Both fear and dependency plays key roles in ‘working within the system to optimize the good’ though I doubt they are the sole factors.
I dunno about backing it up, but I can tell you my typical experience. Many of my pleasures and joys are dependent on my conditioning. In periods when my dependency on conditioning lessens, these pleasures and joys also lessen, and I lose a bunch of my joie de vivre. For example, one of the first things that tends to go is my sense of humor, which is a huge loss for me.
According to Bohm, proprioception of thought refers to an innate intelligence or awareness within the mind that can observe the movement of thought and detect when thought is about to cause harm to the individual or the collective. This proprioceptive aspect acts as a sort of self-regulatory mechanism, similar to how bodily proprioception helps us navigate physical space and avoid harm.
Bohm suggested that this proprioceptive awareness of thought allows us to perceive the potential consequences of our thinking patterns and prevent the detrimental effects they may have on our well-being. By developing an active awareness of thought, we can observe the content, intentions, and underlying assumptions of our thinking process. This awareness enables us to challenge and transform our conditioned thought patterns, thereby fostering more constructive and harmonious ways of thinking and relating to ourselves and others.
So the reason you claim that freedom from conditioning results in a profound loss, is that you feel a profound loss due to some degree of freedom from conditioning.
Does anything indicate (is there any reason to believe) that you are experiencing some sort of freedom from conditioning when you feel down?
Does anything even indicate that the concept of degrees of freedom from conditioning actually makes any sense?
If not, we might have to accept that you are making some sort of circular argument fallacy based on erroneous subjective beliefs/conditioning.
My intention was not to make any kind of universal claim about the consequences of being free from conditioning. Different people will respond differently. But based on my experience and other people I’ve spoken with or read about, emotional turmoil and loss seems to be a common side-effect of freedom from conditioning. Freedom is (can be) terrifying!
I’ll start with the second sentence, because it affects how I respond to the first sentence.
Degrees of freedom makes sense to me. The opposite, black-and-white view of total freedom or total lack of freedom seems in the realm of fantasy. Similarly, freedom from parts rather than the whole makes sense. Now to the first question: Becoming somewhat freed from some parts of my conditioning (which is as far as it’s ever gone for me afaik) can result in loss for me, loss of humor for example. But the feeling of loss IS dependent on conditioning. I’m both free of certain parts, and not-free of other parts of my conditioning.
We might be talking about different types of freedom.
By 'being free from the conditioning that makes me think I am a failure" I mean that the thought “I am a failure” seldom arises any more, and when it does I can usually let it go without attaching to it. But another person (Krishnamurti, for example) might mean I see the full dynamic of the process that results in the thought “I am a failure.”
How we understand ‘freedom’ affects our responses to each other lotsly!
How can we tell if these geezers knew what they were talking about? Maybe they were like you (and most humans) just repeating and identifying with what they had heard from others? After all, taking on world views and projecting our reality via conditioning is what we confusingly mistake for truth…
At face value what you and they are conveying seems to make no sense. Fear and sadness did not need freedom from conditioning to exist, they are a part of conditioning. And just claiming that something we don’t understand is to blame for my experience (of fear and sadness) without any reason whatsoever, is just an unreasonable claim.
How would one defend being unreasonable? Or what should our attitude be faced with unreasonable arguments/irrational claims?
Rather than refuting your claims, I hope that we were just examining them as best we could. And if I were to make some incomprehensible claims, I hope you would return the favour.
In order to explore freely, I think that letting go of unreasonable (or unsubstantiated) presuppositions would be an essential first step.
Maybe we can come at it from the other side (ie. not from where we are) - how shall we proceed? (nb. I have no qualms regarding speculation, it might be helpful if used in conjunction with logic at least)
PS. I’ve used the word “reason” a lot, but I don’t see how you would go about arguing for the benefits of nonsensical speculation
I don’t know about the process, but the consequence of losing a long-held belief can be shocking and unsettling. When the dust settles, however, one feels the blessed relief of being unburdened.
What about when the belief is part of the foundation of your way of living, loving, finding meaning? We’ve all read accounts of people who have had a spontaneous, ‘unplanned’ awakening and are utterly lost with their new way of being in the world.
Defending being unreasonable is an act of reason. I’m talking about an essentially different relationship with ‘the truth,’ a deeply subjective/personal/feeling-based relationship.
We’ve all read accounts of people who believe/think that they have had a (insert concept here : awakening, NDE and gone to heaven, seen a ghost etc) and now blame their confusion on the belief they mistake for truth.
nb. I don’t doubt their experience, just that their unfounded beliefs are unfounded, They must demonstrate that their confusion is a result of clarity, that their suffering is due to a lack of burdens - if not their confusion is just confusion, their suffering actually a form of suffering.
Is my unfounded opinion a reliable path to truth? If my faith or feelings can lead me to 2 contradictory conclusions (eg. Thor exists/does not exist) how do we tell which is correct?
Subjective experience is an excellent and very precise tool for revealing exactly what we believe and what it is that our conditioning dictates that we experience.
The Hindu will experience this and you will experience that - it shows us who we are. It cannot be used to demonstrate that what we believe is actually as we believe it to be - only that we believe it.
‘Belief’ up to now has been the ‘trend’. Once its divisiveness has been seen clearly it can be discarded. It is a support system for the illusory ‘self’ (me).
The obvious fact that the body got old and died may have been such an anathema that an ‘enduring me’
Had to be concocted , a ‘soul’, that would continue after the body’s end. A strong belief, that persists to this day!
I haven’t read those accounts, but I know how one can be aware of losing a belief, a faith, that seems vital to them without understanding why it’s happening. And how, after the shock of losing one’s precious belief or false sense of identity or security, it can take some time before one comes to honest terms with what has happened.
We don’t seem to be able to find enough common ground to bring our conversation to life. You have your way of seeing things and I have mine, and neither of us seems able/willing to budge. Maybe we should take a moment to let the mud settle and then see if it’s worth continuing?
If you look carefully I have budged ; I have gone from assuming the common ground of reason and logic, to asking why it would be more useful to believe our feelings.
I’m not actually defending a position, I’m accompanying you in an exploration of yours.
If this is uncomfortable, its probably just because its uncomfortable.
Sure, maybe the important question that needs clarifying is motive, maybe we are not looking in the same direction. I am inquiring into your ideas with you to see if they are worth clinging to. What are you doing? (hint: you might actually have explained what you are doing in the conversation)
For me your style of accompanying is too critical and confrontational for comfort. I end up feeling defensive, and that’s a poor starting point for exploration, creature of feelings that I am.
We all have the same problem (of ego) and I am aware that this is an issue.
Shining a spotlight on our beliefs does seem important to me - but I realise that consent is essential. We are drawn to the idea of truth, but the dictat of comfort is a brute fact.
nb. brute fact of the process called self, rather than brute fact/fundamental constant)