If distortion or motive or whatever is occurring - then that is what needs to be observed, no? Is it not the urge to change my circumstance itself the ‘what is’ ?
“I” can’t look without motive, “I” cannot be aware in the sense K uses it. Unlike the personality, awareness is just a faculty and has no investment in what is seen, no?
Tom: OK, but what will bring about this looking/observation? Without it the ‘I’ continues to interfere.
It will continue to “interfere” until it is seen that it is one with what it is ‘interfering’ with. As of now you think, feel that you are separate from your anger, say. That you, Tom are ‘being’ angry, that you Tom are ‘feeling’ angry…but that is not so, there is no you apart from the anger…only the disturbance named ‘anger’.
The search for a solution takes us away from the problem. When there is no search there is only the problem. The key point here is rather a subtle point. It is a fact that there is no solution; therefore the realisation of this fact is entirely redundant. That’s what it means to have intellectual excellence: not to go beyond the fact.
Nothing (that we can actively do.) Unless deeply understanding that we are insidiously wasting tons of energy fighting facts is something. I thought the article in the Kinfonet newsletter was spot on and it speaks to this.
Is that not speculation? Can we know anything about something we have not actually experienced?
I see, yes that the search is an escape from the problem, but another way to look at it is that the search for an escape is not separate from the problem. No search, no problem. If this latter point is correct then it would invalidate your last sentence . I need to look more closely into this…not sure I understand all the subtleties involved.
That’s why I asked: what is the problem? What is thought when it is stationary? What is the self when it is inactive? They don’t exist at all until time is involved.
The problem is our intellectual approach…based solely upon memory and conditioning and experience. But the challenge is always new. And our conditioning based upon time can’t touch what is the fact …the actual…NOW.
The problem is always wanting what is not. The problem is believing our delusions and desires to be true and therefore that they must be obeyed.
But thought is again defining the problem in its own terms. Is there any problem at all? Actually, right now, is there any problem at all?
If my wife says something that angers me right now, then there’s a problem…of anger. If I’m fearful that I’ll lose my job, then there’s a problem…of fear. Well the anger and fear are facts, anyway. And those facts translate to suffering, right? Most of us suffer. If man has no problems, what did K. spend 50+ years talking for? For his own amusement? “this process of fear, agony, torture, anxiety…and endless conflict, inwardly and outwardly. That’s the common consciousness of mankind.” A mind that is free
No for sure…he wanted to tell us that our suffering was unnecessary, because we are “nothing”…actually. The ‘problems’ stem from not understanding that fact. As I see it.
Not understanding, or not living it? K. lived it…perhaps…so he could say, ‘I’m nothing’. There’ s nothing to understand about it is there? What we need to understand perhaps is what makes us feel we are somebody…with attributes…a good person, a bad person, a success or failure, a Christian or a Jew…and so on. What is it that identifies…what is identity? Identification.
Yes that’s it. How to see through the illusion. To be “nothing “. Same situation for all of us.
Both of those problems exist only in the future. So the mind is preparing for them. Therefore the roots of anger and fear are in this preparatory and self-protective way of thinking. They have nothing at all to do with the wife or the job.
So this is what I am: the core of all problems.
My wife criticizes me and I get angry NOW…not in the future. Fear is related to time…yes. I’m afraid I’ll be homeless in the future…or sick …or that my wife will leave. If I hate you and hit you, the violence is now. The hatred comes from the past…yes. And I hit you to insure I’ll be safe in the future…assuming I see you as a threat in some way. So time is ultimately related to all of it. This we can agree upon. Protecting the psychological security of ‘me’. Is that the root? Or is physical security also involved. I’m afraid I’ll go hungry if I lose my job. When my parents were young …in my grandparents generation…there was no social services network. If you didn’t work you wouldn’t eat
Getting back to the OP on radical change: “Why do human beings live this way…in this appalling misery?” The Transformation of Man
But she is not here now. That’s the point. Yet you seem to know how you will act when or if she criticizes you. So your anger is already active now; it is not something that comes out of the blue.
As long as the mind is conditioned by attachments, goals, ideals, beliefs, then anger will be pretty much a given when someone threatens that which I cling to. The conditioning is the gasoline…all that’s needed is the match to start the fire. But that gasoline is always there, right…in the conditioning of the brain? Or am I mistaken?
So why am I attached to my wife or to my job? That’s the real question. And am I willing to look at the whole picture of this attachment? Can I look at any attachment I might have without the desire to be free of it? Just to look at it and see what it is telling me. Then I am not adding the extra burden of seeing it as a problem. The fact is I am attached; this attachment provokes a violent reaction when I feel under threat; and the reaction to the violence then creates further attachment to the belief that I should not be violent.