‘Presides over’ over suggests one entity that owns/controls another, which suggests the ego, which revels in owning and in controlling. So let’s put the ‘presides over’ I in the ego-I pile for now.
Continuing the search for a non-ego I:
Is there a What-I-Really-Am?
(I’m going to start a new thread for this, so I don’t end up hijacking this one.)
Can’t wait…
In this K. video are all the K. teaching.
En este video de K. está toda la enseñanza de K.
Can the awareness of what is being seen, heard, thought, take place without the ‘word’? Without a re-action, just a watching of whatever it is? The re-action or thinking about ‘what is’ binds it in time. Just watching or observing without labeling, naming, memory, image, etc is not ‘time bound’. Can there be this awareness of ourselves, of others, of the feelings, the thoughts, all as if for the first time? That is how I understand the difference between thinking and observing in the sense that K speaks about it. Observation does not involve time.
That’s what we do here. We share what we think Krishnamurti meant by what he said. We have our theories and speculations about the teaching. It’s like the parable of the blind men coming into contact with an elephant, each man describing the part of the elephant he’s touching.
What the parable doesn’t say is whether the blind men know they’re blind or not. If they know they’re blind, they know that touch is their only contact with what is real, and they’ll move around until they’ve all covered the whole elephant, and they’ll all be discussing the same thing. But if they don’t know they’re blind, each one will think he’s “got it” because what he’s got is unlike what the others have got.
We know we’re blind-sided by our conditioning, but we don’t know what that actually means any more than we know what Krishnamurti meant by what he said.
This analogy suits our way of thinking in most of the topics we discuss.
That’s all beside the point isn’t it? The point is to observe your thought…not evaluate the accuracy or non- accuracy of it.
You / I have opinions of what is going on here (and everywhere else) but can they be watched without reaction, (without identification with them?) just watched?
I think that was what Roberto was pointing out about the importance of the video.
Added
I need words to describe what was seen, heard, thought, etc but while there was seeing, hearing thinking, there was no need for them. Question: Since the brain is caught in a “network of words”, is it an act of will to try to observe without those words coming between what is seen and heard,etc? Or does the observation ‘allow’ the labeling and images and whatever else there is that intrudes?
If the goal is to observe everything that arises, without judgement or choice, then if words arise, observe them. If resistance to this arises, observe it. If a voice saying “Should I let the words go?” comes up, observe it. The choiceless part is the key, right: If it’s there, look at it, no exceptions.
Is this an effective way to awaken intelligence? I’d have to speculate, since my intelligence is still very verrrry sleeeeeeeeeepy …
‘Intelligence’ if it means anything other than knowledge or cleverness. is not awakened by the self. There is no “my” associated with that quality. Intelligence then is, of course, the absence of the ‘me and my’ isn’t it?. Having seen through the illusion.
If there’s a goal, there’s choice.
That may be. But what I was suggesting was to look choicelessly at whatever is there, how is this connected with the self?
It’s an interesting question, can one choose to observe choicelessly? I think so. The initial choice is like flicking a switch that turns on choiceless observation, by which I mean looking nonjudgmentally at whatever happens to arise.
No. It’s called “choiceless” because it isn’t chosen. It’s like the weather.
Hii Inquiry
Observing can be seen as paying attention, I think.
I don’t see it that way. I think you can set an intention to observe choicelessly and then, in fact, observe choicelessly. (For a while, usually not long.) I’ve done it many times, and I’m no meditation virtuoso. It’s like going out into the weather: You make a decision to open the front door, and there it is.
But I agree that Krishnamurti’s ‘choiceless awareness’ is a different beast, which is why I didn’t use that term. Choiceless awareness aiui involves no choice at any point. Any intention to ‘practice’ choiceless awareness, no matter how skilled, is doomed to fail. Instead it has to happen, effortlessly, motive-lessly, emerging from a whole-istic understanding of self and reality.
I am skeptical that this kind of effortless goalless choiceless awareness actually exists, manifests. I’m not asserting that it doesn’t (how would I know?), just doubting it like I doubt other extraordinary states of consciousness spoken of in spiritual traditions. The human brain is a master at fooling itself and others, I’m always on the lookout for smoke and mirrors.
If you’re “paying” attention, it’s deliberate, intentional, chosen.
You want to change so you expend effort toward that end because you imagine you’d be happier, a better person after changing radically, but you can’t imagine what radical transformation means.
Maybe it’s just too simple: awareness, attention, observation, perception, is passive because the mind realizes that trying to be choiceless is not only futile, but more of the same, i.e., what-should-be. It may seem like attempting something new because it’s a new direction, but the egoic mind can only do what it does.
When you have the insight that everything you do to change is just a modified version of everything you’ve been doing (or can ever do), the insight is the change.
As I see this from my experiences with this, ‘observing’ yourself, the tree, the cloud, the ‘wife’, etc without the ‘word’ is an unusual experience to say the least. He says try it, “do it!” never mind all the pros and cons. Can you do it? Then what happens as you try and fail? You begin to see the “network of words” that he says the brain is trapped in. That is an extraordinary discovery. We have unconsciously over time replaced the ‘things’ of the world with labels, words. We can’t see the things without the words that we’ve attached to them from childhood. Trying to watch without the word is a kind of work, an ‘effort’ to let go the word and just see the ‘thing’. It doesn’t happen just like that because as he points out the brain is trapped. When you try this you see how it’s trapped and there is freedom in seeing it.
Yes. The freedom is seeing that I am all words, images, memories, hopes, fears, etc. And this “trap” ceases to be a problem because it has never been anything but what it is. It’s all I know, so it doesn’t matter what I call it or if there is such a thing as freedom because freedom is unimaginable to a mind that knows only imagery.
Yes, it is chosen.
The world around me is packed with a ton of information and I cannot process everything in a moment. I tried to attend on a particular piece of information that I feel is relevent. I see that people will pay attention to reduce uncertainty in situations.
That is true, I started listening to Jiddu for a change in my thought process. I do know what radical transformation he meant in his talk.
Please share your view