“When you see the truth that whatever the conditioned mind does to free itself, it is still conditioned, there is the cessation of all such effort, and it is this perception of what is true that is the liberating factor.”
New Delhi 6th Public Talk 31st October 1956
To see one’s own conditioning is to end it; the seeing is the doing. But we see it only on occasions, only in fragments, only when it is too obvious to deny. We don’t see its totality.
We don’t see the what-should-be that determines the conditions of our self-limiting. We imprison ourselves in our best laid plans for escape. We plan to free ourselves from what we are dimly aware of by shining too little light to be revealing. We dream of freedom (what-should-be) from our condition (what-should-not-be). We are caught in the corridor of opposites, duality, because we don’t care to find out how we are perpetuating our condition.
Do we though? Actually see anything that would give us pause?
Seems to me that we only doubt our perception at a superficial level, at the level of our beliefs or opinions; there is an unwritten assumption that our fundamental perception of reality is true to form. Hence any investigation we embark upon occurs in a narrow section of consciousness which we mistake to be the whole, resulting in nothing but a modified continuity of what we were to begin with. Our ideas may get shaken but our being never does.
I was using the word “being” in a much more common sense way. As in core being. To indicate fragmentation. How we unconsciously hide part of ourselves from ourselves.
Nothing quite so fantastic as a Nobody which I cannot presume to know anything about. Nothing that can be trusted anyway.
This assumption is constantly revealed to be false, though, so one is watching one’s observations with this in mind, which means being less resistant to uncertainty and ambiguity.
To stay with any degree of uncertainty and ambiguity is in the nature of thought. All this is an adventure and the challenge is lost in the dilettante cultivating knowledge.
The nature of thought is knowledge and making comparative assessments. This is what I am doing, and it is only psychological with that psychological awareness.
In another discussion, which is closed, they are discussing conditioning, and trying to grapple with the conditioning as perceived in the discussion itself. This is entirely the wrong approach. In a discussion that kind of talk is called debate. The conditioning is thought and this requires an attention to the workings of the mind as we are living and breathing. We can call his psychological, but this looking at myself, not referring to psychological theory. Conditioning can be indicated, and then I can give my attention to this. The words and ideas in common use in a group talking together, these words while part of the conditioning, they are used in an attempt to indicate the conditioning. Sticking to a theory of conditioning, is not seeing conditioning.