Yes. It may be negative or positive self-image; it doesn’t matter. The self-image sets in motion the whole machine of pleasure, pain and fear. That is why the most vital element in all of this is the ability both to spot an image at the moment it appears in relationship and to not make any further reaction to it by trying to change it, suppress it or anything else. The self-image appears to us in those moments of tiny reactions to the people around us in everyday life: the man who drops some litter or the woman who irritates me. The self-image is not something that gets seen as an obvious fact, even though we may describe it conceptually very accurately. It comes as an oblique occurrence, beneath the radar of the judgmental observations of the self. When I say, ‘I am conditioned,’ that statement separates me from reactions. There are only my reactions in relationship. That’s all I am as a psychological entity. There is no ultimate me at the centre of those reactions. So separating myself from those reactions and trying to bring them under control is what ultimately destroys all the joy of existence because it turns personal relationship into a trial and a terror.
When I say I see the fact, that seems to need a closer look into.
The mind is aware of the images it forms, the feelings they arouse, and what examining the images reveals. But since the mind is convinced that it knows what-should-be, the images are not seen for what they are: constant reminders of the mind’s fundamental mistake.
We use images as maps, portraits, models, etc., and if we think we know what-should-be, our images are going to reflect that arrogance and misunderstanding. But if we don’t see the arrogance and the misunderstanding, the images retain their authority.
Images protect me - that’s their sole function. Can I go through the rest of my life never wanting to be safe in relationship? This is the implication of it.
Yes, I think I understand. Thanks. Some of K’s statements re-inforce this image of ‘me’ as imperfect and needing to ‘just do it, sir!’. Then later in the same talk he will say that you cannot do anything about the ‘messy’(conflicted) consciousness because you are it. So you can do nothing at all to change it. So where does his ‘just do it, sir!’ come from? .
He is telling you to do something that does not take time. Analysis takes time. Psychological change always takes time. But just to see that one is imperfect, greedy, violent, selfish - just to look at this fact and not to move away from it. This is the only sane action because the perception is the whole action. Everything else as a reaction to that perception is taking you off into time.
Is another way to describe this as, ‘thought’ needs to be aware of itself…rather than ‘thought’ moving and the ‘thinker’ reacting to the content? The ‘thinker’ feeling as if he/she is ‘doing’ the thinking? Can there be a ‘listening’ to thought without the 'identification with it?..This entails activity by a different part of the brain. A part that is not ‘conditioned’ ,choice-less awareness?
‘just to look’ when one is constantly wanting to move away? There’s a conflict if we make any effort to look in that situation, right? In one recent talk I listened to K stated emphatically that there’s ‘nothing you can do’, as ‘you are it…you ARE the messy consciousness’. He was discussing the ‘messy’(conditioned) consciousness and what is our action to change.
That’s what I was trying to get at. The ‘you’ that is the messy consciousness is also the ‘you’ that is “the world”? I’m suggesting that it is not the ‘you’ that is ‘doing’ the “looking”. If that is the case then it is just the same thinker/thought duality. Conflict. The ‘looking’ is not being done by ‘you’. There is no ‘choice-less you’.
But there is ‘choice-less awareness’.
Right…choice is from ‘me’…the messy consciousness. There can only be a stop…but one cannot choose to stop. the stop comes when I see that I am it. I see that the ‘mess’ acting upon the ‘mess’ only produces more of the same…perpetuates the mess. If I actually see that I am the mess, then there comes a stop…even if only momentarily. Watching the K video where K talks about this with 3 scientists was a big help for me to see this. He was discussing with Bohm, Sheldrake, and one other scientist who’s name I forget. Actually a series of talks …available to watch on youtube.
It doesn’t matter how many times we listen to the description. Do we see it for ourselves that we are confused consciousness? At the moment we see or meet the actual fact of our images as reactive energy in relationship, the whole network of thought is revealed to the conscious mind. The habit of thought has produced those images and their reactions; the perception of this activity breaks the habit. Why do we then go back into the habit?
Probably because we lose awareness that it’s only thought producing these images…false images. False because they’re obviously not the actual person but based upon memory and conditioning.
Well let’s suppose that this habitual duality of thinker/thought has been going on for thousands of years. The brain doesn’t know of any other ‘safe’ way to operate. Why should it come out of that groove because of an insight? Maybe as Tom said the “awareness is lost”?
“Me” is an image of the holder of all the images. There is no “me” to protect. There is only what-should-be, which is the basis for all psychological image formation.
All this emphasis on images is missing the point. The mind decides what-should-be as its guiding principle, and all the images are formed in accord with that principle. So when you describe what the mind must do to free itself from its images (as you have done), whether it’s true or not, you describe what-should-be to be image-free. The mind tries to do it, fails, but keeps trying in vain to succeed because it operates on the false premise that it knows what to do.
Only until the mind realizes that it does not know what to do is it free to find out what it can and cannot do. This is realizing the limitation of thought and discovering that the mind is not the teacher, the authority, but the student.
The brain that controls the body’s movements is filled with habits, habitual ways of walking, gesturing, positions, etc. The intellectual center of the brain has its own habits forged from childhood, patterns of thinking, fears, favorite subjects. The habits make up the way we talk, walk, think and feel. What we are identified with…what we are taking about here as I see it, is a ‘new’ way to ‘look’ at all this. Seeing the whole complex of the ‘me’. Not the ‘me’ seeing the ‘me’. Understanding that ‘habits’ will take over but picking the looking up again and again.
So if habituation is the problem, and all you see is habitual behavior, the shock of realizing that you are habituation itself halts the process.
There are “shocks” and there are shocks. You might become aware that you’re scratching yourself and stop…for a while. And then you’re off scratching again. 
Habit is another word for conditioning. We are habituated and realize it from time to time. The ‘realization’ doesn’t shatter the whole edifice as it seemingly did with JK and others. Paul is asking why. This habit of feeling that one is separate from one’s thinking, is not as superficial as smoking, drinking, sexing, etc.
If the heart of habituation is the “feeling that one is separate from one’s thinking”, there is nothing to do but be mindful of the feeling.
Yes and the ‘mindfulness’ comes and goes. JK says that it is arduous. It feels to me like exercising a hitherto undiscovered faculty. Not a ‘grasping’ but a relaxing.