Musings

The alpha ape :gorilla: spots a male sniffing around one of his females. He attacks it, cows it, chases it and goes back to chewing some leaves :maple_leaf:.

The civilized human male seeing another male sniffing around his mate…writes a country song?:guitar:

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I didn’t know there were apes in Canada and the northern USA.

You should get out more.


Is the mind able to see the whole without distortion?


What do you mean by “the whole”?

Yeah, good question. I don’t mean the totality, seeing that’s reserved for God. So if not the totality, what then? Maybe something like the ‘slice’ of the totality that’s available to us. The largest whole we are able to see. Seeing the forest and the trees and the seeing/seer/seen. Iow: I don’t know!

If by “the mind” you mean the conditioned brain, the answer is No, isn’t it?

We don’t know what the whole is because each one of us is what we determine we are from moment to moment, according to our assumptions, etc.

It isn’t possible to even imagine being an infinitesimal part of a vast, complex unknowable whole when I can’t help feeling that I am all that matters. How can I feel otherwise when I can’t cease and desist from this activity?

Probably. I don’t know. I was inviting us to find out: How much, how clearly can your mind see?

Maybe the whole is-includes whatever we happen to determine we are in the present moment?

Maybe I am the only thing that matters, the only thing period. Not the particular I (ego/self), rather the universal I (atman/Self).

Isn’t there a preponderance of evidence every day of how reactive, biased, and mistaken we are?

Yes! But still: How much, how clearly can your mind see? Not how much/clearly does it typically see, but how much and how clearly can it see? Can you find the boundary of your ‘radius of wholeness’ and your seeing acuity? What is the experience like to answer those questions?

How can the conditioned brain have “seeing acuity” when there are things it can’t see without distorting, denying, disputing, or dismissing?

Okay, let’s stay with: How much of the whole do I see, can I see? And what’s the experience like when I do whatever I do to find out?

I can see whatever doesn’t threaten my illusions about what I I’m seeing, but I don’t realize I’m doing this in the moment because it’s reflexive, automatic. My conditioned prejudice and bias is often obvious, but implicit bias is unconscious, so it isn’t until afterwards that I realize how my perception was distorted my conditioning.

If you’ll permit a friendly observation: To me it seems you’re very ‘in your head.’ I’m often very in my head too, i.e. I get the draw of passionate rational thinking (though I’m not all that good at it). But I see a risk in relying on even the clearest rational thinking, there are amazing places and states of being it doesn’t seem to be able to get to.

Is reliance on rational thought and reasoning more of a help or hindrance to your learning?

What besides awareness, “rational thought and reasoning”, and experimentation, can the limited brain do about the ongoing stream of consciousness of its content? Is it not enough to be acutely aware of this conditioned activity without desire for it to end?

That’s for us to find out? Maybe nothing, maybe something really significant?

I guess it’s enough if it’s enough, e.g. if it takes you home. I don’t think it’s the only way.

Are you suggesting that “I”, the problem, can be the solution?

I am wondering whether we each have our own individual key to open our prison cell?

Krishnamurti’s key seems to have worked well for him, not so well for his followers.