Hello? Remember stay simple, that worked really well. Would you like to try it again for thought?
Start with something really simple and undeniable about your experience of thought.
My comment was based on what you implied earlier, that neither thoughts nor emotions can be true representations of reality. So it would make more sense for you to say what you meant by thoughts, right?
We know that thoughts are limited right? What will happen to our fears, if we start thinking about them? Is thinking gonna change the truth of our own fears?
How do you know that thoughts are limited? They are, but how do you know? How does anyone of us know this as a fact, not merely as a theory or as an explanation. At what point does the mind meet the fact? Or there is for the mind only one very simple and obvious fact: that it knows absolutely nothing at all about thought. Surely this fact looks, tastes and smells very different from all the other things that we think we know.
By self examination.
I do not know, sir.
Who is doing the examining? Is there one special and discrete part of myself that is miraculously capable of clear and direct perception? This is what self-examination implies.
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I do not know sir, I can say that it is not a miracle but it is natural.
It is natural to look back and see what one has done, what one has said or how one has behaved. Is this what you mean by self-examination?
No sir, why are you feeling like that? we can inquire different aspects in us right?
One might use thought (logic, reasoning, intuition) to offer an answer. But this pretty much guarantees a conditioned response.
Or one might take the question as an invitation to look within, see what gives.
What do you mean by âlooking at itâ? You may be looking at the image of fear which is merely an abstraction.
What different aspects? I have mentioned what we say and do, our behaviour. What else is there? What are the other different aspects? Are you talking about thoughts and feelings?
Is this where the truth resides, within us?
So it means we are also looking very carefully at the nature of the looker, the inquirer, the examiner. It is all in the same pot.
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Youâre asking the question, which means that the question comes from your point of view of what Iâm implying, what thought means, what reality is. Oui ou Non?
And for you to see where you are, its best to look at where youâre coming from - what can be gained from someone elseâs explanations? (it feels like âpissing in a violinâ to me - to use the French expression)
Did you not think we did well when we inquired together (for our initial definition of self)? Sorry if I have betrayed your trust - If I point out the foolishness and delusions of the self, you are not being especially targeted (well maybe you are, but you are not being singled out as especially foolish)
Anyway, what is my working definition of âthoughtsâ? :
Thoughts are quantas of stored data from past experience, that the brain recycles and offers up (in the form of an emotional narrative) for our viewing pleasure (or horror) in order to frame what is being perceived as the current situation.
Possible heuristics used by the brain might be : perceived similarity of past and present situations and popularity & novelty (ie preference for most used and recent thoughts).
If the present experience somehow does not quite fit with past knowledge, the data is ârefragmentedâ and generally tidied up by the brain, usually when we are sleeping, so that the slightly new me (ie. slightly modified knowledge base) can wake up with the more up to date worldview (in order to better identify friends, enemies, goals etc)
Looking within at the objects of our consciousness and consciousness itself might reveal the truth of what we are.
Paul sir, I love you.
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Alright, but is love a mixture of thoughts and feelings, or something else?
Thanks.
Given your view of thoughts, can they accurately represent reality?
Of what we think we are, yes. But how can that be the truth? Do you have a separate and objective corner of consciousness from which you are able to look clearly and cleanly at all the rest?