There is a dog that is afraid to walk by a mirror because there is always an angry dog on the other side. It tries various techniques to handle this situation. This includes focusing on its breath as it passes the mirror. It also tries watching the other dog without any reaction. None of these practices eliminate or expose the source of the dog’s confusion.
One day the dog has a profound realization, it realizes that there is no other dog behind the mirror; it is just its image. After this insight, the dog no longer needs to use any practice while passing the mirror. More importantly, the dog can now use the mirror to learn about itself.
The dog can learn how it moves when walking, the various facial expressions it can make etc. And it can use its image to make adjustments where necessary. As the dog watches itself more in the mirror it makes subtle changes to how it moves its limbs, its tail and other body parts. Now when the dog walks by the mirror it is watchful; the dog is watching, learning and adjusting.
Without the insight the dog can never use the mirror for self-knowledge.
J Krishnamurti: You know, have you ever looked at a drum? A drum is tuned to its highest excellence, the right tone. And when you strike on it, it gives the right note. It is tuned. So the brain, when it is tuned, gives the right note, the right response. I wonder if you capture all this. And it is not tuned, like the drum is not, when it is in conflict, when it is slack. So to have the brain tuned. Not you tune the brain – because you are part of the brain. So is it possible, like the drum which is tuned to its highest excellence, to have the brain so tuned that it gives the right note all the time?
Krishnamurti said relationship is our mirror; that we see ourselves in our relationships with others; that seeing how we relate to others reveals who/what we are.
But if, unlike the dog that realized what a mirror is, my relationships with others reveal only my reactions to others, there is no mirror, no reflection, no relationship.
The observer is not the observed until the observed reflects the observer.
Are you different from your reactions? The reaction is the experience. The illusion of the observer/experiencer prevents the brain from ‘looking’ at what the organism is experiencing. It is akin to the dog that can never ‘look’ at its image because it is convinced that is another dog staring back at it. Once the brain has the insight that there is no experiencer then it can ‘look’ at what it is experiencing; then the brain can begin to put itself in order.
Prevention is an intention and distraction is an effect. Prevention isn’t always effective but distraction is.
If you’re an illusionist, a so-called magician, your magic is your ability to distract your audience from seeing what you’re actually doing by appearing to be doing something else. It’s a trick that has to be mastered.
Prevention is what we do to keep the worst from happening, but to prevent ourselves from being distracted by a master distractor, we have to be unusually alert and attentive.
Interesting way to pass the time. The 'observer is the observed ’ realization is the necessary first and only step. Everything comes from that. If you work at it, watching, watching, watching, the state of truth will manifest. Take it from there.
Conflict depends on measurement - my partial image of what is vs my image of what should be - the expression of my inner conflict is action in the world as “I fight you!” “me good vs you evil”
It is our actions from a fragmented, partial, selfish focus that leads to violent action.
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
My partial image is fragmented because it does not include the center. It only sees the observed.
Yes the identification with this ‘center’, the me and mine, seems to be what has been referred to as the ‘darkness’. That it is a possibility for us to be freed from this identification and for the ‘center’ to be included in observation even if only in a flash of insight is a sort of ‘miracle’! Then, “the observer is the observed”.
It isn’t true that “When you ain’t got nothin’, you got nothin’ to lose”, because there is no actual you, I, or me. There is only a brain imagining itself as a character in a novel.
There’s nothing wrong with this pretense when the brain is aware of what it is doing; when the brain knows it is a brain pretending to be a character in a story. But in the course of telling its story, the brain can forget to suspend disbelief, forget that its creating fiction, and find itself more committed to practicing fiction than being wholly aware.
The human brain is able to tell itself a story too good to quit telling. So good, in fact, that it would sooner die than finish the story.
So here we are, so deeply committed to our fiction that we can’t quit committing the crime of never breaking character, never stepping away from the story to check in with actuality. Or better yet, breaking character by being the butt of a joke instead of being a savior.
The saving grace of fiction is that disbelief can stretch only so far, and the curse of fiction is that suspended disbelief can stretch for a lifetime.
The authority that causes us to act from conditioned experience must ignore the fuller picture ie. that we are acting from the authority of conditioned experience
If I understand that my brain creates my reality, and I act as if my reality is some fundamental truth - that might be calling for violence for example - then I am acting dishonestly, I am ignoring the fuller picture and acting as if the narrow focus of self-concern is the whole picture.
There is no thinking process without the brain, and it is the brain that does the thinking, so why blame thought for what the brain chooses to do with its life?
Can we remove “I” from the picture and say that if the brain knows it is creating its version of actuality instead of letting actuality “speak” for itself, so to speak, that the brain is honestly dishonest?
When the brain is unknowingly dishonest, it is hopelessly caught in dishonesty. But when the brain has the insight that it is only practicing dishonesty, it is honest, and the new brain can use dishonesty to demonstrate how it can be comedy, tragedy, propaganda, lies, etc., or guileless communication.
Honesty is nothing without dishonesty to demonstrate.
This is akin to lucid dreaming, where you are both dreaming and aware you are dreaming. It’s what Tim Freke calls lucid living. We here are all living lucidly to varying degrees, we all see the role our mind plays in co-creating our reality, the dream-story. The question is: What prevents us from awakening from the dream? Or is the lucidity itself awakening?