We answer it in an unusual way
So let’s look at what is happening now. First of all, are we even putting the same question?
You put the question that started this tiresome exercise. I’m just trying to find out what you’re getting at
If it is tiresome, drop it.
Thank you for giving me permission…
What does it mean to see the totality of ourselves? It is all there in what we think, say and do. Every petty reaction is the totality of the reactive mind, which is myself. And then very often there comes the judgment of that pettiness, followed by a desire to change it. So, when we put the question of what it means to see ourselves, are we really interested in seeing ourselves in action? For there can only ever be pettiness.
Usually, what comes next is something along the lines of, ‘Speak for yourself.’ We have already forgotten the question; we have dropped any interest in watching ourselves in action; and the past continues its sluggish, tiresome course.
Actually, “the judgment of that pettiness” comes immediately - there is no clarity to begin with because intelligence has been rendered unconscious by the aggressive persistence of what-should-be.
Perception is distorted by what is believed, and as long as beliefs are hidden, unknown, unexamined, its perception reflects its beliefs. All the conditioned mind can do is believe, and after studying K’s teaching, believes it is distorting perception, but cannot see how believing what is true is not different from believing what is false.
The conditioned mind is limited by its credulity. The free mind is incapable of believing anything because it sees the danger of belief.
You are accepting your own conclusions in place of just looking.
In “just looking” at your statement, I see an opinion. If it’s not an opinion, but a fact, and no one but you sees the truth of it, all you can do is keep repeating it…like Krishnamurti.
So you have come back to, ‘Speak for yourself,’ by a different route.
Is it an opinion or a fact that there is no clarity to begin with? Surely, to begin with, clarity is evident. There is a perfectly clear view of the entire world. Why interfere with it?
Surely? Why do you assume that? If one ever had clarity, conditioning made a muddle of it before one can remember. We’re born into a system that hasn’t known clarity for ten thousand years.
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Then don’t use any system. When there is just you and the world, for whose benefit is a system that comes between you?
How do you know?
Are you that old?
Isn’t that thought on which you build this image?
Can the confused, confounded, conflicted mind know what clarity is? Is not clarity the absence of confusion and conflict? Even if this mind has had moments of clarity, confusion and conflict are the rule and are all it knows. If it ever had a moment of clarity, it’s just a dim memory that may as well have been a dream.
To the conditioned mind, words like “clarity”, “observation”, "wholeness’, “emptiness”, etc., represent only what it can imagine…not what it actually is.
So those words are by your own definition as below just imagination?
Do you already have an answer to this question? Or the question itself may bring its own clarity. After all, it seems to be rather obvious that what confuses the mind above all else is the sense of being caught in a welter of contradictory answers and conclusions. In the psychological realm, every answer has a conflicting opposite. Therefore the question is: can the mind meet the rest of the world without any answers? Because the clarity is in the question, not in the answer.
The mind meets facts that upset it constantly because it is built upon what it believes should-be instead of what actually is, and is therefore always escaping. denying, or rationalizing the upsetting facts of life. The mind cannot abide actually when its beliefs about what should be are not affirmed by the facts.
This, of course, is insanity, but it’s normal, the status quo, what everyone is doing, and to do otherwise is impossible for the mind that knows nothing else, and doesn’t know itself.
I don’t know what you mean by this
No, the mind never meets facts while it is looking for answers. It can’t. And our question is whether the mind can meet the rest of existence without placing its own answers in-between itself and what it sees.
No need to be rude with a big No.
The mind is aware of its reactions to facts it can’t face without resistance, denial, or rationalization, so there’s no question about its condition that isn’t being answered every moment. The mind knows there is nothing more it can do than be mindful of its every move with interest and affection.