What does it mean to be sharing together, to commune, and to understand this communion is sacred? Surely there is no contest, no conflict, no casting of aspersions. Isn’t this obvious?
Standing in communion together, there is no motive, no role for questioning the other person, nor any idea that words influence the sharing. The beauty, impermanence, transience, the liveliness of it all, the different perspective, all of this, is lost with the ego.
Platitudes…
It is obvious when there is no understanding, no communion together. What is this complete aversion? Why even give it expression?
I put these questions and I think about these questions. I am not separate. I am not hypothesizing. I am slow, but it bubbles away, and tonight I am very aware of what it means. I don’t mean intellectually, I mean consuming me. I am not being melodramatic. This is my condition. I am angry. There is a disconnect, and this angers me, and then I make various gestures of connection. I am not talking about cause and effect. It is a complexity. With this disconnect, there is anger, and a lifestyle of making various connections, like for example, art, hobbies, activities, as if to alleviate the disconnection. However the disconnection is profound. The anger is very deep. The activities are a distraction. Yet the participation with these activities presents an attitude of connecting; connecting with life, nature, health, etc. Then there is this worrying disturbance of the anger, but it is not a mystery. It is the fact of a fundamental condition of disconnection.
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Peter, I don’t remember if I shared this with you before. There is unexpressed anger from the past and anger about the present. I went through a process decades ago which was expressing anger from the past, as well as sadness, which I was carrying. This process of expressing went on for weeks until there was no more anger or sadness being expressed. I was emptied of the baggage. I was transformed. Now, when anger/sadness is, it is only of the present and when expressed, burned to ashes and gone. The anger that was baggage kept a constant disconnect. However, it takes two to connect and, as I listen to others, I hear their disconnect as they try to connect through their baggage, trying to connect by going around their baggage, trying to avoid the influence of their baggage, somehow through thought thinking the connection can be made while still holding on to their baggage. The baggage is real and it seems that it will always maintain a disconnect.
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We can be relieved of our baggage, but not “emptied” of it. We can, however, be emptied of our resentment, the dead weight we carry because we identify with it. Over time we’re more familiar with the heft of our baggage than with the contents, so we need to constantly examine just what it is we’re carrying to see if we still need it.
So you are caught up in the description.
Why do you leap to that conclusion? Why not consider the possibility that you use “baggage” without knowing exactly what you mean by the word?
Part of this ‘baggage’ business that we carry with us is that our dying is something to be feared, dreaded, etc …as if it is not the most ‘natural ‘ thing in this world 
Thinking about this through the day, I see anger and fear are not separate.
Just now, I was watching a TV show which analyses Advertising. They mentioned a technique called “gaslighting”. I looked it up. Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse where a person or group makes someone question their sanity, perception of reality, or memories. Someone who is gaslighting will try to make a person doubt their perception of reality. The gaslighter may convince the target that their memories are wrong or that they are overreacting to an event. The abuser may then present their own thoughts and feelings as “the real truth.”
Humor me when I say that Krishnamurti was gaslighting everyone who took his teaching seriously. Is my perception really distorted by my conditioning? Usually I can verify (after the fact) that my perception is distorted, but not always, which means I am not entirely sane, and if no one was gaslighting me, perhaps I’d never know.
I’m being facetious, of course, because gaslighting is malicious and Krishnamurti was not. But it could be argued that we need to be innocently gaslighting ourselves constantly lest we be too sure of ourselves.
The word psychological refers to this internal affair called a psyche. It is a complexity of life which does not see its own false division from living, its division with others, and this abuse. Psychologically, I can’t realise it, this psyche and self being no difference, except to believe it is something of an intellectual skill.
Dear Peter, may I ask why you use the word ‘sacred?’ You say that communion is ‘sacred.’ In what sense do you use it? K once remarked that if you were to place a can of Coca-Cola on the mantelpiece and venerate it every day it might soon take on the role of a sacred object to you. Now, you are putting that word on another word, ‘communion.’ It is worth noting that the very word ‘communion’ is already preloaded with emotional meanings.
I am, of course, outside of your own thought processes but, from this outside position, I sense that you may be trying to create a feeling for yourself and then solidify it by gaining the acceptance and affirmation of it by others. If this is the case, and I don’t know if it is, it would seem to have nothing to do with what you are terming sacred communion.
One of the tricks we play on ourselves is self-persuasion. We may have heard of something called communion and that it is sacred. And in hearing about it, a certain mind may set itself a goal or a standard to which it cleaves. An attentive mind however may look at its own inner process and note that it is making a wrong effort. It may then ask if it is approaching the thing from the wrong position altogether.
Rather than trying to attain a condition called sacred communion, that mind may ask whether or not there is, actually, any such thing. And that is best put in the factual sense, in the here and the now, not in a general sense of whether or not the thing exists ‘out there’ or is possible at all. Is communion actually happening. Is it alive and present, in the sense with which you describe it?
You title your post, “Don’t you get it?” What is the emotional tone of that question? What does it act to do? What is it trying to provoke in the emotional repertoire of those it is posed to? It’s like to say, “You ought to get it.” You should get it. Why are you not? What I think such a question does, or intends to do, is to put pressure on the reader to accept something that has little or no actuality for him or her. It’s like asking, “Are you stupid, or what.” Though put in a more polite form, of course.
If you load your followers with a sense of urgency and then tell them they are lacking in some way, for not having a full understanding, you will undoubtedly add to the confusion in the world rather than depleting it.
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Really? If the hosepipe is snagged, shall we snag it again?
It isn’t until you’ve tried everything to unsnag the hosepipe that you realize the futility.
If we ever manage to do everything (and how will you know when we have done everything?) - why not do it all again? (you never know)
If we ever manage to do everything (and how will you know when we have done everything?) - why not do it all again? (you never know).
If, in my determination to do “everything”, I never decide that I’ve done enough and it’s time to quit, I’ll just keep going until dead. As long as I’m choosing, deciding what to do with my life, I’m denying the possibility that I may not know what to do.
There is no such thing as sacred communion. Communion itself, while extraordinarily beautiful, is not sacred. While in communion with oneself, it is possible to discover whether or not there is something that is sacred. While in communion with oneself, it is possible to be in communion with “nature”.
That which is most holy (sacred) is not something that can be “known”.
Communion with another may very well be possible in dialogue, I really don’t know - as I have been lucky - because circumstances have forced me to go it alone. I have never seen the exercise of communion on this site. What has been seen is a lot of verbal communication, but not communion. Communion itself would imply that both see the truth or falseness of something both at the same time. And that would imply that at least one would have the resulting mutation which occurs, with its resultant explosion and release of trapped energy. And, of course, one has never seen anyone on this site admit to such a thing happening in the course of their “dialogues”.
I have experimented with dialogue in real time with someone (an intellectual) - never again. His brilliant intellectualism was so strong that I understood after some time that he had no inclination, no real interest of seeing the truth of anything. So I ended that exchange. For his part, the moment I ended this exchange, he dropped his interest in K, and everything that had been exchanged he forgot immediately and went back to his old ways, as if nothing at all had been realised/understood on his part. For my own part, I have no memory of what was exchanged, even an hour after each exchange.
I experimented once with someone from this site with communion. It so affected him that it resulted in his touching his own terror and emptiness that he “moved on” (his words) … oh well…
What one has witnessed on this site are a lot of intellectual insights, a lot of speculation, opinions, assumptions, and conclusions. I spoke up once or twice - “that’s speculation”, etc.
While in communion with oneself, it is possible to have insights - the seeing of the false as the false and the true as the true, and of course, the truth of the false (many - but not all - which I have discussed previously in other threads).
What I have understood from reading K is that K in his exchanges with others was able to communicate directly with the unconsciousness of “the other”, and this is what happened to me. And, that is communion. I allowed his words to move deeply within me and touch the unconscious. The resulting effect of such a thing resulted in the contradiction between what Charley was and what was read resulted in meditation occurring naturally.
I use words to point to the nature of something. I ask, what is the conflict with this? The conflict with this, is not it, right?