Of course, but the point is not that they’re equivalent but that they’re inevitable. To be capable of imagining yourself with more opportunity, money, brains, talent, etc., is like being capable of flatulence.
Maybe an unlimited brain wouldn’t experience desire, but if it did it wouldn’t be a problem…just something that occurs from time to time.
Burping and wanting are inevitable for most humans, agreed. (As with pretty much everything, there might be exceptions. Black swans!)
Are awareness and consciousness more of a continuum than separate? Awareness ‘registers’ data (phenomena) and does some low-level cognitive processing on it: sees colors and cognizes known shapes. It then ‘serves these data up’ to consciousness, which does higher-level cognitive processing on it: This is a box elder tree, squirrels love these!
Does awareness bow to “higher-level cognitive processing”, or is higher-level cognitive processing a bully that awareness must be infinitely patient with, lest the human brain be forever estranged?
Sorry, fell through the cracks.
Higher-level thinking is only possible if awareness is present, if the thoughts and objects triggering them are ‘seen’ by awareness. But not afaik the other way around, awareness can happen (be?) without higher-level thinking.
If what you’re saying is that it isn’t psychological thought, why not call it practical thought instead of bringing in another kind of thought that can only add to our confusion?
Sorry, my posting wasn’t so much a response to yours as a (related) tangent: the relationship between higher-level thinking and awareness. Both practical and psychological thinking can be low-level (nitty gritty) or high (abstracter), and all thinking requires awareness.
So, to practical and psychological thought we should add high and low thought? Aren’t we confused enough?
You wanna see confusing vis-a-vis thought, check out the Abhidharma! But, yes, I take your point, “less is more” goes a long way. I’ll try to save my baroque ruminations for this Musings thread.
Looking for power or beauty or wisdom or newness or specialness of any kind in the present moment might be a recipe for disappointment. If you inhabit the present moment choicelessly, without judgment, without leaning towards good/pleasure and away from bad/pain, you’re more likely to get equanimity than thrills. (Add to the list of “Why we aren’t choicelessly aware more often.” The story our mind spins is full of drama and entertainment. Reality just IS!)
A big if. Too big, it seems to me, to speculate as to what choicelessness and no judging observation might be. Do we know we can function without judgment? Why do we think we can imagine what it is to be choiceless?
The self is attracted to the idea of ‘choice less awareness ‘ because it holds out a promise of freedom from suffering. It sees it as a state above and apart from the vicissitudes of life. It is an escape motivated by fear. A form of greed?
When I rest in choiceless awareness (or as close as I get to it) the thrill of the story is missing, they don’t seem to be able to exist at the same time: the simple unadorned seeing what-is and the joie de story. Any attempt to storify choiceless awareness seems likely to undermine it. Expecting it to feel __________ (peaceful, spacious, knowing, intelligent, whatever) is a form of storification. I guess even expecting it to be a state of equanimity or to be empty of stories is also a form of storifying. Which would mean the way to approach it would be cluelessly.
Any ‘approach’ will be a choice? When there is awareness of the bird in flight or the tree in bloom, what is the need of an ‘approach’?
Then there is just a ‘watching’ right?
The problem with no-approach is, given the realpsychology (equivalent of realpolitik) of humans, without any intentional way in we are (strongly) liable to fall back on our conditioned status quo.
Maybe that is not a problem for you, but it is for me. Free of intention, I become a pleasure-seeking missile. My pleasures might be (somewhat) refined and (nominally) ‘spiritual’ but pleasures they are!
“Falling back” implies the idea that the conditioning is something that we can ‘leave’. Is that so? Isn’t that just a continuation of the conditioning, the desire for change? A result of an incomplete awareness of ourself?
So that’s the fact, why compound it with adding a judgement yea or nay to simply ‘what is’?
Is choiceless awareness being confused with some form of hedonism?
Imagination (along with belief and language) is one of the great human superpowers.
Like the superpower of sprinting for cheetahs, or sonar for bats.
Free of intention, I become intention? What are you trying to say by this?
There is a conflict between what I want and what I think I should want?