3rd Fetter
The Habits Curriculum

Unskillful Routines vs. Presence

The Third Fetter is the last part of the Foundational Triangle of Identification.

The First Fetter identifies with thought and body.

The Second Fetter identifies with feelings and emotions.

The Third Fetter is the fetter where you become aware of The Gap, and all of the things that you do to support not feeling the discomfort of emotions in Fetter 2, and to maintain roles, personal labels, and ways that we define ourselves that reinforce Fetter 1.

With Fetter 3, (as well as subsequent fetters) you discover an uncomfortable feeling and learn to stay with it, not doing anything, not attempting to solve it, not intellectualizing it, or wanting for it to be different. 

Just find quiet and silence, and sit with it.

The Fetter of Diversions

This Fetter is about what you DO to get away from a feeling or an emotion.

You will never find the gap if you are busy trying to solve something. The longer you stay with an uncomfortable feeling, the more clear the delusion will become.

Where the First Fetter was about discovering the identification, and the Second Fetter was about discovering the feeling connected to the identification, the Third Fetter is about discovering the diversions we create in order to keep from feeling that feeling.

But at the same time, the Third Fetter also has its own type of identification tied into it. 

All routines in our lives that we maintain and perform “with the purpose” of improving our identification, originate in the identification with feelings and emotions (2nd Fetter), and are reinforced by the identification with thought (1st Fetter).

Most of this happens subconsciously.

The Third Fetter therefore makes the distinguishing of the identification very complicated, since all 3 Fetters become interwoven, and more difficult to see through, realise, and understand. 

To move forward with the Fetters from here you need to be very clear that:

1. Thoughts are not truth:
Thoughts are just another sensory experience with a completely random pattern, and are no different than the sense of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. Identification with thoughts creates a delusion where “something” can be added to, or subtracted from, what is, in order to improve life, since all thoughts are “about” something.

2. Identification is delusional:
Feelings and emotions are not truth. They are just sensations appearing alongside of an apparently related thought. By detaching the direct experience from the content of the thought, you are placing yourself in a space of observation to notice what is really going on. Reality cannot be any different than it is, and does not need to be any different than it is.

3. Be aware of The Starting Point:
Conditioning and distress become our starting point for all interactions, both internal and external, expressed with the emotional indicators of fear, anger, guilt and shame. Repressed trauma shapes a personality, and creates a Toxic Starting Point. Since trauma can only exist with an identification, trauma does not need to be solved. Trauma does however need space, compassion, love and unconditional acceptance, and will dissolve if it is allowed to.

4. Be aware of The Bubble of Reality: No one can trigger or activate anything in you. You are the only one identifying, activating thoughts, merging them with past experiences, and projecting them into something happening in the now, and feeling that arising as “something”. (“Something out of nothing” - 7th fetter)

5. Rigid routines are maintaining identification: Any action done with a purpose, any preference seemingly more desirable, and any attachment to planning ahead of time, are diversions or distractions from direct experience, and are used to ease an uncomfortable insight. Until the first 3 Fetters have been seen through, the identification (and trauma) will be maintained, and repeated subconsciously.

As long as there is identification, there will be a feeling of something needing to either improve or diminish due to the “I am not, I should be” mindset. 

Every daily routine is a manifestation of our mindset and our Ego identification. 

To discover this, take a minute and look into your morning routine.

Do you see how much identification is taking place?

Do you see how the underlying foundational belief is reflected into every action you take?

Every decision you make?

Every habit you have?

If you remove the identification, all habitual actions are deflated and seem pointless.

That is the extent of the identification taking place!

The Daily Diversions

For most of us, when we engage in activities such as eating, fasting, exercising, or meditating, we often do it with a goal in mind.  

We eat to be full, or we eat to lose weight. 

We exercise to lose weight, or we exercise to avoid diseases in the future.

We meditate to achieve calm and become awake. 

So with our daily routines we often have a very particular goal in mind, and a very clear expectation of a certain outcome. 

All of that falls apart when we no longer identify with thought, feelings and emotions. 

When there is no longer any connection between thoughts, feelings and emotions to anything.

They just arise.

As long as we identify, we remove ourselves from the present moment, and place our focus on an assumed reward in the future. 

The approach of striving towards an assumed expectation, or a hypothetical goal, lacks the natural spontaneity, and more often than not, leads to disappointment and discontentment. 

Since the Ego is always dissatisfied with an outcome, no matter the outcome, the cycle of chasing new objectives and desires is maintained, as is the delusion of the identification.

We call the rigid routines harmful since they perpetuate the illusion of the "I am not, I should be" mentality. 

They fuel and maintain the Ego's dissatisfaction and constant craving for improvement, so further identification is inevitable.

In order to move on with the FetterWork, we need to disidentify and realise that there is no thought, feeling, or emotion that is truth, and therefore there is nothing that needs to be improved upon or cease to exist. 

Things are as they are, and nothing needs to change or happen. 

Reality always unfolds naturally in the present moment, without any need for striving or expectations. 

By tuning into the current state of Being, and making contact with the sensory experiences, flow will happen from a space where decisions are based on a present need for rest, nourishment, exercise, and meditation. If any perceived obstruction is happening, the issue does not lie in the unfolding of the moment, but in the identification with an experience.

There is a present awareness for what feels right in the moment, without the pressure of any internal or external expectations or preferences.

Without identification.

Can you simply be present in the moment, without constantly chasing improvement, or seeking external validation? 

Can you fully embrace and accept yourself as you are, without the need for constant self-improvement, and the delusory identification of who you are or could become?

Can you create space for any perceived obstruction, and just be with any activated identification?

We wish you well.

“Where Am I Right Now?”

Third Fetter

Exercise:

Before making a decision about what to do, close your eyes.

Place one hand on your hara (sacral) chakra, and one on your heart chakra, and breathe with a focus on the exhalation.

Feel where you are right now.

If your thoughts are traveling, pull them back to your sensory experiences.

Listen, see, taste, smell, feel.

Be present.

Where are you right now?

What do you need right now?

What is present in your awareness that is not connected to a thought, feeling or emotion?

Can there ever be a thought, feeling or emotion that is not connected to an identification?

Full playlist for the Habits Curriculum

Explore the 4th Fetter.

See Through The Self Delusion Course

We are so happy that there is now a full course for you to see through the identification of the self!

This course is like a practical handbook of all of the different angles that you need to be aware of when you are investigating identification in your direct experience. We hope that it will be equally useful to people who are absolute beginners on this awakening path, as it will be to seasoned seekers who believe they have seen through the sense of self and are currently working with the higher fetters. We believe that everyone will find things in the course that will help them to deepen their insights regardless of whichever stage of awakening they feel they are in.

Take your time with this course! It is quite comprehensive. Through it we will be discussing many aspects of awakening, some of which tend to be overlooked by those on the path. We stress the importance of integrating awakening into our daily lives, so we spend a lot of time helping to bridge the gap between the spiritual world and the relative mundane one in which we all live.

In this course we will go into detail about meditation practices, discerning thought from “reality”, how to approach long-held trauma, how to investigate and manage our fear of death, practices to stimulate deep non-dual insights, and how to avoid many different pitfalls and egoic traps that you might encounter on the awakening path.

For those who are familiar with our The Awakening Curriculum and Unfettered Mindfulness YouTube channels, you might have already seen many of these videos. But they have been assembled in a practical sequence that allows progressive insights and practice, and they have been expanded with 50,000 words of written summaries, extrapolations, further inquiry and meditation practices, and more. It’s effectively like having a whole book integrated into the video material. Even if you have already watched the videos, we hope that these written lessons will help to deepen and expand your understanding of the material, and provide you new directions to take your practice.

To get the most out of this course, we recommend watching each video in sequence, and taking lots of time to actively do every inquiry at least once. It can help to do the same inquiry multiple times before moving on. It’s always recommended to rewatch lessons, if not immediately, then come back to them weeks or months later to see if you now hear something that you missed the first time, or that now makes sense to you in a way that you couldn’t access previously.

It should be emphasized, you might accumulate a lot of new concepts from this course, but that will be of comparatively little benefit next to the insights that you glean from putting everything you hear into practice.

You are likely here, doing this course, in order to experience some sort of transformation of experience. But concepts have limited ability to do this. At least not in terms of creating long-term transformation.

For that, you need to have an experiential understanding of what we are pointing to. So relax, settle in, take a deep breath, and allow the experience to unfold all on its own.

No one knows what will happen on the other side of any practice. So remain curious, open, and remember to have fun.

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