We talk about ‘the known’ because we think we know it. But do we? Really? Is freedom from the known simply the realization that we don’t ultimately-unconditionally know anything?
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Is freedom from the known the realisation that the “known” is just a very strong belief? (a subjective world view imposed by a mechanical process in this mammalian brain).
My truth, just means my opinion y’all! Even facts are just models that are recognised to be of practical value.
You know that I enthusiastically agree with this, right? Which doesn’t mean either of us is right, or wrong. The notion that I ultimately-unconditionally know nothing needs to be applied to itself, serpent eating its tail! Maybe others disagree or have something meaningful to add?
Or we could say that it becomes wrong moment to moment.
Or more acurately, it becomes wrong as soon as I believe it of myself (I am free!).
We can never be continously free of the known, only become aware moment to moment of the belief (aka experience/reality) we are caught up in.
(The theory is quite simple really)
How can you be sure of that when all you know is what you think you know?
Okay - someone could in theory be constantly letting go I suppose. Or aware at all times that their reality is a conditioned projection.
That would count as continuously free of the known under my model. (if we accept continuity of being as a fact)
There is also the matter of the unconscious. Even if you are 100% aware of your conditioned beliefs and biases as they arise, there is (arguably) a whole iceberg-below-water world of beliefs and biases happily churning away beneath the scope of your conscious mind.
I wanna refute this. (that we cannot be free of the known because not all the known is apparent)
Do I need to know all the motivations and deep traumas of x, in order to know that x is an expression of the past?
In order to avoid an iceberg, do I need to initiate an all wavelength scan of the iceberg - or just get out of the way.
In order to be free of what is being expressed right now, do we need to analyse the patient beforehand?
PS. In the back of my mind is the idea of self as a process that is expressed moment to moment also, rather than a continuous entity existing in time.
If the brain was aware that (apart from muscle memory) it knows nothing but what it believes, the brain would have to be beyond belief, never a true believer, but a realistic believer.
Please explain.
Are we understanding thoughts and feelings that we are not conscious of to be the known? If they are, when they affect us, by definition we are not free from the known. If otoh we consider them the unknown, their influence on us doesn’t impact our freedom from the known. ?
That brings up an interesting question: Can we be free from the unknown?
A true believer doesn’t understand why belief if self-deception, i.e., pretending to know something one does not really know. A realistic believer can’t function without believing a lot of things, many or most of which may not be true, but has no choice but to choose what to believe because the psychologically conditioned (PC) brain is incapable of choiceless awareness or direct perception.
Yup - The known is all my baggage, even the bits I cannot consciously recall right this moment.
To be free from the known - we must also be free from the hidden knowns - your suggestion (that we win when we claim victory over what I decide I shall be responsible for) is just dishonest.
In my scenario, we lose. So that the universe wins.
Or as I have tried to explain by this x business etc
Insight frees us moment by moment (via awareness) of the expression of me, as it is expressed - no need to know the seemingly important details of our delusion that may be hidden to us, but also somehow are us. (it is the simple process of fear as it is expressed right now that we become free of, not the non-existent entity, nor its associated neurons)
Me looking at myself and wondering how to be free of myself is just confusion.
We are just free from all of reality (or we’re not)
Thanks. I kind of get it, kind of don’t. That’s fine, I like mysteries.
Is your model similar to the difference between a dreamer and a lucid dreamer?
Where did I suggest that? I don’t even understand what it means. Help!
That I think I get. I am not saying you need to know all your personal history events/feelings to be free from them. I am saying that if these events/feelings are churning away in the unconscious, and if they are affecting you, you are not free from them. I’m not making any suggestion for how you could gain freedom from them, just observing that if they’re there and perturbing you, you aren’t free of them.
Are we talking past each other?
I totally get it - your analysis is very reasonable (bravo!) : How can we be free of obscure forces working on us from the dark, over which we have no power, that we cannot even see.
I thought I addressed it quite simply in post 8 (starting with "I wanna refute this etc)
Did you grok any of that? What I was trying to get across with the iceberg imagery etc?
Here’s the same explanation using the model of the self (no icebergs) - it begins exactly like the problem you bring up :
We are under the impression that we see reality as it actually is (we feel that we are interacting directly with the real universe - that we are truth detecting organisms - the actual process of human consciousness is hidden from us)
Thus we are bound by an all powerful force : reality (nothing more powerful than that, it must be obeyed)
Suddenly we realise that the content of our consciousness is all a subjective delusion projected by our unconscious (the brain etc).
We are thus freed from our experience (doesn’t matter that we cannot have direct awareness/sensation of the brain projecting and all the hidden, minute psychological detail it is using to form said experience)
Simple.
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Why is it confusion? If it’s understood that me is everything me believes (including me, the believer), isn’t it clear there’s no need for belief?
Describe my model…
Sounds like The Matrix, but without the pill that made the realization possible.
If we’re living in our imagined reality without being consciously aware of actively defying actuality by imposing our imagined reality upon it, must we become consciously aware of what we’re doing to stop doing it, or is there a pill?
There are pills (LSD, MDMA, Valium, THC, Alcohol etc) but somehow we still don’t get it (ie. that experience is dependant on chemical etc reactions in the brain) - we usually shrug off the implications of all these chemically induced experiences as fake or besides the point.
I reckon that it must become undeniably obvious that I am responsible (in all senses of the term) for the experience of suffering. Responsible in that I project suffering, am suffering. And responsible as in take it seriously enough to stop avoiding the issue/making excuses.
How it might become obvious is the next question.