On radical change

It gives me comfort to be attached. It eases the burden of fear that I carry with me throughout the day to come home to a relatively secure and comforting relationship. She may feel differently however. she may feel trapped or stifled in the relationship and want more from it. If she mentions her dissatisfaction with our relationship or a trial separation, I may fly off the handle. If I lose her I lose all that’s meaningful in my life. My job may be a bore and a chore. My other relationships may be totally unfulfilling. my wife is my only source of comfort and fulfillment.

So attachment gives me both comfort and discomfort, pleasure and pain. I can’t have the one without the other. Therefore attachment is really no comfort at all when I look at it directly and simply. It has the illusion of making me feel stronger, that’s all.

Seeing this, that’s enough. But we always want more than just the seeing of it. We want to continue in the mode of the comfort-seeker by gaining some extra form of confirmation from the seeing.

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In the post I deleted above - I too was struck by the contradictions and paradox ie. my wife is the cause of suffering and comfort.

No comfort at all? I think I’d disagree. There’s temporary comfort, no? I got immense satisfaction and joy from my music when I was actively pursuing a career in my younger days. There was also pain…agree with your point here because there were many moments of frustration when I was dissatisfied with my performance…feeling that I couldn’t measure up to the jazz or rock ‘greats’…the big stars. I was also deeply attached because the rest of my life was full of suffering. But in moments of absorption in the music the suffering was forgotten and there was joy. “Confirmation from the seeing”? I’m not sure where you’re going with this point. I see or have insight into myself. However the insight may not be complete. So we seek further insight. What are you saying about ‘confirmation’? That’s not clear.

Confirmation bias? :face_with_monocle:

This is our situation in a ‘nutshell’. Anything but the ‘ending’ of it…Attachment, dependance, possession, etc…keep them all intact and search for ‘freedom’.

There is no further insight. Psychologically, there is no future. So, having seen this, if we are waiting for something else to happen it means we are still acting as though there is a future where the insight is somehow completed or expanded upon.

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If thought realizes that its very movement in the psyche creates ‘time’, that it is ‘time’; the time of ‘becoming’…if it realizes that, it can stop. Without that realization it will continue, in ignorance, creating an imaginary psychological ‘future’.

Ah! But thought is not capable of realisation. We have to leave thought out of it. Thought can only provide ideas.

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That’s what thought says…so it won’t have to come to grips with the game it plays?

YEs we are. It’s why we pick up another book by K or watch a video. We do this because we suffer.

I think Paul is implying that thought CANNOT come to grips. It can only continue the game. Whether this is a realization or just another thought…hmmm…we’ll have to see.

Psychologically there is ONLY past and future. It’s what human consciousness is made up of…time. If you said that, in reality …in life beyond the self…there is no future…there is only the present…I think that would be a more accurate statement. It’s a huge insight to see this…to see what the self is…how the self is time/memory/thought only. And Truth is simply not related to that dimension. And that the past and future have in fact no relationship to the present moment…none. To see that, in reality, there is only the present is a huge insight. This is not a thought but a direct seeing of the fact.

Thought is built from memory and operates in memory. Realisation is the act of becoming fully aware. What place does thought have in the realisation of its place in the universe? It must always be partial because thought itself is a limited form of energy. So thought cannot have insight into itself; it can never get to grips with the game it is playing. Observing this passively, choicelessly, there is really no problem. It is only our desire to understand what it all means or to change what is happening that creates any internal problem. But when we just look, it is all there. Insight comes from looking, not thinking. It is looking that changes the brain cells, not thinking, because thought is then totally unnecessary. Outwardly, thinking has a practical function. Inwardly, it is only ever a distorting factor.

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When there’s suffering we always want to change it…to alleviate it…to understand it. Just look…when we’re deeply frightened, worried, angry, violent? As long as there’s fear we can’t just look, I don’t think. How does the ‘just looking’ get into the picture when our whole being is telling us to run…or to condemn or judge?

When you’re cornered with no place to run - or when you find yourself doing something horrible (beating a spouse, mentally torturing your child, insulting a stranger, lying to yourself or loved ones, disrespecting the suffering of sentient life in general) for what seem like excellent reasons - maybe these are wake up calls that say : Enough.

However, if we’re just on an online forum pitting myself (and what I know) against others (and what they are trying to express) - maybe we can keep living with that acceptable level of conflict and self-centeredness :crazy_face:

Of course. Saying ‘enough’ and even feeling it deeply, however, are only the beginning of the journey for most of us. Even a deep feeling that this is ‘enough’ won’t likely lead to total understanding…to the ending of self-centeredness…to the ending of conflict…which is deeply conditioned into all of us.

If we see where self-centeredness leads, where can I go?
All my journeys lead to the same place.

If there is the seeing that the self is conflict, that the self is suffering, my journey of deeper, futur understanding has no meaning.

Understanding is just what is. Even if that what is sometimes involves the movement of the deluded self.

Silence, not accumulation, is the door.

The ‘just looking’ idea, that while I’m raging, fearful, anxious is an escape from what is, isn’t it? The idea of this implacable entity looking on silently while 'I’m in turmoil is a wish, a hope. Isn’t what “the observer is the observed” is pointing at is, that there is no ‘escape’. they’re all phony…There is just the anger, just the fear, etc and the idea that the one ‘experiencing’ it , is somehow apart from it, is the false perception, I’d say, that he was trying to get across.

But if we’re angry or frightened what will ‘get it across’? It can’t come from ‘me’…me, who is the anger or fear, as you are saying. Yet, I don’t see this…seeing doesn’t take place because fear makes one blind.