Just One Look Forum Archives

HI Everyone - Thanks so much for sharing your experience with Just One Look.

I wanted to see if anyone who has used the Just One Look started the looking when they were identified with an intense experience of suffering or conflict and what their experience has been with the looking and the experience of suffering.

I am asking of course because that is what I am experiencing - it is experienced as if there is a knotted rope all through the body - like a twisted DNA strand that is experienced as vice like contractions or knots in each point of the body corresponding with what would be traditionally thought of as the chakras. The feeling seems to feel as if it is pulling in different directions and is very distracting.

I'd love to hear of your experience with this anyone who may have had a similar experience.

Best Wishes

Annie

Hi Annie,

This is what I experienced, and it peaked around two weeks ago. I thought my case was special and I'm glad we can talk. I'm 17 and I had my first real look in February. I pretty much had no spiritual background, and stumbled upon johns name out of chance.

For me, the progress of time has been been the only real help. Around two or three weeks ago like I said, things were almost unbearable.

What got me through the worst part was I would go down into my basement and cry my eyeballs out and pound on furniture for 30 minutes at a time. This helped relieve a little bit of torment, for a bit. Another aid has been Qi Gong, which helps the body balance and relax it's energy.

The knot in your body.. I have the same thing. I think our bodies are undergoing a big chemical change and this is the side effect.

Hope I helped,

David

Hi Annie

I wanted to respond to you as this is exactly the feeling I have always had. All the emotions I experienced since childhood seemed to be tied together in 'knots' all mixed up and vying for my attention. Like David I often... yes, very often could only cry it out.

I did a lot of therapy to release these repressed emotions for instance as you say in specific chakra centers in the body. Yes all well and good but that underlying anxiety goes so deep. A few years into the recovery a lot of deeper changes have occurred slowly but surely over time I seem to have lost all desire to be free of this sensation of anxiety. It is even interesting to observe and I can identify it more easily, for example between 5 and 6 o'clock very anxious in my belly. (dinner time as a child) or being woken up at night. I guess I nip it in the bud so to speak... I move my attention to the breath and go on with what I was doing in present day time.

On a recent podcast someone mentioned "useless" thoughts. I thought it was funny and say that often to myself in a humorous way. Well whatever helps huh... I've played around with a lot of things but since the looking I seem to find what makes sense for me and suggestions and sharing from others here have really helped too.

much love and tenderness,

Maureen

Why does John advise people to avoid spiritual teachings after the looking? How come it will cause confusion? I read some Adyashanti and Osho and laughed at a lot of what they said, because they articulated things that i cant, and i felt better afterwards. Some teachers say explicitly that the fear of life is the/a problem.. including Krishnamurti and Jeff Foster. maybe all of these teachers are describing the state free of the fear of life but never realized what John did?

Wow, I have been feeling this too and wondered whether it's related to the recovery period or something else. I have a strong knot in the throat area (the 5th chakra, the chakra of speech) and thought that it's perhaps related to things I haven't been able to express. Reading your account made me think that it might actually be something people experience when the old structure is crumbling. I have been in recovery for almost two years. Intense suffering indeed! Peaceful journey to everyone!

Maureen did a great job of articulating some of the weird things that might happen. I'm also experiencing things that relate to my childhood, and one day I even woke up from a nap thinking that I was in my house from my earlier teenage years.

I'm going to add a suggestion. John's focused attention exercise has been helping me a lot. Doing it ten minutes a day has led to a nice improvement.

The energy created in my body due to thinking "I've found it. My experience should absolutely perfect" was a suicidal-thinking-inducing idea, as I found out. Because I was agonized before the looking, that ideal made me retreat further into unreality and screwed up the mind-body connection. Which led me to do and say things that I will no doubt cringe at a year from now. John's article called "Expectations" was very helpful to me in understanding a trap that any one of us could go for.

The recovery period for me has been awkward, uncomfortable, disorienting, and any other word that could fit in that group. Even writing this posting feels awkward because just normal things like communicating are being re-learned. Even typing on a keyboard seems different! Things are becoming intimate like John said they would.

Good luck to everyone,

David

Thanks for sharing your experience with this you guys - it's much appreciated - Annie

Hey Zinggy, I feel quite qualified to answer your question because I went down that road BIG TIME!

I spent the better part of 5 years listening to ANYONE & ANYTHING I could find about the Non-dual experience! Videos, podcasts A COURSE IN MIRACLES and even went so far as to get ordained!

You know what happened? I totally delayed healing my mind and spent those years trying to figure it out! The whole thing became an exercise of (if you'll excuse the term) Mental masturbation. And I missed the whole point!

I was chasing an experience I had in 2012 where my whole sense of indentity was unexpectedly ripped away! All sense of separation gone! Yup, everything they talk about I experienced! BUT.....The "Soldiers of fear" talked about here weren't and AREN'T done with me!

Its taken 5 years to see that what John and Carla teach is a stripped down no nonsense instruction to get back to the truth of myself without the craziness of my mind OR any spiritual understanding or misinterpretation of what those other people are trying to point to!

So in short, The purpose of the looking is to SEE FOR OURSELVES that "I am not my thoughts" thus clearing the context of what "Me" truly is and feels like.

The focused attention exercises do exactly what John says they will do! Give us control over what we attend to and the power to decide for ourselves what deserves our attention! I finally am beginning to see that this is the case! Spiritual teachings allow the mind to engage in trying to solve a puzzle that CANNOT BE SOLVED! John's method isn't about solving a puzzle! It's a method that shows us DIRECTLY that what we TRULY are is prior to the mental activity first and foremost and then how to direct the mind through the use of attention.

I hope that helps you avoid the wasted time I could've used to be much further along than I am now!

Peace out!

This is highly encouraging, thank you!

This thread surfaced at the right time for me. I'm going through a very awkward period in recovery, my life right now seems riddled with paradoxes and all kinds of unexplained and often weird or unbelievable experiences and arisings. Some days I become very fearful of where I am and where I'm headed, a feeling of despair and lack of control. At times I find it hard to distinguish fantasy from reality. What i see to be the case is that subconsciously stored shame, guilt and self-doubt (aka fear) is coming at me with more force than before, and is taking shape right in front of me, making it very difficult to feel at ease with myself for an extended period of time. The soldiers of fear are sending in reinforcements one after the other, drastically enlightening me as to what I need to change about me in order to be well. It is, as the title says, an intense experience if suffering on these "down" days. It occurs in vivid dreams as well.

I don't know what has caused this to happen now, but I speculate that 1) I am doing the self-directed attention exercise more intensely than before, stirring a ruckus among the fear troops, and 2) that I am in fact not alone in this process, that my social context has an influence, with many others who are close to me that are also recovering from the fear of life disease. With much fear gone from my mind already, I am now more open to others' say and suggestions that may not always be grounded in sanity. The self-defense mechanisms that were strong and automatic before now feel weak and ineffective. This openness can make me feel gullible around folks who are more prone to violence and violent attitudes, when I just want to chill, and calmly enjoy my life. Is it reasonable to think that my state is related to theirs?

Or is it just another illusion to keep me away from taking responsibility over my own attention? I'm working to take agency in the way John and Carla are suggesting, because it is the only way I trust will get me out. And the only reason I trust the exercise is because I can see that my attention is the only thing I see to be truly my own, whereas all else is all else.

The fear that arises in my life now is intense, yet I have a sense of okayness with all of it, even an interest in it, even in the midst of all this wishing and yearning for things to be different. Some days I so long to join in the fun that is my life... that the agonizing and alienating fear would just go away once and for all... wherever the heck it came from.

Love and peace to all,

Robert

Spot on !!!!!

There is only you or me. And looking at me is the direct way out of you as fear. Suffering only allows me. When you are in the midst of what may be described as suffering, the you who would be fear in response, simply has no opportunity left but to turn to me. Yes, turn to me. Not some other's insight. Cause when you are hurting for certain, there is no answer behind the remedial curtain--there's just you or me, just you and me. Written while waiting for my next intensely delayed bowel movement, which is occurring now as you read this. Excuse me.