I suggested before to leave it and you did not. So why are you always coming back then? The word is not the thing and the description is not the described. We agree on that. And this means whatever we share here about awareness in words and thought is not awareness. It is as simple as that. When we exchange what we have experienced in whatever situation we just talk about memories which might refer to something that actually happened or not. In any way it is just thinking that we exchange and not awareness. I continously put the “but” in because you seem to ignore that. We cannot go into awareness if we leave thinking outside. If we are looking at the whole we have to look at them both. They do not exist without each other, which does not mean they are opposites. For me they are not. You said you do not want to explore thinking through thought because you are fed up with it, which I can understand very well. And now you want to explore awareness through thought - if that was a serious remark ? You contradict yourself and you know that. I think you lost your initial intention about the practical aspect of the teachings. I tried several times to offer you ways to go into it, but you refused. I am not fighting you or against you. I think you are honestly trying to go into things. But as I said earlier you are quick in drawing conclusions and accusing others of not understanding you or missing things. I think you have no need to do that. There are so many opportunities to go together into these things if we start with awareness and the practical side. Please do not feel obliged to answer. You can just go on with the others.
I’m just stating a supposition here, so take it for what’s worth. Just to try and go over the impasse you both are in.
It could be that the habit of procrastinating is involved here, it’s something that often I do: “Yes, I have understood…” and I put it aside, thinking in bona fide that I will tackle the matter another day. What happens is that actually I will never tackle it.
I think this shows resistence and so lack of real understanding. This is a very widespread human behaviour and we can’t force another individual or ourselves to do what we don’t want to do. I think the only possible and healthy way to tackle this point is to be sincere, honest both with ourselves and with our interlocutor and say, OK, I have understood it up to a certain point but I don’t want to do it. If I say that to you James, in the context of what we are discussing, then I think you will be understanding and will let the discussion drop for the moment.
Yes, provided we do not have like/dislike, condemnatory/praiseworthy attitudes towards these/any sensations.
So when we look at these sensations/energies as they arise are we not looking at them ‘as they are’
/holistically?
Yes, I get this. I often feel the same way when I want to talk about something else! 
I think I have been quite frank with Erik about what I consider to be the topic of this thread, and my sense it that Erik has persisted in rejecting/blocking/ignoring this (for reasons of his own). And after more than a week of this, I think it is enough.
I’m not saying that it has been a complete waste of time, but enough is enough! (sorry Erik)
Yes. If we condemn or judge the sensation then we have removed ourself from it - we have cut ourselves off from the inner.
I like K’s use of the metaphor of the tide going in and going out. So, in the same way, I am interested in exploring how the tide of awareness can move naturally outwards (touching on external phenomena) and then move just as naturally inwards (touching on the contents of our consciousness).
And if there can be a simple non-resistance to what is happening outwardly, why oughtn’t there be a similar non-resistance to what is happening inwardly?
If course, I realise it is more difficult than that (!), but I think there is value to exploring this terrain with a certain innocence (i.e. with respect to outcome): there is nothing essentially “bad” about the inner, even if it can sometimes be uncomfortable or distressing.
For example, a leaf-blower (if you have ever heard your neighbours use one!) is outwardly uncomfortable. Indeed, my neighbours are presently using one! It isn’t easy to listen to it without becoming reactive, annoyed, irritated. (*Btw, there is a nice New Yorker cartoon about leaf blowers - I have attached the cartoon below 
).
Similarly, painful sensations inwardly can be uncomfortable to feel, without wanting to withdraw from the sensation, to escape from it.
But if we can have the same innocence of approach to the sound of the leaf-blower as we have to the bird singing, then why can’t we also listen to the sensation of hurt or envy in the same way that we listen to the sensations of contentment or tranquillity? Just meeting the sensation as it is, without judgement…
New Yorker cartoon*
It would be something like, say, we are reading a newspaper. After reading for a while, set it aside and see what’s happening to you. This way we get a feel of what it means to be inwardly aware without getting disconnected from the external.
So observe the outer and then observe the inner response to the outer.
Yes. So once this is understood. Next step would be to actually start looking outwardly and invwardly. As we live our life, isn’t it? Because no amount of intellectual understanding can substitute actual looking.
I never managed to do it.
We have an example of this with K, in Saanen, near the marquee where K spoke, there was a railway line so that every 15 minutes or so, the loud noise of the passing train invaded the marquee and K. had to stop talking. His reaction is clearly visible in the videos, at first he was clearly irritated by the noise (which is a natural response of the nervous system) but after a moment he listened with all his attention (his senses fully awake?) untill the noise faded away. We might assume that he was paying attention both to the external noise and the internal irritation.
Yes. Though, of course, with the newspaper example it is perhaps a little more complicated because it is a mediated form of ‘outer’. But yes, the principle is the same.
For sure. All that we are sharing on the thread here is grist to the mill as far as I am concerned. I have no interest in limiting the inquiry to intellectual understanding alone - outer and inner awareness must be done, applied, put into practice (without becoming a “practice”!, if you see what I mean).
Quite. I took the example of the leaf-blower because of all the daily external sounds that come up, it is the one I find most difficult to just attend to without screwing up my face and inwardly screaming at the neighbours! I am actually quite sensitive to noise, and so listening non-judgmentally to ugly sounds is a challenge I find most demanding (and apparently - if one takes K’s reactions to the trains at Saanen - I am not alone in this!).
My point is that such sounds are at the upper limit of what our nervous systems can tolerate (when it comes to external noise). And, in a similar way, certain forms of psychological pain, grief, are the upper limits of what our nervous system can tolerate inwardly.
So if we can tolerate - even if only occasionally - irritating sounds without too much resistance, this may give a clue as to how we can tolerate - even if only occasionally - painful psychological reactions without too much resistance. The inner mirrors the outer here.
Of course, most of the time the external sounds we listen to are not so overwhelming that they require incredible feats of attention just to meet (without resistance). And similarly, most of the time the inward psychological movements of consciousness (our feelings, emotions and moods) are not so overwhelming that they require incredible states of high-energy attention just to meet in the moment. The inner and the outer movement are the same.
I am just interested in experimenting with this for the time being.
I think it does. Btw years ago in a book by Liselle Reymond (sp?) she mentions a comment by Sri Anirvan who she was in contact with: he said “Emotion is a misplaced sensation”
But then you are saying implicitly that over that limit we can’t stay with the pain. Is not that similar to what I have stated earlier about the awareness of our psychological phenomena?
Physically we know for certain that the nervous system can’t tollerate a too strong pain, but I think we can’t know (unless we found ourselves actually in that position) how much psychological sorrow our nervous system can tolerate.
We have two examples from K. He used to to take no anesthetic when at a dentist. He said that after a while, when the pain was too much, the brain withdrew from the scene. I don’t remember the exact expression he used, perhaps he meant that he fainted? Anyway this settles the physical pain side.
About the psychological sorrow there is the episode of the death of his brother, he lied in bed for three (!!!) days moaning, so it had to be a real torture… and he endured it too.
You said you want to experiment with this, but you’ll have to wait untill a great pain such as that of K will come to you…
As for what I could observe, past only can be contacted as attentively meeting the present, that´s how it gets dissolved and the whole thing is seen. Just do not add more content to the content allowing awareness to get trapped by what it is aware of in the present through reaction which is the past. Reaction pertains to consciousness whereas action belongs to awareness, this is why when the past is met by awareness in the present it gets dissolved. Let´s keep it simple.
I can’t remember what you said previously about our awareness of psychological phenomena? - but when it comes to awkward or irritating sounds - like the train at Saanen, or the leaf-blower- these are clearly sounds that we can safely stay with. They are, or can be, very annoying; but we can experiment with staying with them and seeing if we can listen to them without resistance.
You said that after the initial irritation to the sound of the train noise
that K then
This is what I am interested in experimenting with. I recall that K also suggested trying the same thing with the sound of a dog barking (as you probably know, in India, especially in the countryside, the village dogs can sometimes bark through the whole night, and keep one awake).
I’m sure you can see the analogy with inward, psychological disturbance.
With physical pain of course there is a limit to what the body can bear. Everyone has a different tolerance for physical pain, and at the limit we will simply pass out (faint) - so, strictly speaking, nothing is ever actually unbearable!
But with psychological pain we do not know our limits. As you say:
However, my point isn’t that we should throw ourselves into the extremes of sensation (outwardly or inwardly), but just simply experiment with the ordinary limits that daily life brings in its wake. The sound of the leaf-blower is something that is bearable, and so something I can experiment with. It won’t kill me to try to listen to it for 5 minutes without resistance!
And similarly, most of the daily psychological reactions that take place in my daily life are - at the limit - ordinary reactions of irritation, hurt, moodiness, sadness. And it won’t kill me to remain with them for 5 minutes without resistance.
Yes, I realise that nothing can prepare one for actual sudden grief, sudden loss. The few times this has happened to me I was incapable of staying with it for very long - it swept me off my feet and threw me down to hell.
But perhaps if I had experimented with ordinary griefs, with ordinary loss, I would have had the clue to impossible grief. Who knows?
Anyway, speculation aside, I am interested in experimenting with tolerable limits, tolerable extremes (like the leaf-blower, like feeling hurt, etc). Such things are actionable (in my estimation) - I think you would agree.
Believe me, I am trying to keep it simple! But the words “past” and “present” are abstractions for me, except as descriptive elements to point something out. The past is living in the present as - for example - a mood of sadness. It is this mood of sadness that has to be met, and met as it is (not as I would like it to be).
The question is, how to meet this mood (of sadness), without rationalising it into non-existence, without becoming numb to it, without labelling it as “sadness”, without calling it “the past”, etc - but for the body’s (and mind’s) own awareness to be sensitive to the movement of this strange energy as it moves through the nervous system.
At the moment of awareness of this energy, one is the energy (of the mood of sadness). Right? That’s all there is, flooding the scene.
So one encounters it as pure sensation, pure energy, pure permission.
The simplicity is in the doing, not in the description of the doing.
The inner – what is it?
if not the intensified sky,
hurled through with birds and deep
with the winds of homecoming.
Rilke
Speaking of awareness, are you aware that you are implying that you have found your “way out of the labyrinth”?
I remind you to be coherent in your reply, because some of your replies shows incoherence
Are you aware that you are making a baseless accusation when you are not specific by showing these allegedly incoherent statements?
I appreciate your apologizing but it will be useless without the necessary awareness. If you don’t use practical awareness to understand why I said what I said, then the situation and the interaction between you and me will never change, can never improve.
Obviously, you were unaware that I was being facetious.
Then you say: “your standard of what-should be”, forgetting that that sentence is extracted from a conversation I had with James and it was James who talked about those “standard”. Go and re-read the whole post, this will be beneficial to you. So, you see how you jumped to hasty conclusions?
Don’t drag poor James into this. I’m sure he has better things to do than play the role of referee.
I invited you to look at your habits pointing out the uselessness of them.
Are you aware that this is your opinion, and not a fact?
It’s not important whether I’m right or wrong, but only if you are willing to look and to have clarity about your intentions in this forum.
It’s very important to you that you are right, otherwise you wouldn’t have gone to the trouble to write this carefully crafted reply.
I’m aware of my intentions in this forum and I make myself as clear as possible. Read everything I write three times before you reply.
Quite so. I experienced this with regard to another mood but by then, I didn´t know anything about this mood being energy, one being that energy and so on. I just said or rather that very energy ordered to me “do not touch it”, flooding the scene, as you put it, it was something spontaneous. But of what use is this knowledge which isn´t but ignorance? Coming across with it afterwards it´s been fine, oh, so that´s it. End of the story. As you say “the simplicity is in the doing.”
Attentiveness, not to this or that, but as a state of being without intention or direction does the work. How? No idea.
Do you think that can be done even with the loud noise of dumbness?
And will the intelligence and love implied in that action have any effect on that dumbness?
K. had to endure a great deal of dumbness in his life, especially from those who had elected him as the vehicle of the Lord Maitreia, but the only effect was that they turned against him declaring that the coming of the Lord Maitreya had gone wrong. They severed from him and he had to sever from them. So perhaps that is the only intelligent thing to do in such a cases…
There is a passage from the Tao Te Ching that comes to mind:
“Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?”
Speaking as someone who frequently gets irritated with other people when I feel (whether rightly or wrongly - usually wrongly!) they are being stubborn or intentionally blocking, this is a lesson I have to reacquaint myself with over and over again…
It isn’t merely about other people’s apparent stupidity either, right? It is also about our own. Can we be patient with our own reactivity, our own frustration - as well as our own blockages - until the mud settles?
The answer, for me, is usually no! But this doesn’t invalidate the question, which is part of this whole business of awareness we have been discussing on the thread.
In choiceless awareness all the mud of our responses and reactions begins to show itself to our conscious awareness - which is like observing mud that has been stirred up in an otherwise tranquil pond. This mud is our feelings, reactions, irritations, annoyance - as well as our own boredom, numbness, resistance, lethargy, etc.
But in sitting with it all, there is an opportunity for the mud to show itself as mud, and begin to settle. And for awareness to show itself as awareness, and begin to be the space within the reactions, the space between the reactions, the space around the reactions. And the reaction too - the ‘mud’ - is a form of limited awareness also. So one gets a sense that there is nothing outside awareness - including one’s own stupidity (when it is not compared with ‘intelligence’).
Stupidity is a way of being in the world that has become trapped - it is essentially trapped awareness (water that has become muddy). Hence the question:
"Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?"
Good answer, and poetic too.
And what follows from you is not only good but useful too. It contains some necessary remainders regarding the main point of discussion: awareness.
My question concerned a problem on a different level, a different plane. I reported the example of K and the troubles he had with some part of the Theosophical Society. So my point was about relationship. Perhaps we should not discuss it here being off-topic. Anyway, as I see it, I think K had all the attention and awareness needed to deal with that disturbing situation, and I guess that he also waited for “the mud to settle”. That presumably put him at peace with his inner feelings, yet at the end he had to break away from those people.
What do you think?