Image making is an ‘art’ of the self. It’s a
‘necessary’ activity to determine if the other is up to no good. Mistakes are made: the swindler gets believed, the avuncular financial consultant does you in , the ‘lover’ takes you for all you’ve got. The self which is an image, making images of others for its own protection!
The ‘altar boy’s’ image of the priest! …Well that’ll teach ya little fella.
Ah, I see now how you are using the word “refresh”. I am happy to drop the word.
When you say that you don’t presume to have intelligence, maybe the word “intelligence” doesn’t communicate what I had in mind: maybe “awareness” or “sensitivity” is better? We are all aware to some extent of what is going on within and around us (as well as between) - and such awareness is not nothing.
All I think I’m suggesting (without, I hope, any preachiness, because I include myself in this) is something very simple:
Can we each of us be a little bit (more?) attentive (aware/sensitive) to the images we form in our relationships here on the forum?
As I see it, we are like a small group of people thrown together by chance, who have crash-landed on an island, and now have to survive together for an indefinite period of time. We will not survive for long if we are always in conflict. So why not make the best of it, and see if we cannot drop our images of each other; and even (though this may seem like a stretch) begin to care about each other?
I don’t think this is impossible. But it means altering the status quo - the status quo which is maintained by our images.
Do you see what I mean?
This is an interesting point. Does dropping one’s images of others mean that one becomes gullible, naive, non-factual?
When someone says or does something duplicitous, dangerous or malevolent, we say that there are “red flags”. We form a judgement of that person: they are not to be trusted. Such a judgement is clearly an image at some level - a self-protective image that says to the brain: “Don’t go near that person, they will cause you harm”.
Aren’t such images useful?
Yes, they probably are. But only up to a point. Our judgements can be wrong after all. There is the danger that we may be projecting on someone innocent the judgements we have made previously of other people who this new person now reminds me of.
So maybe intelligence or awareness is necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff? We need to know when a red flag is a genuine red flag (which requires protective action), and when we can give the person the benefit of the doubt (and so drop our image).
What do you think?
This sounds like what selfless people do. But for those of us admittedly self-centered folks, it would be hypocritical, dishonest, don’t you think?
So why not make the best of it, and see if we cannot drop our images of each other; and even (though this may seem like a stretch) begin to care about each other?
As I’ve said, I can’t drop my images - I can only revise them because I’m not free of me, an image, To me, a radically revised image is as good as I get to a dropped image.
I’m not sure I understand why you seem to equate crash-landing on a desert island with being selfless…?
The plane has crashed, and here we are, marooned on a desert island, whether we like it or not. You didn’t choose to spend the next weeks or months with me or another, but here we are. So what do we do now? - That’s not selflessness, it is just the fact. It’s what we do next that interests me.
I am personally not expecting miracles! When visiting difficult family relations, a continuity of one’s previous images is almost inevitable. The question is, can we put the smallest dent in those images? dissolve even one of them? refresh even a single image? A revised image of another may be all I am capable of - but that revision is not negligible. Relationships sometimes hinge on these micro-transformations.
Of course, but most images are flags of tendentiousness.
I’m saying that no self-centered being can do any more than revise an image because to be self-centered is to be an image. I can’t drop my image of another any more than I can drop my image of myself.
Do you at least consider that there is no ‘you’ behind this ‘refreshing’ and ‘revising’? That it is an image ‘you’ that believes that it is separate from yourself? An image that says “I’m not free of me”…The “self is evil” K said. It’s worth at least considering …in my opinion.
It’s an image talking about images.
I am thought (a mechanical process) personified. I create and perpetuate the illusion of a person, a character, because that is what I am conditioned, programmed, to do. I know there is nothing behind the illusion but I can’t stop perpetuating and revising the image until/unless there is no program.
Anger (against other people or ourselves) only makes sense if we think that we choose to be who we are, act the way we do, think the thoughts we think, believe the stuff we believe. Would we be angry and violent with a sick person?
If you choose to have an image then you must take the consequences which is hurt and isolation .
I’m not sure that it is a matter of choice.
As I understand it, the images we make of each other accumulate unconsciously in the course of relating - through the reactions we have to each other, what the other person says to us, what we say back to them, how we feel about what they have said, etc - and when we meet again the image our brain has created is there to interfere in the relationship.
We didn’t choose these images, but we can become aware of them (and so perhaps drop them).
The consequences of having such images are that we are liable to misunderstand other people, mistake other people’s intentions, over-react to the comments they make or the words they use, etc, thereby making them into enemies (against whom we must battle), and so on.
As I see it, there is an opportunity on a forum like this for each person to become aware of this image-making (as it is taking place), and find out if the images we have made of each other can be dropped, or not.
This has some potential value, no?
If I have an image of myself that I am great what happens? I compare.
Image-Making and the Known,
And to drop image-making, one must be free of the known (K), which a petty mind is most unlikely to do. A petty mind is a slave to image-making as long as it is bound to knowledge - psychological knowledge. A petty mind has a petty brain, a brain that has used psychological knowledge so much that it can no longer recognize the difference between psychological thought and technical thought. The only way the petty mind can end is when it realizes that it is petty, and then it can break up its pettiness. It is only then that it can honestly say that it doesn’t know, and stay there, so opening up the possibility of entering the field of the unknown, thus, awakening intelligence. It is only then that it may stop projecting (and making personal attacks). It is only then that it will stop comparing, that it will cease and desist theorizing (becoming), speculating, analyzing, drawing conclusions. It is only upon entering the field of the unknown that it can see truth. For this to happen, it is only when it realizes that all accumulation of psychological knowledge is false. Seeing the truth of that is sufficient to begin the awakening of intelligence. And it is only a fully awakened intelligence that can have insights.
*“K: Now it enquires. It doesn’t say there is, or it doesn’t project, I have carefully explained. If it projects it is still within the same area.
“So, it says, “I don’t know.” I explained very carefully, “I don’t know,” and that very acknowledgement, the truth of “I don’t know” is that area, and honesty—you can never say, “I don’t know,” if you are not free of the known. And this requires tremendous honesty, which means no deception at any level. And deception only comes when you desire, when you want, when you want to succeed, when you want to achieve something, to attain something, then the operation of will brings illusion.”
K: Talks in Saanen, 4th Public Talk, 21st July 1974, Spoken Version
So, Charley, what I hear you saying/asking here is - Can we put aside this pettiness, put aside the projections and personal attacks we might make of each other in thought, the assumptions we have about another person; and start afresh, with a sense of not knowing who the other person is and where they are coming from? - meeting each other without the past.
Would this be right?
And maybe from there, there can be a more honest inquiry, a more vulnerable inquiry, in which there might come about an awakening of intelligence…? (although there is no guarantee: intelligence is not a reward for setting aside one’s images of another).
Inquiry,
Inquiry is not something that is a progression.
This is an incorrect assumption, hypothesis. As inquiry is something that is done alone, and is in no way dependent on what others participate in. So, this insinuation is misleading.
Who is this “we”… This royal “we”… Speak for yourself! Honestly, you are the main one who has perpetrated all the major personal attacks. So, Charley asks can the ones who are making the personal attacks realize they have a petty brain, that they are the very and only source of making posts personal. Until the petty ones make this realization, there is no way that any one of them can “put aside” their projections and personal attacks. And it is this poison which has penetrated the psyche of this site and caused damage to the site and to others who have believed and followed without challenging all the contents of the posts of those functioning exclusively in thought. Only one person has challenged one of the contents of posts which Charley has made (regarding “will”), and Charley responded to that particular challenge. All the others, functioning exclusively from thought, and unable to challenge the contents of Charley’s posts, have only made personal and denigrating comments on Charley herself, and in so doing have blocked themselves… They do not realize that they are slowly destroying themselves in doing that. It will take a few years for that to happen, and when that happens, it will be too late for them.
Again, one states emphatically, it is only intelligence which is impersonal. Intelligence is not a reaction. Only those exercising thought react, and continue to make patently false conclusions, as you made recently in your thread on clarifications regarding how in sleep, the contents of consciousness are also emptied. (Btw, it is only in the process where this can happen.) So your conclusion itself is false, but Charley has no interest in commenting in your thread, James. You can lead all your followers who like your posts to believe in things that are false. Charley doesn’t mind what you do on this site. If someone desires to destroy themselves and also within others the possibility of awakening intelligence, Charley cannot say anything to prevent this from happening. This has nothing to do with Charley as it is their life not mine. So, as Charley has stated before, would you please leave this thread, go back to the threads which you yourself have started where you can state whatever it is you want others to believe in. Or would you prefer Charley to go into your threads and state in them all the false conclusions you make, and boy there are a lot of them! Charley is not that interested in doing that. Too much work and wasted effort and energy on someone who insists on some viewpoint that is contrary to everything K.
I think this is the whole idea of a forum like this James. However, it’s clear that this type of inquiry requires a high degree of cooperation and listening skills and I very much doubt that the small, diverse group of people here are capable of this. We would all have to change our ways quite a bit for a more honest, vulnerable inquiry to take place.
Hi Rick. Can you say what you mean by “let it flower” (the nastiness). This seems like an interesting idea and I’m all for going deeper to discover the root of things like nastiness but I’m still not sure how this would work in practice.
Does Charley own this thread because she started this and may we only agree in what she is saying in it?
That seems to me contrary to everything what K said!
Wim,
Please be precise, as one has never stated that one owns anything on this site. It is actually Kinfonet that owns this site. So what exactly within the contents of every post that Charley has posted do you find a contradiction to everything that K has said?
As a matter of fact, Charley made a misstatement in the first few months of joining this site in one thread (don’t recall where it is now). And one had woken up the next day realizing that what Charley had posted was incorrect, but reality made it that Charley had to do some things here, and Charley forgot about it. And the next day, the same realization happened again upon waking up; but this time, Charley realized that no one on this site had even noticed it, so Charley considered this and decided it was interesting to leave this post alone. A few months ago, re-reading another post, Charley also noticed that one had made a little mistake which was largely due to one’s fumbling fingers… Charley left that one as well. No biggie. If one has not expressed any sentence as clearly as any reader would like it to be, it is up to the reader to ask for clarity. Please understand that one functioned in one’s adult life in another language entirely, and linguistics has never been Charley’s forte. One has only requested, and requested very politely, that those who were making denigrating personal attacks on Charley (and others) make their posts elsewhere, and to be clear here, now, that’s all one can say about that.
It is strange WimOpdam, that you make such a statement here, and that you have never made any post elsewhere on this site about the persistence of those who make personal attacks on members, when K made a point of never making any kind of personal attack on anyone in all of his years of talking. Now, that is a contradiction in how you yourself interact with other members, liking some and disliking others, isn’t it, something K never did?