The energy of the self is built on the remembrance and expectation of pleasure. When the promise of pleasure is threatened, that energy undergoes a crisis. Which is the real self in all this, the fundamental experience of being ‘me’? Is it in the building up or in the knocking down?
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Yes, but that’s beside the point. which is that I am the cause of the explosion.
Yes, I am the cause. And I am also the effect. Can these two be as one? Then the effect doesn’t create further cause.
I don’t know. Do you?
As long as one can successfully make a game of life, one need look no further.
Knowing the cause makes no difference. And we only know the effect once it has subsided. Therefore, can we leave it alone so totally that the effect doesn’t get translated into knowledge, which produces yet another cause? That is, to be angry without justifying it or explaining it in any way.
Here we’re talking about a different part of the brain that is free from the totality of conditioning, free from the complete structure of the ‘self’. This would be the ‘place’ from where ‘passive awareness’ is possible.
Sometimes the game includes looking further. That might be the worst self-deceit of all: Thinking you are on the Great Quest for Truth, but in reality just playing ‘spiritual’ Jeopardy.
Well how could it be anything else? Until the onus of the self structure is glimpsed, the totality of it, ‘passive, choiceless awareness’ will just be a game self plays with itself. As I see it, it is the ‘glimpse’ that can awaken the brain to realize its situation of enslavement to the past…
Same for awakening, intelligence, love. All mind games for most of us. Our paths to higher wisdom. Evolution of the spirit. Movement towards enlightenment. All part of the movie. with us cast as (anti-)heroes. What are we without our beloved stories: no-thing! And that’s terrifying.
It’s only terrifying if Thought makes a negative image of ‘not-being-a-thing’ which it obviously does…being a ‘thing’ (which we ‘think’ we are) seems to carry more prospects for being justly “terrified “.
If fear is involved, thought’s often behind it, trying to protect the self.
Maybe we’ve read K. say “Thought is fear” and when looked at in that way, it made sense. Not that thought was “behind” fear but that psychological fear IS thought, “Thought is fear”. The image, the memory Is the fear as well as the ‘pleasure’. So who is it that is frightened by the thought/images? Who is fearful? That’s the ‘thinker’ ,me, isn’t it? But then he points out that the thinker and the thought are the same thing: thought itself. There’s only thought, no actual ‘me’ to be frightened…it’s all thought images, thought scaring itself! That’s the ‘terror’ trap the brain is caught in.
“Game” implies success/failure, winning/losing. Whether it’s a game of chance, of skill, or both, the object is to win, to defeat your opponent(s). So a game never involves looking further than one needs to win, to defeat your opponent(s). The self-centered mind is playing a game with itself, so it can’t look any further than it can afford to see without seeing what it’s doing.
Yes, the prison, prisoners, guards, warden … all thought.
Talk about self-fulfilling prophecy!
What kind of game? Who are the players? How do you win? What’s the prize?
But the body / mind gets affected. The muscles tense. There are probably chemical secretions, the body reacts to the images as if ‘real’ danger is a possibility or imminent…
Humans are not great at distinguishing between the real and the imagined.
The name of the game is “Duality”.
I think imagination will also come under reality.
I am not sure 