Are we incapable of living with things as they actually are because, in spite of all we know, we know little or nothing about the self?
Why are we less interested in self-knowledge than in perpetuating the pretense of knowing who we are?
We can’t change the way the brain operates because it’s all we know, so can the brain bring itself to order despite our activity, or must our activity cease for the brain to come to order?
To be or not to be? But seriously, this is a question that I ask myself often.
Right now I’m kinda thinking we might be confused because of our tendancy to see events as existing separately.
In my own words the question goes : is insight (about self) necessary for awareness (of self) to provoke silence? and to be honest I think it is - so maybe I have no real question here.
The real question is : what provokes insight? and actually its not a real question either because I think its : sensibility, honesty & a sense of responsibility and being completely at a loss.
So, sorry, my mistake, I’ve asked myself the question so often that I’ve accepted a conclusion.
It may be that the seeing of what we are, the ‘disorder’, without choice or judgement IS ‘order’? The “arduous watching” itself brings about its own order?
A big “if”. How can we see “without choice or judgment” when the only “seeing” we know is with choice and judgment?
I’m not sure I know what insight is, or if I’ve ever experienced it. All I know is that at some time, for no apparent reason, something I’ve been puzzling over becomes clear and I can articulate it.
This is a tough one: seeing disorder brings order about.
First of all you have to deal with the seeing:
What is this about? The whole issue about the observer and the observed, the thinker and the thought. If not understood fully, one can do whatever he likes but the outcome will always be disorder, conflict.
What is seeing? Has it sthg to do with the senses? With the whole of the senses and maybe more? With the whole body? Not only with the intellect.
K is giving us a hint when he says : have you ever looked at a bird in its flight without naming it?
Is this what is meant by seeing? Have you ever tried? Does sthg happen then? Have you still a remembrance of what has been happening? Or has it left a trace?
Isn’t that important to find this out?
Sounds like a definition of insight (except for the articulate it bit - thats extra)
I’m sure we all have.
But not when we are trying to.
Have you ever had a really, really terrible problem, that feels really really important, but that remains horribly and terribly unsolved for seemingly forever - with apparently no way out?
And then you suddenly see the whole situation clearly; everything becomes simple and appeased.
Thats seeing.
Absolutely but you don’t “find out” by trying to grasp it intellectually… or describing all the reasons it ‘can’t’ be done. That’s what is meant by “arduous”; we don’t do it because we don’t see any payoff in it, it doesn’t make us feel ‘holy’… doesn’t offer a ‘reward’ etc. as fraggle put it, “we are lazy”.
Ah thanks - I was puzzled by your use of that word.
Watching the bird in flight isn’t ‘arduous’. There’s no reason it should be. Why then is this simple watching as we go about our daily ‘flying’ so different? Is it because between ourself and the bird, the mountain, the tree there is a ‘space’. I am not them. But here with myself there is not that space?
I wouldn’t put it that way because there is no actual seeing, no direct perception, when the brain’s conditioning determines what is seen.
K is giving us a hint when he says : have you ever looked at a bird in its flight without naming it?
Is this what is meant by seeing? Have you ever tried? Does sthg happen then?
I think it’s going about it backwards to imagine what K was trying to convey instead of ascertaining whether I am the distorter or not. Once there’s no doubt that I am my conditioning, the distorter of perception, it doesn’t matter what K said.
There may be no path to truth, but the truth about the brain’s pathology is always evident, whether one cares to watch it or not.
But isn’t it so that if you have declared what you are seeing to be “pathology “ then it is the ‘judge’ or self that is doing the ‘seeing’ which is quite different than the simple watching that K is suggesting is so important?
You can’t know if it’s insight if you can’t articulate it. The insight may have come years ago, but if the words that make it clear aren’t there, it’s inchoate.
But it can also be self-deception, especially if one is hoping, pining for insight. How will I know the difference between the actual thing and the thing I’ve set my sights on?
“You” cannot know, but insight knows… the one who is guilty of “losing touch” with insight is the one who asks “how will I know?”. Now, the question is, why does the “me” want to know, with what intention?
You also say that “you can’t know if it’s insight if you can’t articulate it”, which is again the “me” wanting to know. And again the question is: why does the “me” want to know whether it has had an insight or not, or why should it care whether it can articulate it or not when that insight is not its own?
So the self, constantly moving in the realm of knowledge, seems unable to conceive that it can know anything without prior (accumulated) knowledge, and without accumulating knowledge after the insight. And being trapped in that, it creates psychological evolution and the methods to achieve it, without ever leaving the realm of knowledge… and thus unable to know what is supposedly beyond knowledge… not seeing that this is at the root of disorder.
The me, the I, is an illusion, so nothing is its own except the illusion of having something.
It’s the brain that has the insight into its condition, its confusion.
To see the bird in his flight, to see the flower on the pavement, indeed, it seems to be simple.and do you know why? Because the bird, the flower , nature on a whole , doesn’t want sthg from you.
And indeed it becomes arduous when we look at our neighbour or at our beloved ones, because indeed they are demanding.
And even more arduous when looking at oneself who is everlastingly demanding.
But at the same time it is rewarding (now and then) to have a glimpse.
That is all.
A slight tearing of the ‘web’, quickly mended and back to business as usual?
Why is proof of insight dependant on its translation into a conceptual narrative?
inchoate : not fully formed, rudimentary, incomplete, unrefined, blurry.
Your statement may betray a bias towards the superiority of symbolic, conceptual narrative, over the thing that is being described.
It may be that reality (or our understanding of it) may be constricted and simplified by its translation into a descriptive narrative.
What demonstration is there that the description of what is seen is somehow clearer than what is seen?
It might be better for the purpose of communication, but surely it is the narrative that is inchoate (at best) when compared to the thing it describes?