But there is a difference between knowing and meeting, isn’t there?
Yes, there is a difference in quality between knowing and meeting, just as there is between imaginary meeting, and meeting.
That’s just the point. Most people want to take a quick journey, grab the substance of it and go on their way.
Well, I’m afraid that they’ll come up empty handed then.
Will you give your life to this journey?
One will do that perhaps when one suffers deeply …and for a very long time. Without suffering, it’s back to the usual escapes and fulfillment and desires…greed, ambition, and all the rest.
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I posted to this at #351…aren’t you here placing a sort of judge to determine how one should or should not act in the face of arising thought? Also when you use the word ‘accept’ doesn’t that create another layer of an accepter or rejector? And isn’t this just more thinking? Wasn’t the revolutionary idea that K was proposing, that psychological thinking, the process itself must stop? The movement of it must end. More thinking about it, no matter how brilliant, incisive, clever, etc is still the movement of thought. And the movement brings ‘time’ into the psyche where it pollutes with its ‘past/present/future’.
Absolutely, one must be very careful of how we interpret what we perceive.
One should not judge ones thoughts. Nor depend upon the thoughts one has about one’s thoughts.
If the the idea of being curious about one’s relation to thought is not helpful, just drop it.
The other thing one might try, is to see if we can identify the entity that is supposedly living through all this confusion. (I think this more difficult, despite or possibly because of its constant, intimate presence)
Identify and let go of - which is silence, which is death.
Or just give up the struggle for no reason and love? This seems even more naive and complex at the same time - maybe what PaulDimmock is trying to encourage?
Unfortunately (or fortunately) If we suffer long enough we get used to it
That’s why it has to be profound…with no ready escape.
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I want to meet you, Dominic. That’s all. What’s wrong with it?
No, I am talking about the journey one takes with the ending of the self and all its sorrows. If one stays on a journey because one is suffering and wants to be free of suffering, it’s an endless dependency. No-one is going to remove that suffering along the way because freedom is right at the beginning of the journey.
One stays on the journey as you call it, because it’s one’s life…it’s the consciousness of man. And the wanting to be free of it…to escape from it is part of it. To say one can simply step out of it is absurd. It just doesn’t happen to anyone, as far as I know…without much suffering. Because without suffering it’s ‘business as usual’…the movies, the music, the sports, food, romantic pursuits …money… The ‘dependency’ you speak of is a dependency upon the escapes from the suffering.
It is absurd to memory, absurd to thought, absurd to all the experts and gurus. But I haven’t said step out of it. That is an interpretation thought puts upon it because thought can only envisage some form of action, a doing; and therefore an action based on memory, which can only ever be a reaction. We are talking instead about the total cessation of doing: what it means literally to do nothing at all inwardly, psychologically. If I suffer, can I look at my suffering without a single reaction to it? Thought has no interest in looking; it always wants to do something about what it sees. So is there a perception free from thought which is memory? Then it is not my perception of suffering. While it remains my own perception of suffering it must always be through the prism of the past as memory, experience and knowledge, collected either from my own life or borrowed from the lives of others.
Without a single reaction? Only if I fundamentally realize that all I ‘know’ about my pain is from what I’ve been told/taught by others. That’s it’s all brainwashing…conditioning. Like being told what to do by parents or school teachers or the priest or the supervisor at work. And we internalize all that and it becomes ‘me’. If I see that I actually don’t know anything fundamentally(!) about my pain other than what authorities of one sort or another have told me then perhaps I can cease trying to do anything about it.
Now, you can see it all very quickly and sharply: my own perception is the root cause of suffering. So there is no extra personal perception that will set me free sometime in the future, sometime along the way. There is instead a perception of the whole right now, which obliterates all desire for personal perceptive activity.
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The self is the root. My ‘perception’ through the screen of conditioning is the self.
Good post Paul. I will have to come back to this later. Have to look more carefully at it when I have the time and energy. Lot’s of work to do here…‘normal’ every day responsibilities…busy day here.
Obliterates the past…‘me’. I was going into this yesterday and this is how I perceived it…the ending of the past…the psychological past…the conditioning.
Yes, it is different words pointing to the same thing: the self is memory. Only something totally new can solve the problem of the old. There is nothing inside the system of the self that can operate wholly.
It operates in fragments…K went into this in depth…the fragmentation of consciousness. ‘Me’ separate from ‘you’…separate from my wife or neighbor or child. That’s the root of the world crisis according to K. And we can see this in our own daily life.
We can see the effects, the consequences, the results of fragmentation. Thought then says, ‘This is terrible, how can we stop it?’ So thought seeks the cause of fragmentation. But isn’t thought itself the cause? The moment it sets to put right the world, it separates the cause from the effect. Then time is necessary to undo the mess and to solve the problem. So can thought never come into it in the first place? Here is a world of conflict, outside and inside. I am that world.
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What meaning does meeting have here as set against being in touch with what is actual? Is there anything to Paul or Dominic beyond the image? The self is fascinated by itself and self-absorbed naturally, but is there really anything that interesting about it given it is ultimately a dead end? Is the brain in touch with anything actual right now? It is the brain which thinks it is in touch with an objective reality which is committing genocide and destroying its environment.