the world - which the mind has made its connection with - stir up energy ‘inside’) you are free to be, you are released from the burden of the human. Until what is watching is comfortable enough for that to happen, you stay put and only go so far, you can’t leave, because you’re still interested in whats happening in front of you. Not allowing it to just happen as it actually is, what is watching, ‘lost’, is all over the place - scattered consciousness - and as a result is not paying attention to perception itself.