Yes, that’s the question.
There is a misunderstanding running throughout the questions and responses on this forum which is indicative of the inability to communicate at depth. The issue is to do with the nature of individual experience as it is seen and understood, when set against a notional collective reality or consciousness, which is felt to be general in nature, and which is usually expressed in terms of ‘we’. The key element is seen and understood, not just imagined as a form of self-aggrandisement, and defence against loss of control.
An existential threat exists to culturally induced personhood in the prospect of something whose nature is deeper than anything thought can encompass, so merely adopting a linguistic ‘we’ without authenticity doesn’t cut it, nor does questioning oneself and others to the point of insanity.
Questions reveal nothing beyond the learned response that coins them. They exist largely as entertainment to keep addled brains safe from incursion. No question is actually proscriptive of truth; they are simply the modus operandi of the brain in flight from anything actual.
Dialogue is nothing without a question it seems, but if dialogue does not reveal its own inherent limitation then it’s no use at all. When dialogue neither brings about sensitivity, honesty or truthfulness, then its time to bin it as just another cheap addiction.
1 Like
It depends what you mean by dialogue. Why impose any limits on it?
None of this activity is derived from an unlimited, nor is it informed by such. There isn’t a human being alive who needs to carry on with this to this extent. A pure mythology has been created around the power of questions on account of the psychological support it provides. If the brain did not have the preoccupation afforded by its endless questions it would be faced with that it doesn’t want to face.
1 Like
I don’t know. That’s why I am putting the question. Let’s not rule it out so quickly.
And ‘what’ doesn’t it want to face? That it ‘doesn’t know’ and is “addicted” to ‘knowing’? As long as the desire to ‘know’ exists not in the practical but in these psychological realities that we all share, there must be suffering, isolation, etc, mustn’t there? The fact is that we don’t know. The senses reflect the world around the body. What is beyond all that is imagination, the ‘why’. Isn’t the idea of death just another “cheap addiction”?
No one here can question their way out of an inherent lack of integrity. All this is doing is saying: just one more question, just one more question…
Making it about knowing is the same as making it about questions. Contact is not a question.
What is the “it” that you are referring to?
Why not? You seem to have found a way to do it.
The situation one is in; the condition.
Where do see total integration in yourself right now? There is no integration, and no way to it.
Again, it depends what you mean by integration. In a dialogue together we have a chance to find out if any of these fancy words have any real meaning to them. That’s all. It is simple enough.
I don’t know how I can respond to the topic of this discussion which is “have we ever looked at the nature of suffering?” So I just post in reply to whomever.
The question is a yes or no question and suffering is a very complicated human issue. It is the outcome of many different factors. One may suffer from covid where as another may suffer from loneliness and another from poverty and so on…
I believe that the term ‘suffering’ here refers exclusively to the mental/ psychological aspect. Some would argue that ‘suffering’ pertains only to that.
It doesn’t depend on what I mean at all. This finding out is mere postponement, and endless kicking of the can down the road. There is no gradual, there is no reformation. Either there is total integration of the heart and mind, or there is an absence of integrity, in which case the questions and the questioning lack integrity. What is the relationship of all you are doing and saying here to truth?
Whose truth? You already seem to have a good hold of it.
Do you suffer? That’s the first thing.
Not whose truth, just truth. The truth of being, the truth of consciousness, which no one is beholden to anyone else for.
The nature of the psychological suffering, as I see and experience it, is the illusion of a ‘Dan’ or a ‘me’ separate from the thinking and/or the feelings of the moment. When that illusion is present there can take place, ‘MY’ suffering, fear, isolation, thinking, etc. When it happens, as it does, that there is present an ‘integral awareness’ that sees through this false internal division going on, ‘suffering’ goes up in smoke along with the imagined division. This awareness comes and goes. The JK suggestion was, I believe, that the ‘energy’ necessary for this integral awareness is wasted by the constant friction or conflict expended in our usual thinker/thought, experiencer/experience divided state.