Good Vibrations

INTRODUCTION

In my relationship with X, I have felt vibrations since we met.

Good vibrations?

It’s possible I get frightened by vibrations or at least I become very attentive. I bring in something as long as thought/memory exists. So I wonder if vibrations come out of that field.

It is the vibration of thought (to put it simply) but also about something else too, something deeper than thought perhaps. Memory is deeper than thought. It is about memory. Thought is always trying to replace the memory of hurt with the memory of joy. It is therefore seeking the greatest joy imaginable, which we call enlightenment.

So does thought work on that memory?

Thought cannot process an incomplete memory, which is, any psychological hurt. These types of memory are always incomplete. Therefore, thought has nowhere safe to store them. So it must keep them in circulation until resolved. Thought is not memory. Thought is the accessing of memory. Thought is an operating system. Memory is the data with which it operates. But psychological memory has no data, no fact, no binary code to say 0 or 1; or, rather, it is data which keeps switching back and forth between 0 and 1. It is an aberration, or faulty data. So thought, unable to find a right place for this faulty data, keeps it in play while also doing its other job. As the faulty data increases, thought is less and less able to function sanely, calmly, intelligently. And the faulty data increases as thought juggles multiple opinions about the word and thus struggles more and more to think, to do its job.

Something X did hurt me. So there are two elements involved: what X did and the hurt caused by what X did. The memory of what X did, said, etc. is clear enough and quite reliable; but the so-called memory of the hurt or the psychological pain is totally unreliable because it is all self-induced. All hurt is self-induced. And it is the same for X. Something I did hurt X. So, X and I, together, will work out the next step of our relationship only when we have the memory of what happened and no memory of the hurt or the psychological pain attached to it. Until then we have no relationship.

Having no relationship is far more painful and real than all the imagined hurts. For without the imagined hurts as unresolved memory, there is no psyche. The psyche only exists because we have no relationship with the world, with other people, except through images. With real physical pain there is always the possibility of immediate action to bring about the cessation of the pain; but with self-induced psychological pain there is an endless cycle of reactions, which is the self.

So we start with a situation that is not clear; I can’t change it for some reason; and the result of this is an unresolved memory. The whole struggle gets stored or kept in mind because it is still not as it ‘should be’. Is it stored in that unresolved way? Is it on a to-do list of bad things to repair? And is there any memory of the good things that happen? Is the good memory stored in a different way, let’s say in a ‘positive’ box?

There is no good or bad memory. There are facts and ideas. Facts can be stored and retrieved. Ideas cannot be stored. It is a fact that you say things to me and there is a memory of the words used; it is an idea that any of these words can hurt me. A fact goes into memory and gets accessed only when necessary. An idea cannot be stored, and therefore occupies and clutters the space for thinking; this cluttered space is what causes the illusion of a thinker, an entity who can make sense of the clutter. The thinker is itself clutter, not something separate from it.

So there is a difference between storing a memory as a fact and filling the mind with ideas.

Exactly. There is no conflict in facts.

Is it the idea that meets the fact?

The idea cannot meet the fact. The conflict is with other ideas. When there is just the fact, there is no idea. The idea that you are nothing, for example, conflicts with the idea that you are something. But the fact is you are nothing. Therefore no conflict is possible. Any concept of or belief in being ‘something’ involves ideas. Being something always involves ideas; and hence conflict. You’re a big fat nothing, and so am I. Then only is it possible to relate from there, and from nowhere else. Anything else will have conflict built into it, guaranteed.

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‘Be thankful not for the friend’s tenderness
But for his tyranny,
So the arrogant beauty in you
Can become a lover who weeps’

Rumi

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Joy, like love or compassion, is not something that can be experienced as an object; it is a movement of being, arising only when the mind is quiet. Thought, on the other hand, is always trying but never truly acting. It is caught in its own fragmented movement. Can we inquire together starting here without analysis?

Hurt is self-created whether in its accumulation, experience, or in the endless escape from it. Can this be observed without resistance?

Precisely. Can we go further? The fact is always immediate, alive, and beyond any image or interpretation. When there is no interference of thought, the fact stands alone, without conflict. So can we look together without ideas, conclusions, or resistance at what is?

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Yes, that is our question. Can we relate to one another from a state of being nothing?

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