To deal with the consiousness means what? I negotiate with my consciousness. But when there is the realization that I am my consiousness what happens? I can’t do anything about it. I can’t change it because there is no I that can change the content . The ‘me’ is the consiousness , the “I” or the “me” is the content of the consciousness which is hate, jealousy,fear,desire ,hope, and so on.
Change may take place with the perception of false as false and truth as truth.
The content of consiousness that thought has created is totally false.
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It may sound obvious and banal to point this out, but is this realisation merely an intellectual realisation? Or is realisation something complete, total, with all one’s energy, attention, brain and heart?
If it is the former, then nothing will change. One is then left with the analytical dilemma of how the ‘me’ can affect its own contents of consciousness - which is obviously a trick question.
But realisation means insight, direct perception that ‘I am that’ (‘that’ being my fear, my uncertainty, my unhappiness, etc). Only when there is a complete insight can one say what happens next.
Speaking for myself, I have not had that total insight. But even without insight one can watch, observe one’s own contents of consciousness without any choice or interference of thought.
When a bus is coming at you do you say that I understand intellectually . Seeing is acting. There is no gap between seeing and action.Understanding or seeing is nonverbal. Believing is intellectual which has no value in one’s daily life.
So you are saying you have been transformed? You have had an insight that you are your consciousness and it has been transformed?
If I don’t identify with “my fear, my uncertainty, my unhappiness”, what am I identifying with? Am I identifying with a false sense of who/what I am?
Could I be suffering from mistaken identity? If I identify with nothing but the moment to moment physical-emotional sense of self, is this not choiceless awareness?
When 07007 was talking about the realisation ‘I am my consciousness’ I didn’t take this to mean ‘I identify myself with certain contents of consciousness’, but rather ‘the observer is the observed’. As when K said ‘you are sorrow’. The seeing of that - according to K - is the ending of it.
Perhaps this seeing and ending can also be moment by moment (by seeing I mean choiceless seeing)?
But don’t we identify with the contents of consciousness? Am I not the personification of the contents?
We do - but I’m not sure that this is what 07007 was talking about when he talked about the realisation that ‘I am my consciousness’.
There is a difference between an observer seeing something about themselves and feeling identified with it, and the observer actually being non-different from the observed.
Do you see the difference? (i.e. have I explained the difference adequately?)
Isn’t it the difference between being what I am and being in denial?
Yes - though it depends what you mean.
If we take the ordinary situation - where the observer, ‘me’, feels separate from his/her contents, then there is in effect a denial taking place: one is denying (implicitly) that those contents are not different from ‘me’.
Whereas if the observer is the observed, then I am what I am. There is no denial of the fact. I’m a coward (for example), it’s a fact. I won’t pretend otherwise.
The contents of consciousness, as I understand it, are what/who I believe myself to be, for better or worse. Some of what/who I believe myself to be I may be denying, burying, and other contents I may be proud of and drawing attention to. But all of the contents have more to do with what I think I am than with what I actually am from moment to moment.
Is the case? When there is fear, do I merely think I am afraid, or am I actually afraid?
Fear is usually induced by thought.
That’s a rationalisation. In the moment of feeling afraid, I do not merely think I am afraid, I really am afraid. The fear may be the product of thought (which I can discover through a process of analysis), but in the moment of fear, I am my fear.
That’s the difference.
That is a good question, do I see fear intellectually and virtually or do I see fear without the association of the intellect?
The intellect or word is of the past which is dead .
My question is, can one look without the interference of the intellect?
Yes, I think this is the right question.
To look without any interference is to see clearly, and clearly, the conditioned brain does this only on rare occasions, and only briefly. So, with the exception of rare moments of clarity, we cannot look without interference. And this means looking at the interference itself, if one can.
For instance, if I’m trying to speak to someone and someone else keeps interrupting and interceding, making communication impossible, I want that person to be quiet. But when I come to find out that that person is me, that I am too conflicted to listen or speak without interrupting, what am I to do?
When I am divided against myself, unification is not a matter of getting rid of one part of myself so that the other part can be free. It’s a matter of perceiving the conflict for what it is; seeing the whole situation, and that is possible only when there is unity.
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I agree. But when there is fear or suffering, what is the situation?
The situation usually is that there is fear or suffering apparently separate from myself - a state of affairs that is maintained by ‘thinking about’ the fear, or the suffering.
Whereas the question I understand 07007 to be asking (although I could be wrong), is whether there can be a direct, immediate awareness of fear, or of suffering (these are examples of content), without any interference of thought (i.e. rationalisation, ‘thinking about’ one’s fear, objectifying it, etc)?
Just - directly being afraid, directly suffering. This is the unity being pointed to here.
Thinking may have created the fear or suffering in the first place; but once the content is there, what is one’s relationship to it? Is it separate from us? Or is it, in fact - oneself?
One can look at a tree without naming it “oak tree”.
One can look at a cloud without naming it cumulonimbus. In the same way one can look at fear without the term " fear".
Words are only useful in communication.
Words prevent observation because they come from the past.
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