The theory of surfing was explained to me - I had an idea of what “being one with the wave” meant - but I was surprised when it happened (nothing like what I imagined)
If I am told (in the Christian tradition) that I am no good - and that I must lose myself in prayer - which I do for years (as a nun in a convent) - until one day I dissapear into the light or feel the bliss of non-self (or divine love) - which appears as a gift and is totally astonishing.
In these two scenarios, has my conditioning set me up for insight? similarities between what I have been told and my memory of the “experience” being noticed later as I reflect on what happened. Or have I been hypnotised? how can we tell the difference?
This is a hypothetical answer. Therefore it prevents any chance for the question to breathe. Can one live in the world without fear? Can one live in the world without the self? Allow the question to breathe a little.
The operating system is to move as quickly as possible away from the question into an idealised answer. Freedom from any psychological problem cannot be found through movement away from the problem. So can the brain break free of its own limitations without taking time over it? Essentially, this is the same question. But what is putting the question? Is it being asked by a brain that already thinks it has all the answers? Is it being asked by a brain that has only grasped a theoretical understanding of the problem? Or the problem itself is putting the question.
Therefore, forget all about the answer. The answer is totally useless because it depends upon time and thought to get us there. In dropping the answer, time itself is also being dropped. But the question remains. And without time to echo back its various proposals and theories, the question then has an entirely different flavour.
Both are set-ups because you are acting with hope for and expectation of a reward, a pay-off, and when one persists in this pursuit, one either decides it’s futile and quits, or deceives oneself into believing that one’s persistence is rewarded. This is something we see here in the K-world where K-devotees believe they’ve undergone transformation and are now free, selfless, etc.
Yes, I realise that the hypotheses you state are common place. But whether you have had these experiences or have come to these conclusions by listening to stories - how do we tell if one conclusion, if any, is correct?
Concluding that I don’t want to persist in a pursuit is the end of the matter. But my pretending that I’ve achieved what I hoped for and expected (when no such thing happened) is something I may never realize, much less admit to.
I don’t know but it seems to me that the brain can’t free itself from its beliefs until/unless it realizes that it is its beliefs. There’s no freedom if there’s belief/disbelief, presumption, conviction, certainty.
What is a psychological problem? In what way is it different from a mere non-psychological problem?
I’m having the same difficulty understanding the separation (that is apparently evident to many here) between psychological knowledge and non-psychological knowledge (the psychological stuff being apparently the culprit/evil trickster)
Of couse - freedom from the problem comes from seeing what the problem is in its totality (which also means seeing what the entity suffering from the problem is)
So the key is in the question - not in any escape from, or solution to the question - freedom comes when both question and questioner are seen - the desire to escape the problem is part of the problem.
What is our relationship to the question? Are we separate from it as a questioner, an enquirer or an observer? Then the desire for an answer must inevitably creep in. Can the brain break free? This is a question not being put by the brain, by limited intelligence. The limited brain places questions that are tied to the prospect of answers. There is no answer to this.
If there is no answer … and if looking for an answer is futile … why frame it as a question? If the brain sees a question, it automatically goes into “answering” mode. If no answer is possible, frustration and confusion result.
Why not frame it as something like:
Find out if your brain can break free of psychological thought and time.
If this is taken to heart, it launches an open and active investigation. There’s no confusion in the presentation, it’s clear what needs to happen. Why waste cognitive energy on dealing with a question that has no answer?
No, I stick to what I said. Our fundamental questions come from somewhere else. They are not the products of a confused or limited brain.
Can the brain break free of its limitations? The question is very clear. But the answer is unclear. Therefore, what does the brain generally do? It puts the answer at the end of its quest as an idealised version of freedom, with a picture of what it means to be free; and then it imagines all the things it must do or refrain from doing in order to achieve this projected state. In other words, it manufactures its own version of clarity through the use of thought and time. Therefore, it has almost immediately stopped any real movement of breaking free. This is the important thing - the breaking free - not the image of freedom at the end of the trail.
When one listens to a fundamental question without any urge to offer an answer, everything must change because there is then no gap between the question, the listening and the answer. The question itself is the whole answer. It isn’t broken up into a problem and a solution or into a state of confusion and a state of clarity. There is only a fundamental energy of enquiring, which has nothing whatsoever to do with this or that limited brain.
When I listen to a big question and drop the urge to answer (to the extent that I can drop it), I draw a blank. Not a positive “unlimited” blank, rather a WTF?! blank. And I’d reckon I’m not alone on this, or the problem of posing a question that is not to be answered wouldn’t keep coming up over and over again in forums like this.
So, again, why not formulate it as a statement, a call to action of some kind, rather than an unanswerable question?
See if your brain can break free of psychological thought and time.
How will this be any different from facing an unanswerable question? Is it simply that it provides a window of hope? When you are faced with an immense question, it isn’t your question at all. That’s the secret, isn’t it?