Don’t say ‘probably’ or go off to a supposition – find out for yourself. The supposition is part of the habit of thought which comes in to analyse what has happened. Whether we do it now or at the moment of perception, it is exactly the same habit.
Thought is a waste of time. Now, can you perceive this as a fact and leave it alone? It is the very same fact as when you see yourself as nothing more than an image/reaction in relationship. It is the same insight. Just to see it and leave it, not go straight to it with thought and try to unravel what other meanings it has.
The simplest thing of all is just to see the whole of oneself in a moment of impatience because in such a moment the whole network is revealed: the self-image of being more important than anyone else, the challenge to that image and then the reaction to that challenge. Just to see the pattern as it plays across the mind without any attempt to create a better pattern, which can only ever be another self-imposed image as, ‘I must not be impatient.’ Be impatient, but be aware of it too. Don’t escape from it through any movement of rationalisation.
As I’ve said, there’s no language, no communication, no art, no science, etc., without imagery. Images are only a problem when used to present distortions or falsehood. If the shoe fits…
When I sit in a room, the light comes in the window, from wherever the window is facing. While we say the source of the light is the sun, the light is like an ocean of light, coming in any window, whether facing the sun directly or not. Whether recognised or not, it is perception, how we think, which fails to appreciate this flow of a living ocean. We look at life through a window, and the window can be open or shut, but do we appreciate the vast ocean, and that there is just a small room with a window?
It’s fairly easy to see at a basic level how the brain cells may change/mutate.
When we learn something new .say for example to learn how to drive a car ,it involves great deal of attention and thinking,we have to coordinate various physical things and store in the memory.
We can see these as patterns of thought. when we need to recall them there are the connections in the brain …like a circuit perhaps braincells etc.
At first it all seems to take a lot of time to go through these memory patterns. As they are repeated frequently this access to what is stored as memory becomes much faster…eventually it takes up very little space in the brain …it works more efficiently ‘like’ a physical reflex. We may have a habit in our life that we decide to give up…maybe smoking for example . When we finally are free of that particular habit, then those ‘reflex type’ memory patterns set up in the brain cells over time will no longer operate…perhaps only a small thing, but the brain cells will have changed.
So we can see at a certain level that the ending of habits changes these physical activities in the brain cells.
It would appear that we /humanity has created in a similar way, the psychological habits of self based thought. …our reactions to others frequently very fast …as reflexes with our images with judgements, accepting rejecting etc. Perhaps we have difficulty ‘seeing ourselves in the mirror of relationship’ (as urged by Krishnamurti) because of the speed of these reflex type reactions set up over time as habits?
Perhaps giving rise to the question of whether can be sensitive enough to see our reactions …allow space etc?
The brain is quite complex. Some people who are quite good at languages for example will talk about study, practice, repetition, etc., and then, at the end, say they memorize phrases. So the real issue for someone struggling with learning a language, or any study, is what is called poor short term memory. This is probably because they are overwhelmed with new and unfamiliar words, and expressions, which have no apparent meaning. Yet understanding of this issue does nothing to improve the learning, and their studying ability remains very low.
Memory is not just elements stored in the brain, but also the active function, of recollection, recognition, familiarity, conformity, etc. Isn’t this active function an obvious performance? Why do people ignore, or make it an elaboration, or defend, what they are doing?
They are no more boring than the names we give ourselves in order to escape the mundane. The mundane is just the world, the only world we have, our gift of a world.
When I first started travelling I used phrase books, but it is very very basic use of language, not a conversation, isn’t it. Through an interest in pottery, I have been studying Japanese, and while I find the exercise interesting, even after many years, it is still very very basic, and not very good at that. I was never very good at school work, and I put it down to an inability, or is it an aversion, to memorizing. Later in life I discovered this may be a blessing.
Ok, that’s interesting Peter. As I live in a country where a different language to my mother-tongue is spoken, I’ve had the opportunity to be in close contact with a wide-range of language learners. Language learning is certainly highly complex with many different variables but motivation, as with most other things, seems to be a very important factor.