Are you suffering it or enjoying it?
If we understood suffering we wouldn’t suffer, but the only way to find out is to remain with suffering…and who wants to do that?!
Do I know by reason of having accumulated experiences, ideas, hypotheses, theories, conclusions, habits, beliefs, etc., as memory throughout my life; or do I know because I can recollect from what I have accumulated in memory? But then, how much of what I have accumulated as memory can I recollect, and on how much of that can I rely at any moment? Knowledge in the form of memory is the ground from which thought arises, and when it does it interferes with perception and distorts, corrupts whatever it meets. Thus, the moment I become aware of the distorting effects of this knowledge, such knowledge ceases to be a determining factor with respect to how I live.
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The spiritual seeker persona only wants to seek and keep seeking. Actually finding what it’s been looking for for so long or giving up the search would end its existence, a terrifying prospect for it!
In the same spirit that a capitalist wants to keep profiting, or a soldier wants to keep fighting, or a scientist want to keep discovering, etc.
We’re all monomaniacs until we awaken to what we’re doing.
The pursuit of happiness is the happiness of pursuit.
The carrot 
never stops looking tasty to the donkey 🫏.
We really like our prison cells, don’t we? We decorate them, cozify them. Nurture them. Even if the gate were thrown wide open, we probably wouldn’t leave. Or if we did, we’d return soon.
Division, as a psychological construct, is rooted in the conflict of the self with itself, a conflict that arises upon the onset of consciousness, upon the disruption of perception as a spaceless and timeless movement, a disruption that gives rise to the illusions of space and time. All conflict with “what is” originates from this conflict, which is also the source of the division between the “me” and the “you”. Only by becoming aware of this conflict of the self with itself, by seeing it in complete attention, by understanding it fully, only then will division as an idea come to an end.
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When you see the self to be a mental construct, a ‘phantasm’ of thought and memory with no autonomous being, how can it be in conflict with itself, or ‘do’ anything else for that matter? I think I understand what you are pointing to when you say ‘the self is in conflict with the self’ but for clarity would you please explain in more detail?
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I begin at the root of my consciousness with nothing, there my self is not the product of thought or of memory, but then in confronting the unknown I take on a different identity which I modify over time as I go on through life battling insecurities and uncertainties. I can have conflicting images of myself as I go along, but at any point in time my fundamental conflict is between myself at that moment and my primitive self, therein lies the basic contradiction concerning life.
I understand, the conflict is between the deep self and any of the image-ined selfs. We agree I think that the imagined selfs are not agents capable of engaging in conflict. That leaves the deep self, is that self the ‘doer’ in your explanation? Is your deep self real rather than imagined?
“I” is not nothing…
All my worldly activities originate from the false self, the self that pretends to be this or that, the images, and these images are in conflict; the true (“real”) self is always at peace, it cannot be imagined because at the beginning there is nothing to draw from to imagine anything. In complete, undisturbed, and choiceless awareness I can see what I did that gave birth, so to speak, to the false self, and in that seeing, without judging, condemning, or justifying what I see, there is complete understanding, conflict ends and the images wither away.
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This is beautifully said Manuel!
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Thank you, Dan, for your understanding.
Thanks for sharing how you see your self(s). I’m always interested to get a glimpse of how others see and navigate reality. (Your true self reminds me of Bankei’s unborn mind. You know it?)
Do you know there is such thing as a “true self”? Is this what K meant by being nothing, empty? Must there be a self that has a brain, or is there only the brain?
Thank you, Inquiry, for asking. You are asking about things that I have understood not because I have come to know about them, so I cannot answer from knowledge because I do not know; I do not know what K meant by what he spoke, perhaps he knew what he meant; and I do not know if the self has a brain or if there is only brain. I find no value in knowing these things because I have learned that understanding is nowhere in any of the parts, it is in the totality. I am sure that you understand your questions, and if you do then you have the answers.
You are welcome, Rick; regarding Bankei, I know nothing other than your reference of it.
Here’s the nutshell about Bankei’s ‘unborn mind’ (from Bard), enjoy!
Bankei’s view of the unborn self is that it is our true nature, which is pure, empty, and free from all attachments. It is the self that we are born with, before we are conditioned by the world around us.
Bankei taught that the unborn self is not something that we need to achieve or attain. It is something that we already have. We simply need to realize it.
To realize the unborn self, we need to let go of all of our attachments, including our attachments to our thoughts, feelings, and sensations. We also need to let go of our attachment to the idea of a separate and permanent self.
When we let go of all of our attachments, we can see that the unborn self is simply being itself, without any need to change or improve.
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Thank you, Rick, I find this wonderful indeed.