Without a choice less awareness of this, thought creates and maintains a psychological ‘reality’ in the mind. It needs to be brought into the ‘light’ if the mind is to be aware and free of it. This view isn’t shared by many. Behind it is that the mind should be empty and silent, not in a constant turmoil of thinking.
Some of the things we take to be facts are available to the mind. Other facts, unconscious thoughts and feelings, are hidden. To what extent can we be conscious of our Book of Facts?
And if what one considers to be a fact turns out not to be a fact, that is something one can only discover for oneself through awareness, correct?
Yes, though we can get a little help from our friends.
So all this - what you mention (“thought-memory, feeling, bias, conditioning, groupthink”) - can be looked at just as it is, can’t it?
It can be looked at if it is available to the mind. Unconscious thoughts and feelings cannot be seen, only inferred: I’m feeling anxious, no danger is present, unconscious thoughts-feelings are probably afoot!
I don’t know… perhaps to the extent to which we are aware?
Why must unconscious facts stay hidden? Is there a physical law of nature that prevents unconscious facts from showing themselves to our awareness? (I don’t think so).
Perhaps there are some facts - such as traumas, unconscious shame or fear, racial memories, ancestral wounds, etc - that are very difficult to unearth, because they have been buried for so long, and because the mind has developed an intricate network of defence mechanisms preventing these unconscious contents from revealing themselves fully.
But this does not mean that these contents can’t or won’t reveal themselves. Given the right atmosphere, the appropriate mental conditions (i.e. inward generosity, a quality of affection, nonjudgmental attention, etc) there is no fundamental reason why even the most buried content cannot be made available to awareness. Friends, both personal impersonal fellowship can help of course, but ultimately it is our own minds we are dealing with.
And because we are only talking about ourselves (i.e. oneself), what another may be incapable of facing (in themselves) is no bar on what we ourselves may be open to facing.
Right - which is all part of awareness too (i.e. inference, intuition, emotional intelligence, being sensitive to subtle alterations in one’s mood, the sudden influx of fear, irritation, sadness, etc; as well as the externalisation of inward contents, such having an accident, falling ill, losing a job, having difficulties in relationship, etc).
There is no hard line separating the unconscious from the conscious - it is “just” a matter of opening Pandora’s box (without holding on to an image of what that might mean…).
Unconscious thoughts and feelings can definitely move into consciousness. As our Onkel Carl taught us: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
There is no hard line separating the unconscious from the conscious - it is “just” a matter of opening Pandora’s box (without holding on to an image of what that might mean…).
Yes, but opening Pandora’s box (aside from the risks involved) can be very very hard to do!
For sure. But we are voyagers right? So nothing is off limits, nothing is impossible.
We have a map that says “there be dragons”, but we’ve never truly met these dragons (at least, not completely, with our full awareness), so we can’t take the map (which is a mental guide) to be the gospel truth about ourselves - the map is not the territory, right?
When it comes to trauma, of course, we have to be smart, we have to be wise, intelligent, kind to ourselves. We don’t walk directly into trauma, but must first of all feel it out (indirectly) through the physical sensations it has left in our bodies (as tension, guardedness, irritability, numbness, acidity, tightness, etc).
You may have heard of Van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps The Score, where he talks about “physical awareness [being] the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.” So I don’t see awareness as having to do solely with mentation or even emotion, but as having to do with very visceral and immediate sensations (both pleasant and unpleasant) occurring in the space (the territory) of the body.
Yes. In the absence of attention (to the constant inner monologue of our thinking) thought will inevitably create (and add to) a psychological centre (which of course breeds its own problems).
So awareness/attention is to expose all this to the light, so that thought has less material to work with and the mind is less beholden to its psychological conditioning.
Dear James, I just came across this thread and found it interesting that you are talking about. I always felt that the teaching are first of all practical, in the sense that they deal with how we live everyday life. To maybe make it clearer what we mean with choiceless awareness I have a question. Would it not be important to bring the self in? Because awareness in general can only take place in the now. We have no other moment to be aware. The past is gone and the future not there. So to be aware is only possible in the now. The self takes also place in the now but it belongs to the past, is build by the past memories etc. and therefore cannot be aware of the now. What we are aware when the self exists is the past which acts on the present situation. So would not the self have to end in order that choiceless awareness which has not bondage to the past, psychologically, can take place? And would the practical side of it not be seen in the way we live then, the way we act and change?
In this light all that is observed must be observed with equanimity. That is the ‘difficulty’, the ‘good’ and ‘bad’, the ‘like’ and the ‘dislike’ in me need from the point of awareness, to be seen equally. Is that possible?
Aren’t we already bringing in a condintion, when we say it has to be observed with equanimity? Can we just observe what is? Whatever it is and also observe our reactions to it?
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The ‘self’ is assigning this task of seeing to awareness for the gain that it hopes to get. The only ‘condition’ it is imposing is to not choose one thing over another, just ‘see’ whatever is there in the moment. If this is carried out , following thoughts for example, this will reveal the self. That is the idea as I see it.
Dammital right!
What he said. The choiceless awareness with no bondage to psychological time is what I’ve been calling pure choiceless awareness.
But if there is the wish for a gain I am not seeing but am concerned with the achieving. And if there is a condition it is also a try to achieve. Choosing not to choose remains a condition and a choosing. There is not way out in there. So would we not have to observe the choosing and why it is there? Which would mean we observe what is: the choosing.
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Not the “why” just whatever is there with no judgement…if there is judgement, analysis, choosing, yes that is what is seen. Also the identification with ‘my’ thoughts, the sensation that ‘I’ am thinking, feeling, etc. Just seeing whatever is included in the picture.
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This ‘excercise’ seems to be putting a different part of the brain to work?
Kin of awareness, seeing and listening are practical Krishnamurtian skills-arts.
Again, as with choiceless awareness, seeing and listening, in their purest forms, are free from self.
I honestly feel that this is where people get this whole awareness business wrong. We have created a condition to awareness - we can only be aware when this and this happens - and we don’t seem to see that it is this that is interfering with awareness.
I don’t know if you guys see this?
The self is thought and memory, correct? And we have no say in the matter: if it is present, then it is present. This isn’t controversial.
So awareness is wherever and whatever we are this second. If we are free from thought and memory this very second, then the quality of this awareness will obviously be different from the quality of awareness in a mind that at this second is reactive or restless with thinking. This seems reasonable.
But in either case, there is no choice in the matter. What one’s mind is - at this very second - is what one’s mind is. I don’t think one can argue with this. It’s like objecting to the image of one’s face in the mirror: but it is one’s face in the mirror, so one’s objection has no meaning.
So when somebody says something like “the self has to end” before x, y, and z - who is saying this? Is the awareness saying this? Is it a mind that this very second is free from thought and memory that is saying this? Or is it just the movement of thought, self - which is thought and memory - saying this?
Obviously, if one is full of judgements, full of images of condemnation or justification (which are the self - as thought and memory - in motion), one cannot look at another person objectively with complete awareness. But one can still be aware of these judgements, these strong feelings of like and dislike, as they are projecting themselves, right?
So choicelessness doesn’t only happen when the mind is already free from its conditioning, it can happen right this instant, right now in the lived present, just by becoming aware of
the doing, the thinking, the feeling, the fears, the guilt, the despair [etc]
as K says in the OP.
K was not a systematic philosopher or scholar in the Buddhist mode of exposition - so he rarely follows a totally clean step by step outline of what he means by the things he talks about. Nevertheless - if you read through the extracts I shared in post 35 (and then again summarised in post 40) - you get a sense of the overall shape to K’s teaching on the subject.
He generally begins with simple, ordinary, unexceptional awareness of outward things. I won’t insult your intelligence by repeating it all here, as I assume you have read the posts just mentioned where I share what K had to say about it - but he is clearly not expecting or demanding some special insight or special empty state of mind, or a special freedom from conditioning, just to be aware of trees and leaves, the colour of people’s clothes, etc etc. Is this clear?
Having given attention to the outward field of natural objects and happenings, he then invites his listeners to turn their attention inwards, towards our own feelings, thoughts, reactions and motives, our incessant judgements and comparisons, our pettiness and jealousy, etc etc.
Again, none of this requires some special enlightened state of consciousness or ego-free mind: K is merely inviting us to look within at what is actually - not ideally - taking place in the psyche, in our ordinary psyche.
As he says, this awareness
isn’t something mysterious
It is just the awareness of what actually is, what is presently going on, both outwardly and inwardly. It can go further than this, but the “further” is not separate from where we find ourselves; it is not divorced from what is. Right?
Having begun to be simply aware (of what is) in this most basic way, we might naturally, spontaneously see that our judgements and labelling of events interferes with seeing, interferes with listening, and so the labelling falls away naturally. And when this happens there may be a deeper, more broad, more subtle quality of choicelessness than was present in a previous moment. Perhaps in this subtler state of choicelesness there is little to no interference of thought (or self). But this is still part of the same movement of ordinary awareness we have already been talking about. Do you see this?
So we do not need to divorce ordinary passive awareness from selfless awareness; we do not need to divide ordinary choicelessness (as in, I didn’t choose to feel the way I feel this second) and the choicelessness of complete equanimity, of complete, objective, full attention.
As K says, this actually happens
when you are deeply, profoundly interested in something.
So why make it more complicated than this? And who or what is wanting to make it more complicated than this? Is it a mind free from thought, free from self, free from ignorance that is demanding “pure” choiceless awareness, or awareness free from self? Or is it just our own thinking?
Again, is the person stating this with such conviction themselves free from self? Or is there a subtle attempt - by saying this - to put a condition on seeing and listening, just as has been done with regards to awareness, which interferes with seeing, listening, being choicelessly aware?
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This seeing also includes why something is there? What leads to it? What makes something exist? It is not only about the content of a thought but alos what brings this thought into existence.
Dear James, I have the feeling that you have not read my lines correctly. I was questioning that there will be choiceless awareness when we bring conditions in. And as long as the self operates there are conditions, interpretations, conclusions through which I percieve the outer. How can there be choiceless awareness when the self always chooses and is operating? I do not mind quoting K. But if I try to explore something through his saying, am I really aware of that which I want to explore or am I just trying to find things according what K says? I feel when we talk about that we also have to go into the question if we in communicating with each other are choicelessly aware or if it is just an idea which sounds very plausible? Can this awareness we are talking about be out of the self? What you said about the self and to which I agree it obviously can’t. So when this choiceless awareness takes place the self cannot be the dominant factor anymore.
I don’t know if I (psychological thought) is always choosing and operating. No doubt there are moments when this imposed condition is not operating, or is operating poorly, so all I can do is be aware of all thoughts and reactions as they occur because this is who/what I am. I want to be as familiar with what’s going on inside as I am familiar with my reflection in a mirror.
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