I don’t know if this is of interest : when I drop a burning hot potato (because it burns my hands) I (my brain/body) have created the pain, the reaction to the pain and the memory of the pain. I drop the potato however I may interpret the situation. The hot potato burns whether I think I am the same or separate from the pain.
When there is awareness, there cannot be chattering. Whether the awareness arises from a conscious choice or not. Does this sound right?
This is a a question of the survival of the body . We don’t have the time to think in such a situation. Though I will remenber that pain…I hope . As I will remenber to run if I meet a snake
Does chattering arise from a conscious choice ? Or is chattering inattention, unawareness ? Chattering may be something mechanical that happen in inattention. I get aware of it. Chattering is irrevelant. I have no interest in it. As you say, it dissipates.
Passive awareness says you left out three commas.
. Strangely, I had put them and finally take them off. I felt that the sentence was to short.
Sounds confusing. Why can’t there be chattering “when there is awareness”? If chattering is banned from awareness, it will only get louder and more obnoxious.
Hi Richard,
Ah! … the key to understand all of this. “The observer is the observed.”
This was Charley’s first insight, with the ensuing explosion of energy, coursing throughout the body. One of the most interesting after-effects of this particular insight is that all projection ceases immediately, and then there is a clear understanding of knowing who one is… and the wonderful passion that comes with this insight - hence knowing what one is to do in one’s life - correct action, and obviously a correct/right choice in one’s decision as to what area of life to direct one’s actions to earn a living.
Without this insight, thought continues; and as can been seen, there are those who treat thought as some strange entity, separated from the centre of the psyche. In other words, one part of the “I” consciously acting on another part of the “I”… Hence, thought seems to generate itself almost in the same way that Bitcoin is mined (dirty money - cough)… (lol), with one thought arising at a time, and hence energy consciously directed to understand that particular thought, and when that is over, another thought arising, then understanding - an endless cycle of never-ending thought. It all seems like an endless self-generating cycle, indeed! And the very conditioning of the past is still ignored/dismissed. Further, the conditioning is seen/heard as having been thought itself, not the event in one’s past that caused the thought. The trouble with this approach is that one has not even reached the point where one can ask, “Can thought stop?” It’s almost as if the person indulging in such activity has unconsciously decided that thought cannot stop.
There is also the fact that anyone doing the above has not put thought in its right place - easily seen when someone uses one’s memory to remember who the other is… which K referred to as “sacrilege”. So anyone who treats x in a certain way because of what they “know” of another has never put thought in its right place. Right, you all understand this?
In googling online, apparently, one read that the brain can generate @ 6,000-70,000 thoughts per day…
Also, one read, " As a number, … the average adult human brain has the ability to store the equivalent of 2.5 million gigabytes digital memory.
If we have unconsciously decided that thought cannot stop, we can’t know this until we are conscious,
Oh Inquiry (sighs),
So, you still see (“hope”) the end of thought as a conscious decision, is that your conclusion; or, do you wonder whether or not thought can realize it must go all by its lonesome?
I was being facetious.
If we have unconsciously decided that thought cannot stop, everything we do and do not do could be determined by unconscious decisions, and there’s nothing we can do consciously to address this condition.
Inquiry,
Forgive me if I ever considered you to be serious
In my experience it doesn’t match up with fact. Thought it seems has a ‘mind’ of its own. Observing one’s thought is a very delicate activity. Different than listening to birdsong or the rustling of leaves etc they are ‘out there’ but thought is ‘in here’…calling thinking “chattering” or whatever, may come from insight but thought immediately appropriates it and it becomes knowledge. When K in The Awakening of Intelligence points out the beautiful light on the mountains to Needleman and Needleman says “beautiful “, Thought hasn’t entered yet and there is just the seeing. In listening to the birds or the wind, it simply IS, I don’t mistake myself for it or try to change it etc, but with thought it’s different. In the listening the ‘thinker’ arises and takes over the seeing. Hard to describe. For me.
It seems apparent to me that when the thinker arises with a thought, this is more akin to thinking than seeing.
When I am looking at something, and the thought “beautiful” (or “ugly”) arises, it would seem that a thought has arisen.
Am I being too simplistic? Either its a lot more complex, or thoughts are part of thinking, not a part of silence nor awareness.
How is this an example of simultaneous thinking and awareness?
When I say “I just thought this or that” - This would be a narrative based on memory. Having some knowledge of my mental narrative, is not an example of awareness, more of an example of experience and memory.
nb. As @charleycannuck mentioned above, this stuff is happening really fast - be it the thoughts themselves, or the movement between silence and thought, between awareness and experience.
Breathing goes on without awareness. Sensation goes on without awareness. Thinking also goes on without awareness. But it seems awareness can be ‘brought to’ these functions, for a while anyway and then return to ‘automatic ‘. Is the ‘awareness’ a product of the function? As K put it : “can thought be aware of itself?” Since there’s no ‘me’ to be aware of anything! I find going into this deeply fear arises at times, fear of the unknown?
Example : I, for some reason, direct my attention to how I’m breathing - this makes me start breathing in a really unnatural, self-conscious fashion. Is this an example of awareness?
PS - some monks in the Rinzai tradition would say that an in & out breath cycle that takes a really long time (like 3 minutes), means that you’re breathing like someone who’s well on the way to becoming a buddha 
There’s an ‘awareness’ of the sound, the in and out, the movement of air in the nose or mouth, so yes, there’s a being ‘aware of’, that wasn’t there until the attention was directed to it.
Granted. This kind of awareness is also called biofeedback. I would call it a knowing that influences the known, it is the observer unconsciously changing, acting upon the observed,
This is the level of awareness we are highlighting - it is really experience, memory and automatic self-control. Agreed?
Is this what we are doing to our thoughts when we direct our attention there?
In the case here I would say no. The thought here has been ‘schooled’ by a variety of gurus, sages, mystics, the Wise etc. it has learned about taking a ‘wrong direction ‘, being in the ‘wrong place’, the presence of greed, the danger of belief, of tradition, of religions, of nations, of its own ‘trickery’ of creating a thinker, experiencer, an observer apart from itself. It has heard that it’s image-making keeps it in a kind of prison made up of the past and no matter what effort it makes will be futile. It has understood the necessity for non-judgemental self knowledge. It is ‘open’ to exploration.
Thought arises spontaneously and deliberately. The mind uses thought consciously, and is otherwise plagued with continuous thought that serves more as filler and background noise than anything useful. We identify with our deliberate thinking and consider our incessant spontaneous thinking to be more pathological than useful.
On the matter of thought we are conflicted. Unless we see that all thought - be it practical or psychological, useful or useless - is limiting at best and deceiving at worst, freedom is inconceivable.
You have learnt some way of focussing your attention on your thoughts, without reacting to them nor affecting them, yet not being separate from them? What is this magic? Can you describe the process in action?
You are non-judgemental about yourself and your thoughts, despite judging them to be wrong in so many ways - How does this work?
When I see that I cannot direct my attention towards something as simple as breathing, without my whole experience being affected - I must wonder whether I really know what I’m doing when I look at my self and my thoughts.
I think that we have move away from the topic of this thread, which was negative thinking. My fault in fact, in asking Peter a question about what seems to be related to the topic of the observer being the observed , which is a totaly different matter. Could be a topic for another thread.