Is cultural conditioning, (the thought patterns we are programmed with by the culture), really “my” thoughts?
Does the system of thought we absorb growing up in our social environment really belong to a “me-thought” or a “you-thought?”
Why does humanity in general seem to react defensively if someone questions something we suggest?
Is it because the very nature of the psychological conditioning is this pattern of defining each psychological thought as being “personal?”
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My condition creates all the factors for what I perceive as my self, and along with thought, time, place, context, etc., I see this as a creative individual action.
Do you see, in reading the teachings, we are considering a religiousness? I wonder do we realise this? . Modifying the way of thinking is what we have been doing all the way along, and keep trying to improve. But the teachings are pointing to a non-materialistic, non-domestic, non-verbal, unlimited perspective, which is not a perspective at all.
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My cultural conditioning is personal because it’s what I am. Aware of no “I” apart from my cultural conditioning, I am that conditioning, and therefore always threatened by the possibility of being wrong, mistaken, misled, misinformed, deceived, brainwashed, controlled, etc.
My fundamental insecurity is that I know I am a product of my cultural environment, and my false sense of security comes from my faith that my conditioning is the right conditioning.
**Does a particular name make the general conditioning “personal?” Simply labelling it Joe or Steve or Sam? Isn’t the conditioning in humanity the same general patterns? Conditioned parents assign a name to a child, then tell the child that the thoughts that arise belong to this thought-identity of “Joe or Sam.” Does the arbitrary name/label make it “personal,” when it’s actually a shared cultural pattern? Is this collection of conditioned psychological thought patterns really the essence of a human being, abstract thought imagery? The patterns ‘are’ the identity, the “me.” But is that thought imagery a human being, or merely the thought-conditioning the body has been programmed with by the culture?
Yes, it’s just the programming, but until this becomes obvious, it is, for all intents and purposes, your identity.
When it begins to become clear that you are not who you are conditioned to think you are, you are beginning to learn the difference between conditioning and learning. Once you are actually learning, “learning” is your identity (or “student”, if you prefer). You are a brain that is seeing its conditioning (and all conditioning) for what it is.
It is not really limited to personal conditioning, but that the conditioning is what I express as my thinking. My thinking is considered creative, inventive, investigative, or wise and profound, stupid, evasive, provocative, etc. We think it is personal in the context of others. This really a separateness, a schism, which we want to heal. Making it personal is one way, temporarily, to control the schism. We are searching for love, completeness, unity etc.
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**The irony being that the movement of psychological thought, to acquire love for a divisive self-image, is basically the negation of love. Whereas the listening without the word, the me-structure, is love.
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Do you know this or are you assuming it’s true? I ask because I don’t presume to know what love is.
**The statement is the ‘description’ stemming from ‘observation’. It’s not an assumption or knowing, it’s a seeing.
…and that seeing comes in “two aspects”. The understanding of the experience, and the actual “experience-ing”. Both of which seem to be “always” occuring…
Experience with time(memory)/ideas, and experience-ing, which appears to be without any reason, time, or place.
The “one who is aware” is at the heart of everything we experience. Start there for putting order to “the mind”. Start with that, for seeing if it’s possible to know what thoughts are.
My point exactly. No one can dispute that we have ideas. When we say that we “have” ideas… any understanding must be an opinion based from awareness. The fact, is that we actually have no reason for being aware…!
Awareness seems to point to the one thing that has no why, no where, no substance… no time… and requires no path…
Actually… any “how”, any idea seems to be a diversion separate from aware-ing itself…!
**Seeing is seeing, it doesn’t have two aspects. That’s thought-imagery suggesting that false division. There’s also no psychological time, that’s imaginary. There is no one who is aware, or that needs to ‘start’ somewhere, that’s also just thought-imagery. There’s only what is, and that’s not an imaginary me or you, seeing. That’s a thought-projection.
Well said! Thought-imagery projects an imaginary “me”. But still, to most people it appears that it all “boils down” to the see-ing, and the “see-er”.
One-thing is an idea,
Not-two is an idea,
Is it that “What is”, can also “become” an idea?
It seems that all things… simply are.
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