Lives Matter Movement!

I don’t know what is wrong or right here. The impression I got was that the ‘empty mind’ is different in some way from the mind with its ‘contents’. All we know is the filled , noisy mind…not the silent mind. I copied this from the Huguette post: (bold mine)

K. “… To find out what is sacred the mind must know the total content of itself. And its content makes consciousness. You understand, sir? Consciousness is its content. If there is no content there is something else, isn’t there? If my content of my mind is worry, resentment, wanting to fulfill, bitterness, anxiety, fear, afraid of so many things, wanting to do this and that, that is the content of my consciousness. When the content is not - you understand? - there is something entirely different. And we try to make one of the contents into the sacred thing.”

My own response or reaction would be that of escaping to some secluded and far out place where I could live in peace. I know it would not be a real solution but even K. during second world war retired into the woods in California. If you are not identified with any of the sides in conflict and so you don’t take sides you’ll be the target of their hate as well.

But you ask: “to being self”. Should I be in conflict with myself? I cannot be anything else but a self. This is a fact and I stay with that fact.

Yes that is so, but what I mean is, I can see something of the trouble self in other is, but I can have a tendency to think that while self in other is problematic, my self is not, or at least not so much, and that if self were just myself, then self wouldn’t be as much of a problem, and it would be safe to carry on.

Yes, you are absolutely right. That’s the attitude I/we have. We can easily see the danger of the self in others but don’t see this danger in ourselves. This I think it’s a serious problem. I think I’m OK (in the same way even Trump thinks “I’m OK”). What can we do? We cannot produce the insight which will free us from our self and our vision is limited.

One personal question: you talked about this desire (or reaction) to kill in others, did you ever discovered this killing attitude in yourself?

I often let thoughts flow uncontrolled and many times strange and even violent thoughts or images came out. They scared me and I supposed they are not “my” thoughts but thoughts in the common consciousness of humanity. So I think K. was right in saying that in our inquiry we should consider that we are humanity and have to see ourselves not as individuals.
What is you experience of this aspect?

Yes without a doubt. And not just a thought, but an urge, and a powerful one at that, like a possession, but one not physically realised. I have never taken any step towards such a thing, such as being in the military, and I am not part of a gun owning society, having always had a powerful inhibition around such, though I am not a pacifist either. As the self I am violent still, regardless of the fact I inflict no physical harm personally, and am a lifelong vegetarian, and all the madness of the self belongs to me as surely as anyone else. Every aspect of self can grow ever other aspect, so I am the solution to nothing.

Ah! Now your previous question “And when I see how extremely dangerous self is, what is my own response to being self?” acquires a very strong meaning!

I don’t feel that urge or possession but I suppose that giving the “right” occasion I might react in the same way. Nobody can say to be immune unless having ended the ego. I strongly feel to be influenced by the collective hysteria or fears sometimes even if rationally I reject them. That is why I try to be as long as possible alone in nature, I don’t feel that mass influence there and there is a genuine peace in me. But as long as I’m back to town I’m again under the spell of collective neurosis. I’ve experienced this thousands of times and I’m pretty sure of it but I’ve never heard of someone else feeling the same thing. There is no sanity in our citites and our neurosis are the neurosis of our society. The thing I regret most is that those solitary places in nature are getting more and more fewer and when there will be no possibility to isolate ourselves we will be bound to live in that inferno.

But your question is a good one, what will it be your response?

Our way of living subjects all of us to violence of one kind or another, not just physical. There is economic violence and there is the myriad ways violence is done to our spirit, and our sense of justice, besides out and out physical violence, all of which can leave us deeply affected.

How do I respond to the danger my self constitutes? by watching it like a hawk, both inside and outside of myself in the shape of others, who I see as being myself just as much as the contents of my consciousness in particular.

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Yes, this is, by the way, a biological approach. We have divided religion from biology but actually the problems of humanity derive from his biological evolution. Religion, seen through this perspective, could be a way to improve this evolution or to extend it further.

That is what I try to do myself. Yet there is something we are missing, the resolving factor, i.e. the observation without the observer. As you said: " I am the solution to nothing."
Have you ever thought about this thing? It’s a paradox (or a Zen koan) in order to end the ego we must observe without the ego. So to end ego there must be no ego! That is our basic problem!

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Is it possible to see the seer - and in that moment let go?

How can you see the seer? it’s impossible, thought cannot see thought. We can only perceive proprioceptive sensations like muscular tensions, temperature, internal pain and so on, but we cannot perceive the producer (the nervous system) of those perceptions. The only way I can make sense of the insight K spoke about is to have a sudden glimpse of the whole pattern. The pattern of the observer, not the observer itself.

Yes - obviously thought can only come to conclusions about itself - which is of no help.
Can there be an awareness of the subtlest movement of self? In this case an awareness of the one trying to see, or the one watching and judging?
In my experience it is possible, and that the watcher may dissapear for a while when this happens.

What is this like? Can you describe this experience (or theory?) a bit more.

I was thinking of this point this morning and it came to my mind that the ego may disappear for a while only when there is love (which is attention). When I look at something I love, like the sea in my case, for a fraction of second I’m not there. It eludes me how to observe with love my mental processes…

“What is this like? Can you describe this experience (or theory?) a bit more.”

I have not had that experience referring to the pattern of my ego, but as I had a glimpse of the whole pattern of something else, like the behaviour and attitude of a person I had the opportunity to know, I guess the same could be done for our patterns. This I think is in line with what K. used to say: to see the ego in operation and have an insight of the whole implications.

Is it that there is the brain in observation, however fleeting (fleeting being a time-bound notion) but then the brain falls out of that observation, at which point there is the observer separate from the observed to the fore once more, which is the self, and that self is ancient (another time-bound sense) and has a considerable momentum to it, like flow, in a large body of water or air which is content, and that in the reactive brain, the periods (another time-bound perspective) of observation are few and far between, so self ends up deeper in its own mire, having content it does not see as itself as real and compelling. So there is age, there is division, conflict, separation, which is momentum, which is reaction, including the concern with resolution, which is a concern part of content has about all the rest.

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This is an essential part of psychological health (so is sleep for example). Sometimes we call it “Daydreaming”.
Sometimes daydreaming means “lost in imaginative reverie”, sometimes it means “Dissapeariing into the moment”. I’m not sure if these are similar or different - but I’d like to concentrate on the “dissapearing into the moment” - these moments of daydreaming when “what is” fills the whole of consciousness - and there is no movement of interpretation, judgement, separation etc… (no watcher)

I’m saying that this essential (for our sanity and clarity) wholeness can have an increased
presence, via courage (meaning that we do not need to cling to the self) and attention (meaning that we are able to identify its subtlest movement - ie the watcher)

I would like to caution against the idea that we should strive for such a thing (it may happen, but that is not up to us) - that our Psychological freedom and clarity should depend on some impossible feat is not advisable. Although you are probably right that the shock of realising that the self can only lead itself further into its own trap, is a powerful life changing event. (But are we guaranteed of having such an insight/shock? Is choiceless awareness dependant on such an insight? Maybe)

I wish we could trust in simplicity rather than think that there is some complex model that must be grasped in order to see clearly. (This is more of a caution against philosophising, rather than an argument against some all-englobing insight)

What does the fact that the self (the habit of, the sense of and the interpretations of) imprints itself physically on the brain (builds itself into the synapses, becomes the brain) do to this hypothesis?

What is courage? It’s a word which I’ve never understood and I guess it’s only a conventional concept with no psycological basis. Either there is fear or there is not and you can operate smoothly. Having courage, commonly, means that you have fear and then you do what you must do in spite of it. So I don’t think courage is what needed here.

There is a book of K titled: “the impossible question” sometimes I’m apt to think that it is literally so! (:slight_smile:
Well, take it or leave it, there is no alternative. I remember a Zen story I read long time ago: a monk could not reach satori in spite of all his efforts. His master (a sadist perhaps) told him: “if you do not reach satori in a week you better kill yourself”. The monk went almost insane, then at the end of the week he had his illumination." Apart from the truthfullness of this story it seems that there is a serious risk of loosing one’s mental sanity in this search for a supposed truth (and this might explain why in this forum we find weird people (:slight_smile:). The borderline between illumination and insanity is very narrow and surely for one who find the first there are thousands who meet the second!

Imprinting of knowledge in a brain is something an observer separate and apart from what is observed experiences (along with a host of other things) as part of a physical and material universe, and as such is woven into a narrative it is about everything.

So is your question, what is the impact, if such there be, of observation on matter, such as that in the cells of the brain?

I must confess I can’t understand this sentence (while the rest is clear). Can you explain it in a different way?

I think what you call “mire” I call it “pattern”. Our nervous system, at least its lower levels, works in patterns.

There are three levels in the nervous system: the first and the most ancient one is the vegetative system (or the Autonomic nervous system) which regulates the basic body functions like heart beating, temperature, and so on. The second and higher level is the lymbic system. This is responsible for emotions and attachments. We have this in common with animals so its quite ancient too. The third and higher level is the cortex (I hope I remember the right name, I read about it long ago), it deals with awareness. It’s the youngest one (in the evolutive scale of time) so it’s the weeker of the three. These three levels have a hierarchical functioning, which means that when a higher level is functioning the other two are inactive.
The ego belongs clearly to the second level, the lymbic, and like the first works through aquired patterns. Even things we learn through the cortex, through awareness, are recorded as patterns and so they become a fixed behaviour (your mire). Theoretically awareness should be able to bypass the lymbic system, but the second being so ancient and so rooted and strong, that we all the time fall back to this second level.

Sorry, I’ll use plainer language. Mire is a bog or swamp and the expression, to be mired in, or caught in the mire, means to be enveloped in a situation, in particular one where struggling to get out can just make things worse.

What I was trying to convey is, when the mind is highly reactive, observation in which a thing may be seen more clearly is largely absent, and as a consequence of that, a state in which an observer separate from what it observes then dominates. At its most pronounced, the threat perceived through this division is so compelling, that I may even kill, when in actuality there is no observed separate from the observer. Even a mind disposed to seeing the observer is the observed, and having something of the intellectual framework around such a thing, can struggle to realise it. Connected to this is fear. Krishnamurti pointed out that there is no fear in the actual thing itself, fear is in the thought of what the actual is. Since observation threatens to reveal what is actual, fear levels rise in proximity to it.