There is awareness of thoughts arising when and where they do less to make things clear than to make things conform to unexamined beliefs, opinions, and suspicions held. In other words, when thought is rooted in beliefs, conclusions, opinions and suspicions, everything it does confirms its bias. So it is not until thought is free of conclusions and suspicions that it can operate properly.
Self-knowledge is knowing how not to think, so until thought knows itself well enough to do nothing when nothing is required, it can’t help but create confusion and misunderstanding.
Thought knows that thought is the thinker…it has moved on from there. The question is, If thought can’t correct itself, who/what can?
Thought is just a mechanical process, and if something outside of thought must put thought in its place because thought can’t acknowledge the error of its way, self-knowledge is pointless and there is no awakening, no enlightenment, no freedom…nothing but authority acting peremptorily on our behalf. In other words, nothing new.
Nothing? That’s why the denial of change is so important? “Correcting” means changing what is, to something different? That IS ‘‘becoming’? Wrong direction?
What I am pointing out is, in the state of attention, state, it is a movement, it is not a dead thing, it is a movement of attention, not the movement of time - the movement of time is concentration - in that quality of attention there is no time, there is no border. You understand border? A fixation. Because there is no centre and therefore no circumference. That is attention. Now in that attention why shouldn’t there be inattention? You follow? It is within the whole area, I don’t separate inattention from attention. I wonder if you get this. It’s only when inattention says, “By Jove, I must leave this and capture that”, then you separate inattention from attention.
With ‘practical’ matters learning is becoming more knowledgeable, getting more information, ‘becoming’ more adept etc…psychologically ‘correcting’ means I have taken the measure of myself, which is comparison, judgement and found myself wanting? That is the “paralysis “? Trying to make inattention into attention? Trying to remove a border that doesn’t exist?
If thought has “taken the measure of itself”, how accurate and comprehensive is its measure if it doesn’t reveal what is “wanting”? Thought has not taken the full measure of itself because self-knowledge is an ongoing process, and the end of self-knowledge is the end of self.
If thought cannot acknowledge its errors and correct itself, it can only create more confusion and do more harm. This is self-evident. Like any tool, device, procedure, it’s only as good as it is used correctly and appropriately.
It depends on what he meant by that statement, and I don’t presume to know. If I knew what he meant, I could explain it to you or anyone, but how would you know my explanation was valid, accurate, true, if you didn’t find out for yourself?
If it is true that “freedom is at the beginning”, the reasonable reply is, “The beginning of what?”. The beginning of the realization that I am not entirely and completely present in the only place and time I possibly can be? The dawning realization that I don’t know what I’m actually doing?