The mind realizes things, and realization brings about a change of mind. When we say “I realized” something, it’s just thought personifying itself for sociability.
No, the brain has its myriad realisations. That is what learning about life is all about. And so the brain becomes addicted to such things: experience, realisation and memory, which is the cycle of desire. This is the way thought operates; and through this mechanical operation it continues to strengthen itself. The way out of this mechanical mode of living is not through yet another realisation.
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Nonsense. Experience, realization, and memory are not addictions. They are functions we can’t live without. Where did you get this nutty notion?
Replace the word ‘realisation’ with the word ‘pleasure’ and it may make more sense. First comes the experience with its pleasure and the memory of that experience sets the brain in search of a repetition of the experience. A realisation is just an intellectual pleasure, though you may well perhaps view this as equally nutty.
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Not all realizations are pleasurable. In fact, a realization might be too painful to face, and it may be denied, resisted, buried.
Why revert back to together? I say together is only a reaction I the thinker am to my own fundamental isolation. First do I see that I am not having thinking, but that thinking is having me with all my ideas and thoughts about being together or having the same intensity? What do I really want to be together with the same intensity for? what am I concerned to mask here? If I felt isolation to the core, would I still be talking about together? The question being posed by the thread is: Can the self come to an end? but related to that is the question, how did I come to be in the first place? how did I come to find myself here? By here I mean the situation, the circumstances I as a self find myself in. Logic says, the way out of self is back the same way I came in, so what way did I come in? That entails a journey into the heart of the isolation I am, where seeing together with the same intensity is not a viable proposition. There is no together in me, there is only fragmentation and isolation. I may seek the company of others, and talk about these things, but in the end that only serves to throw my isolation into sharper relief, which is seeing myself in relationship. Nothing fundamental is solved by relationship in and of itself, it merely serves to show things as they actually are.
Quite right, because pain and pleasure are two sides of the same coin. But though they are pleasurable or painful, any realisation is an event in the brain. It is an event in time because it has both a cause and an effect. The ending of the self has no cause; it is not an event in time. After all, love has no cause. If I love you for a reason, that’s motive and self-interest, not love.
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How did I come to be in the first place? That’s fairly simple. From childhood I have been hurt in relationship. Withdrawing into myself has been my only protection. In there I can evaluate the past and plan the future. I can feel that I am in control. That is my internal life, separate from your internal life. This is so, isn’t it? It is a rough sketch, but a fairly honest description.
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There is nothing to know. There is only that. Our vanity demands knowledge of the other, which is the impulse for power. We want to capture the immeasurable beauty of the universe and make it fit into our petty boxes. So our own vanity and fear denies the other. But when there is no trace of vanity and fear, the other is there. Therefore, it is our fear we are opening the door to.
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You don’t know this to be true. You know nothing about the ending of the self, being no less enslaved by it than anyone else. Spare us your K-shtick.
It is not about knowing it to be true; that is still the self. Love has no cause. That’s a fact. You either listen to this or you don’t; but you can’t do anything with it. You may want to argue against it, which takes time. This is usually our preferred move because our identity is tied to time: while we are arguing we can continue in time.
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You don’t know this, either. You just like to make solemn pronouncements. Give it a rest.
No, I want a dialogue about it with someone, anyone. Nothing else makes much sense, as we have taken the trouble to come here.
Ages ago I asked you: what is love? Apparently, nobody wants to find out.
If you think you know what love is, you must have a lot to say about it, so write about it.
Then that’s not a dialogue; that’s just the reheating of an old meal; and I won’t serve you leftovers. Besides, it takes time. Does love take time? It is only a question. But the answer has very little meaning unless we look at it together.
Yes hurt or damage occurs and that has a snowball effect and before I know it I arrive fully formed as my own version of everything that is the case. And in that state of affairs there is isolation right? So can I remain with the fact of that isolation? The isolation I am is not just within myself, or between myself and you, it’s between myself and all of nature, it’s between myself and the whole of the physical and material universe. It reaches from myself to the furthermost reaches of the night sky and back. So can I stand that, can I bear that, which is a crushing thing in reality? And who is there for me who can make any difference to that? who can intercede on my behalf and take it all away? My self recoils and seeks to escape, but there is no escape. There is no escape from what I am. Isolation isn’t just a word I say, and then that’s isolation done, and I move on to the next thing, or go straight back to an idea about together all over again. Isolation is real, so I must deal with it fully as is, and not shy away from it, which is difficult right? Why else would everyone be running around as they are losing their heads if this was not so?
I don’t call it the un-manifested. I said it very simply to start with and you have changed it subtly into something much more complicated. I called it love. That’s good enough. If we love one another there is no corner, no leap of faith, no belief; there is the whole universe all around us. You don’t talk of knowing that you are standing on solid ground; the ground is there.
But it is not a fact. You have just said it: it is a version of myself that has come about as the result of being hurt. I get hurt in relationship. And life is relationship; it is my whole psychological life. So why am I hurt in relationship? And we are in relationship now, so the answer to this question can come theoretically or actually.
That’s not quite correct. I am not hurt in relationship, I am hurt is all. Relationship does not cause hurt, it merely reveals what is. The notion I get hurt in relationship is an association self is making. Where was I when I experienced hurt? in contact with someone or something else is all. Relationship has no power to hurt, and no one can hurt me - make me feel hurt - unless I am.
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