Do you think yourself out of living?
When thought is compulsive, incessant, reactive, and barely aware of itself, living is a matter of suffering this condition or exploiting it. Weāre all so accustomed to it that it never occurs to us that there is such a thing as silence until, for some reason, the brain is silent and one awakens to the fact that its ānormalā condition is to be compulsively noisy, chattering, using thought to prevent silence. Then, one begins to wonder why silence is such a threat that it must be denied, prevented, upstaged by a constant distracting stream of sound.
The only way to find out is to be silent and see what happens, but you find that you canāt be silent; that the brain is so deeply conditioned to deprive itself of silence that itās not enough to know that silence is necessary, essential. Something deeper than the fear of/desire for silence must awaken for the noise to end.
So is your response, Inquiry, a long winded way of saying, yes, you think yourself out of living?
If all you wanted was a yes or no answer, my answer is No, we donāt āthink ourselves out of livingā, as you put it. We live what we think is the life we should live because itās all we know. If that isnāt living, how would you know?
If thought, which is the past, is the driver for how we live now, in the moment, are we always living, measuring the present in terms of the past? Always comparing? Must we be this way or are there other possibilities?
Yes, this is living for the conditioned brain.
Must we be this way or are there other possibilities?
We believe it is possible to live without limits, without self, etc., but believing/disbelieving is the way we live, so we honestly donāt know if there is any other way of livingā¦we just have to believe there is because weāre miserable and believing mitigates our misery.
Personally speaking, Iād be an absolute wreck if I didnāt know that Iād be with Jesus after I died.
1 Like
Thus endeth the inquiry, Inquiry.
And the participation in this inquiry is to āwhat?ā support your belief? question your belief? end your belief?
To inquire further. What else is there to do?
If thatās where it ends for you, Bobā¦
And the participation in this inquiry is to āwhat?ā support your belief? question your belief? end your belief?
None of the above. I was responding to Inquiry.
Just a bit of humorā¦I donāt believe in any of that stuff. Iād be a āwreckā though if I DID believe Iād meet Him after I died!ā¦ I mean what would you wear? 
Living is about smelling flowers directly, seeing beauty of nature. Words can never be replacement for that.
1 Like
So blind people and those who have lost their olfactory sense arenāt living?
Hi Bob
if we are alive naturally we are still living. Is there anything else you want to add to clarify the direction of your inquiry?
Abhijeet
We are alive but are we living in the āwhat isā or in thought? Are we living a second hand life?
Clearly living within our own second hand selfishness otherwise why would we be failing so wretchedly in our behavior?
If thought wasnāt so active in our behavior and generating fear what else could explain our inability to return one hello with another? one hug with another? one smile with another?
if we havenāt divided ourselves from āwhat isā what else explains us having a phony demeanor as if we are better?
p.s. if i donāt answer or post from now on please be aware i am having a hard time coming in terms with the level of control present here wherein normal posting actions and our movements are heavily restricted and i have to wait for the suggested time frames
Weāll be patientā¦ā¦ā¦.::::
What I mean is that this forum for example is not life. Words are limiting and cannot replace life. They also donāt represent the actual world. Mental processes are not real life. Real life is to be lived directly. Walking in nature cannot be replaced by a documentary on nature on TV for example.
I must assume that you are speaking metaphorically - or maybe you are discriminating between different parts that we can point at?
Do you mean : words are not what they represent
1 Like