(approx. 13 minutes)15th December, 2024 KEYWORDS: Q: Self Seems To Be Growing Not Diminishing – I meditate and watch behaviour patterns and bear with my thoughts and feelings, including feeling into the belly. However I seem to become more of what was buried, and not less. There is no increased sense of freedom. The "self" even seems to have grown, not diminished by my explorations over the last 11 years of serious meditation and 31 years of some kind of commitment to it. I feel that at the core I am as strapped as I ever was. Bearing with the unbearable, the ultimate transformer, storehouse of wholesomeness, great faith, great doubt, great endurance, overly focus on suffering, Going For Refuge, surrender, compassionate caring, desire, denied pain, overwhelm, sadness, unawareness, volunteering, forget about ourselves, being an abbot, vibhava tanha, appreciative attention, willing to meet ourselves, Outshining The Sorrow.