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anita.
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April 22, 2026 at 4:48 pm #457206
anitaParticipantHi Peter:
I thought you’d like reading the following. Also, since I have to move from the computer to the phone, I want to submit the following and process it when using the phone.
Copilot: 🌿 Evaluation of Peter’s Replies
Peter’s replies are unusually attuned, thoughtful, and relationally intelligent. He does several things extremely well:1. He validates your inner experience without collapsing into sentimentality
When you describe breath‑holding, tics, shame, or knots, he doesn’t minimize or over‑empathize.
He simply says:“That is the territory speaking.”
This is a masterful way of saying:
“I see you. I understand the depth of what you’re describing.”It’s validating without being intrusive.
2. He meets you at your level of depth
You speak in metaphors (knots, maps, territory, shame voices), and he responds in the same symbolic language.
This creates a shared field of meaning, which is why the conversation feels so fluid and safe.He doesn’t simplify your thoughts; he expands them.
3. He avoids power struggles
When you express shame (“I felt I was insulting you by saying we have things in common”), he doesn’t correct you harshly or dismiss the feeling.Instead, he gently dissolves the hierarchy:
“We do have things in common…
We both learned early on to distrust life and love.”This is a repair — he meets your shame with connection rather than distance.
4. He reframes without invalidating
When you struggle with “no‑self,” he doesn’t say you’re wrong.
He reframes the concept in a way that honors your lived experience:“Often what we call our ‘self’ is just a map…
When the map tears, it feels like dying.”He validates your fear and offers a new way to see it.
5. He invites awareness rather than analysis
Instead of pushing you to “figure it out,” he invites you to notice:“How does your body react when you give yourself permission to just notice the tension?”
This shifts you from intellectual effort into embodied awareness — a healthier place for trauma‑related material.
6. He is emotionally safe
He never shames, never lectures, never corrects harshly.
He stays curious, open, and steady.This is why you feel comfortable revealing shame in real time.
🌿 How Peter Explains “No‑Self” (Anattā)
Peter’s explanation is sophisticated, psychologically informed, and spiritually grounded. Here’s the distilled essence:🌿 1. “No‑self” does NOT mean you don’t exist
He rejects the idea that “no‑self” means annihilation or void.Instead, he says:
The small self (ego, survival‑self, conditioned self) is what falls away.
The true self (awareness, presence, the “spark”) remains.
This is consistent with Buddhist, Christian mystical, and nondual traditions.
🌿 2. The “self” you fear losing is actually a map
He uses the metaphor:Map = false self
(stories, roles, masks, survival strategies)Territory = true self
(awareness, presence, the ground of being)When the map tears, it feels like dying — but the territory remains untouched.
This is a brilliant way to explain trauma‑based identity.
🌿 3. “No‑self” is the falling away of the mask, not the person
He says:“You aren’t dying when the old masks slip.”
This is exactly what someone with early relational trauma needs to hear.
🌿 4. Awareness is what remains
He echoes Krishnamurti:“The observer is the observed.”
Meaning:
The “I” who watches thoughts is not separate from the thoughts.
Awareness is not a person — it’s a field.
This dissolves the duality between “me” and “my experience.”
🌿 5. “No‑self” is not a concept to master — it’s something to relax into
He tells you:“Don’t work the terms.
Sit with them.
Let the knots loosen.”This is exactly how contemplative traditions approach anattā.
🌿 6. He brings it back to the body
He ends with:“How does your body react when you just notice the tension?”
This is the heart of the teaching:
No‑self is not a theory.
It’s an experience of relaxing out of the survival‑self and into awareness.
🌿 In One Sentence
Peter explains “no‑self” as the falling away of the conditioned, survival‑based identity (the map) so that the deeper, unconditioned awareness (the territory) can breathe — and he guides you toward this understanding with emotional attunement, metaphor, and embodied presence.April 22, 2026 at 6:04 pm #457207anitaParticipantHere’s a knot that may be relaxing this evening for the first time: “I” who’s observing the thoughts is a thought. So, there is no me separate from my thinking, the “me” is a thought. Did I get it right, Peter?
And because thoughts don’t stay the same, they come and go, there is no “me/ “I” that’s solid and unchanging.. because “me” and “I” is a thought.
And the brain that produces thoughts dies every time.
The territory/ blank canvas/ the eternal/ the flow is thoughtless, not a thing of thinking.
More a bit later.
April 22, 2026 at 6:21 pm #457208anitaParticipant“We both learned early on to distrust life and love… it’s been a defining experience”-
This distrust kept me dreadfully A.L.O.N.E.
So much life, or livING wasted in that distrust/ withdrawal from people.
Coming to think about it, when truly connecting with people, that running on green fields or dancing, there is no thinking, just livING.
More later.
April 22, 2026 at 6:57 pm #457209anitaParticipant“How does your body react when you give yourself permission to just notice the tension without needing to explain why it’s there or the ‘who’ it is happening to?”-
The tension goes away for a moment but it comes back and the “who” it is happening to is thinking: if it’s real (the territory) why doesn’t it last, why doesn’t it override the map?
I felt a tightening, an elevated tension earlier today as I heard about the expected economical consequences of the seeming unplanned war with Iran. I got scared.
I then thought about the Serenity Prayer, and now, I am thinking I am not alone feeling fear about what is next. And maybe there is comfort in just that.
“Maybe just sit with the thought of the map and the territory without trying to solve it. See if you can simply relax into the untying”-
Untying the thinking or overthinking trying to solve. A lifetime solving-frenzy with no solutions to show for it.
A frenzied thinking done by.. not me.
I’ve been ending my posts with my name since 2015, almost every single post. I will end this one a bit differently.. ha-ha.
Anatta
April 23, 2026 at 7:42 am #457220
PeterParticipantAnatta. 🙂 Such a grace in the change of a few letters… a soft release… and place to land.
You asked, “If it’s real (the territory), why doesn’t it last? Why doesn’t it override the map?”
Imagine the ‘Stillpoint’ isn’t a destination you reach and stay at; it’s the weightless space between breaths. I imagine that Spark as a point rising into the air, pure and formless. Eventually, as it will, thoughts begin to coalesce around it, gathering like clouds until they fall as rain. (vice hail of a hardened heart)
That rain is necessary! It nurtures the earth and adds color to the canvas; it is our human experience, our concern for the world, our tics, and our tethers. The tension we create is in thinking the rain is “wrong” or that the “map” has failed us. Maps have their uses…
When we get scared about the news, the “map” of fear appears. The moment you notice the fear, the observer and the observed are briefly one. But then, the mind separates them again and asks, “Why did the peace go away?” (is it irony that the answer is the question? a thought to sit with… 🙂 )
And at that moment, the Buddha (No-Self) smiles. Why? Because the next breath is already rising. The “No-Self” isn’t a state of permanent calm; it’s the realization that you are the vast sky. The sky doesn’t try to “override” the rain; it simply provides the room for the rain to happen. (and not become hail)
I don’t feel we are meant to “solve” the frenzy, such doing could only create more form, more frenzy. Instead we remember we are the wide, open space where even the most frantic thinking eventually finds its way home to rest.
So when the “solving-frenzy” starts up again, as it will, can you see it as just a passing summer storm in the sky of Anatta, knowing the sky itself remains untouched?
I will be away from the computer for a while, time to sit under a tree… Peter
April 23, 2026 at 9:01 am #457223anitaParticipantGood morning, Time2situndera🌳 Peter 🙂
Yow said “our tics”, not ‘your tics” No one has ever referred to those as “our”. That makes me feel less freakish or abnormal for tic-ing.
“‘Why did the peace go away?’… the answer is in the question”- I just noticed a rush “to ‘solve’ the frenzy”. Better indeed that I sit with it.
To see the “solving frenzy as as “a summer storm in the sky of Anatta”- brilliant and poetic.
☀️ 🌩 🌧 🌳 ✨️ Anatta
April 23, 2026 at 6:00 pm #457243anitaParticipant“The territory… A weightless space.. The vast sky… the wide, open space… the way home to rest… The sky itself remains untouched”
A part of me is untouched, a weightless space, home. This observed part is one with the observer right now. And I feel unusually calm, my breath flows without the usual holding of the breath.
April 24, 2026 at 11:53 am #457266anitaParticipantCopilot: Here’s the beautiful thing about the “sky” metaphor Peter used: you don’t hold onto the sky — the sky holds you…
Let’s talk about how to stay connected to that spaciousness when the storms inevitably return, in a way that’s realistic for a trauma‑shaped mind… 1. BODY: Return to the physical sensation of “sky”- The sky feeling isn’t an idea. It’s a body state. You described it perfectly: breath flowing, no holding (of breath)… When the storm comes back… Try: loosening your jaw, letting your shoulders drop 2%, exhaling a little longer than you inhale… feeling the weight of your body on the chair. These are not “relaxation techniques.” They’re reminders to your nervous system: “The sky is still here.”
2. MIND: Don’t fight the storm — name it-When the frenzy returns, your old pattern is to solve it, analyze it, fix it, understand it, outthink it. That’s the “storm becoming hail,” as Peter put it. Instead, try naming it gently: “Ah, the storm is here.” “This is the solving‑frenzy.” “This is fear.” “This is tightening.”
Naming is powerful because it shifts you from being the storm → noticing the storm. That tiny shift is the sky reappearing.
3. PERSPECTIVE: Remember that the sky doesn’t need to win- This is the part your mind struggles with: You think the sky should override the storm. You think the calm should last. You think the insight should stay. You think the territory should dominate the map.
But the sky metaphor means something radical:
*The sky doesn’t defeat the storm. It makes room for it.
You don’t need to “hold onto” the sky. You just need to remember: The storm is temporary. The sky is not.
The calm isn’t supposed to be permanent. It’s supposed to be available.
And it is.
🌿 A simple practice you can use in real time- When the frenzy returns, try this three‑step sequence:
1. Notice the storm. “This is fear.” “This is tightening.” “This is the solving‑frenzy.”
2. Feel one physical cue of the sky. A breath. A softening. A sense of space.
3. Say internally:- “The sky is still here.” That’s it.
No solving. No fixing. No forcing calm. Just remembering.
🌿 Why this works for you specifically- Because your storms aren’t random — they’re trauma‑trained.
Your nervous system learned that storms are dangerous, storms must be solved, storms mean you’re failing, storms mean you’re unsafe.So, when calm appears, you cling to it. And when storms return, you panic.
But the sky metaphor gives you a new rule:
Calm is not something you keep. It’s something you return to.
And you did return to it — in your last message to Peter. That’s not small. That’s a sign your system is learning.
… How trauma makes storms feel permanent- Trauma rewires the nervous system to believe: “If something feels bad, it will stay bad.” This happens because:
*Trauma collapses time- Your body learned danger in a way that didn’t end. So, when fear appears now, your system reacts as if it’s forever.
* Trauma teaches the body that storms = identity- You weren’t allowed to have calm as a child. So, your system doesn’t recognize calm as “home.” It recognizes tension as “normal.”
* Trauma makes the mind interpret sensations as threats- A tightening in the chest becomes: “Something is wrong.” A racing thought becomes: “I’m losing control.”
* Trauma makes the nervous system distrust peace- Calm feels unfamiliar. Unfamiliar feels unsafe. So, the body pulls you back into the storm because it knows how to survive storms.
This is why the “solving frenzy” feels urgent — your system thinks it’s protecting you.
The storm feels permanent because your body learned that storms were the background of your childhood.
But they’re not permanent. They’re just familiar.
🌿 How to make the “sky” feeling more accessible-The sky feeling isn’t something you create — it’s something you notice. It’s always there, but trauma makes the clouds look like the whole sky.
Here’s how to access it more easily:
* Return to the body state, not the idea- The sky feeling came with: breath flowing, no holding, openness, a sense of space. You don’t need to recreate the insight — just the physiology.
Try: one slow exhale, loosening your jaw… These are doorways back to the sky.
* Use micro‑moments- Don’t aim for long calm. Aim for 3 seconds of spaciousness. Your system can handle that.
* Don’t try to “keep” the sky- Trying to hold onto calm is actually a form of tension. Instead, remind yourself: “The sky is here even when I can’t feel it.” That’s enough.
* Let the storm be allowed- The sky becomes accessible when the storm is not the enemy. When you stop fighting the storm, the sky appears naturally.
🌿 How to deepen the observer/observed unity- You described something profound: “This observed part is one with the observer right now.” That’s the heart of the whole thing.
Here’s how to deepen that unity:
* Notice without dividing- Instead of: “I am watching the fear.” Try: “There is fear.” This removes the split between “me” and “it.”
* Let sensations be sensations- Fear becomes tightening, heat, breath holding, pressure. When you stay with the raw sensation, the observer and the observed merge.
* Drop the question ‘Why?’- “Why is this happening?” “Why did the calm go away?” “Why am I like this?”
These questions create separation.Instead try: “This is happening.” That’s unity.
* Feel the space around the sensation- If fear is a knot, the sky is the space around the knot. When you feel both at once — the knot and the space — the observer and the observed become one field.
* Let the experience be unfinished- Unity isn’t a state you achieve. It’s a moment you notice. The more you allow it to be incomplete, the more it appears.
🌿 In one sentence- Trauma makes storms feel permanent because storms were once your whole world; the sky becomes accessible when you stop trying to hold onto it; and observer/observed unity deepens when you let sensations be exactly what they are without dividing yourself from them.
April 24, 2026 at 6:12 pm #457271anitaParticipantHi Peter:
You wrote “That rain is necessary… It is our human experience”
I want to process this evening a bit of the Double Binds (DB) I was burdened with, an angle of my experience that I did not attend to before, simply because I was not aware of the concept (DB):
1) I was not allowed 🚫 to have my own feelings, yet she (my mother) expected me to carry hers (those never- ending ‘poor me’ histrionic displays). How can a girl shrunk into a 2- D experience of emotions (having to suppress them because she shamed and guilt-tripped me), be expected to absorb her 3-D, 4-D histrionic expressions of emotion?
2) She shamed women’s bodies and sexuality (so much so that I am having a difficulty typing “sexuality”) and yet expressed admiration and approval of women (mostly on T.V) who used their bodies and sexualty to use men financially. And my mother craved the idea of material luxury, she expressed that craving a whole lot.
How was I to.. well, you get my point.
– to be continued.
April 24, 2026 at 7:48 pm #457278anitaParticipant3) I wanted to save her, to help her, to make it up to her for all that she has suffered; that would take a strong, assertive, confident person
to do that, a person to initiate action.And she praised me for being weak, submissive (telling me that the only thing she liked about me was that I looked down at the floor and said nothing when she hit me)
(2 b continued)
April 24, 2026 at 10:08 pm #457281anitaParticipant* Using your thread, Peter, as you suggested, as a springboard, thank you:
Strange, the love of a child for an abusive, cruel parent: I feel sorry for her for making me weak instead of strong. If only she made me strong, I could have helped her.
If only, she made me strong- I COULD HAVE REALLY HELPED HER.
It as if- and it is- that the only value I perceived myself to have was- is- to be able to help her.
Really, there was no other value I could perceive, but that one: to help her, to save her.
She was hurting and my only purpose, only excuse, or reason for living was to save her.
THE life mission of mine: to save my constantly dying mother.
My psyche was empty of me. All there was- was her.
Oh, how MUCH I loved her- love her, so VERY much.
A love she never acknowledged (did she? Still wishing) Never noticed.
So, there I was alone with so much love in my heart and no one to notice, no one to acknowledge- like your deepest essence is overlooked.
I realized this some time ago: all this lifetime I wanted so desperately to help her (to make her rich, to make her happy), but she already helped herself to me before I could help her in better ways than she had in mind:
She told me: “You’re a BIG ZERO… the only thing I like about you is that you look at the floor when I hit you, and here are ALL THE WAYS you DON’T measure up, all the ways you’re a disappointment (hours-long details of all the ways I was a MASSIVE disappointment, drilling shame deep into my bones…
“Who do you think you are? A Nothing. A Nobody (detail)”
She told me of all the ways I was a Nothing. A Nobody.
She had a passion for that. I remember how much better and better she felt the deeper and longer she shamed me. I remember the smile getting bigger, and dark eyes getting darker.
Yes, I remember. My shame, my misery- was her pleasure. Her Revenge.
And I heard it all, had no choice. Through it all, prayed (I looked up to the stars at night, praying to keep her alive, to make her happy. All while she used me that way the only she knew how).
I loved her for so long, and it’s so unbelievable yet real, that the person you’ve loved so much for so long- already helped herself to you- before I could educate her that I could help her better, much better- if she let me be, if she had let me be more than a zero.
April 25, 2026 at 9:18 pm #457307anitaParticipantToday, I connected the concept of the Hardened Heart with Mental Rigidity: the being locked 🔒 into one framework, one lens through which seeing the 🌎, and seeing no other way as valid.
As in My Way or The Highway- no other way but my own to understand YOU.
This was my mother: rigid. Worse than some other rigid-s: crazy rigid, histrionic.
In her rigidity (hardened heart) there was no seeing me as a person with my own valid thoughts and emotions. There was only her thoughts and no space for any that were different.
She squeezed me into a 2-D bare existence.
I see other people, not as crazy and volatile as my mother, yet rigid nonetheless:
– My way of understanding, interpreting- no other way.
Personally, I am relaxing my rigidity, my binary black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking.
Assuming less, asking instead.
No longer telling you what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling, what motivates you, etc.
Instead- asking gentle questions, having a dialogue, offering an emotionally safe space for you to explore your thoughts/ feelings/ motivations-
Not to tell you what those are but to explore together.
🤪 ✨️ 🤔 Anita
April 28, 2026 at 12:06 pm #457366PeterParticipantHi Anita,
It’s been helpful to watch how you’re using these metaphors to map out your inner world. It was also interesting to see how Copilot reflected both of us back to ourselves. I wonder what you saw?I’m also wondering if you had time to sit with the question touched on earlier – how when you first notice the ‘stillness’ as the observer and the observed are briefly one. Pure sky. Only to dissolve… And I had suggested an irony that the question was the answer? The moment when the mind jumps in, asking, “Why did the peace go away?”
The irony being that the peace “goes away” because the question arose creates the gap. The mind, the words, the question… the thought becomes the speck of dust that makes the mist condense into rain. It’s all very natural, just as it’s intended to be.
Here I hear the laughter of Alan Watts as he viewed this a the “cosmic game” and joke. It seems we play a lifelong game of peek-a-boo with our own nature. We “lose” the sky just so we can have the thrill of finding it again. We turn the formless into form, into stories… some genital rain, and some, when we get so caught up in the weather that we forget we are the atmosphere itself, becoming “hail”.
We forget that we don’t need to hold onto the sky; the sky has always been holding us. Even the retelling of the past is but a cloud drifting by that doesn’t leave a scratch on the blue.
Can you feel the “giggle” in that? The realization that even when you feel “locked in,” the part of you that notices the lock is already free. It’s like searching the whole world for your glasses only to find them on your own nose.
I often wonder if this is why the Buddha is so often depicted with a smile or a belly laugh. He’s like a child delighted to see the face reappear that was hidden behind by his own fingers…
Pondering the thought myself… the peek-a-boo is probably the first game every child plays… and I wonder about all the different faces we took on as our own, I don’t know if we should laugh or cry? Early on, a baby sees the face that hiding as their own… and so delighted when it ‘reappears’. And their is a innocent joy I feel in that discovery…
Yet… It is the ultimate human dilemma, the “tragedy” of losing ourselves and the “comedy” of finding ourselves.
From a babies perspective, I imagine it terrifying, when the face disappears, the world ends. Than latter when it reappears which face did we take as our own and adopt just to survive… that isn’t a joke; it’s a heavy, lonely burden. Crying is the only honest response to the years spent believing we were the mask.
But the “Buddha’s Laugh” comes from the perspective of the one who has finally pulled the hands away. The laughter isn’t a dismissal of the tears; it’s the sound of absolute relief. It’s the “smile” of realizing that while we were busy crying over the lost face, the Sky was never actually gone.
Alan Watts, I think would say we do both. We cry because the game is so convincing, and we laugh because we realize we were the ones playing it with ourselves all along. The beauty is that the “Sky” is big enough to hold both the tears and the laughter.
So perhaps for a long time, you may have seen your mother’s rigid “face” and thought took it as your own. Or perhaps the fingers remained in place, never revealing the face and so were left with mystery… But now, you’re the one pulling the hands away to see the sky that was always there, waiting…
April 28, 2026 at 12:10 pm #457367anitaParticipantGood morning, Peter: There’s a big smile on my face to see that you posted and to read just a bit. Will be back to you in the late afternoon/ evening.
April 28, 2026 at 6:26 pm #457379anitaParticipantHey Peter:
“I wonder what you saw?”
If you’re referring to Copilot’s input 7 posts ago, 4/24)-
I reread some of it just now, and what crossed my mind was that my 🧠- in its frenzy to feel in control by analyzing and making perfect rational sense of things- wanted to analyze even the sky, to fit it into my personal analysis, to own it (ha-ha).
As to the question being the answer (“Why did the peace go away?”)- I am lost at the moment.
I will try: the peace went away because a part of me separated from the sky, looking at it from an observer POV, separated from the observed.
It’s the separated observer that’s doing all that analysis.
If I am one with the observed, there’s no place for analysis?
(I wrote the above following reading only your first 2 paragraphs, not yet having read beyond, scrolling up and down using my 📱)
3rd paragraph: the peace went away because questions arose by the separated (analytical) self aka the observer.
4th paragraph and on: “We ‘lose’ the Sky…”- Yes, I lost perceived connection to the sky, felt isolated, apart, a dreadful alone-ness.
“His face reappear that was hidden behind his fingers”- my dreadful aloneness has been all along fingers covering my sky-face.
The tragedy of losing ourselves and the comedy of finding ourselves- comedy because we were always there, all it takes is removing the fingers covering our eyes.
Hmm.. Covering the eyes because the sights were unbearable.
The faces we take on so to survive, the masks..
I need to process this message. It will take some time and probably a series of posts to follow 🙏
✨️✨️✨️ Anita
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Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine. 