The Daily Niz (discussion)

It's a pointer ... I can prattle on about how I follow it but that prattle is just words. I recall in one of the dialogs Niz making the distinction between his "I am" suggestion and the use of mantra's ... he didn't disparage mantras, he just made the distinction. I've got no experience with mantras. From what little I've heard or read about them the goal is a specific mind-state. That's not what I'm referring to with those four pointers.

Here a paralell to ATA is useful: unlike a mantra, "refusing all thoughts but 'I am'" is something that can be done anywhere, anytime, interrupted only when the use of the mind is necessary.

Obviously referring to it as a "doing" is inherently misleading.

<just_words>
"I am" refers to our sense of being, the one thing that we can be absolutely certain of. When I "refuse all thoughts but 'I am'", I don't concentrate or focus on the words or the thought "I am". When I "refuse all thoughts but 'I am'", I'm in touch with my sense of being and I watch thoughts arise without following them, without denying them, without suppressing them, without assigning truth value to them, without dismissing them as false, without deliberately refraining from evaluating the truth value of them ... the thoughts, as they arise, stay for as long as they do and then eventually, they dissolve. In the non-absence of thought, that feeling of the sense of my being, that we can refer to as the "I am", can be felt more deeply, more intensely ... there are a myriad of descriptions that can apply to the sense of "I am" from there, none of them which will completely capture the sense itself
<just_words>

<speculation> The Western ear, especially a secular western ear that has no habit of prayer, might hear the word "refuse" and associate it with the suppression of thought ... I know that if I'd heard it a few years ago, that's what I would have assumed. In India, where a tradition of meditation is more common, the expression might be more readily understood. A European visitor said something similar to this to Niz in one of the dialog's and Niz pissed all over the idea ... it was the only time in all of the dialogs I've read so far that I've disagreed with. </speculation>