No not ‘psychological’ thinking, any movement of thought, there is no you / me as thinker, there is only the arising and disappearing flow of thinking; the process of thinking from the past? The ‘me’ as thinker, me doing the thinking, gives the illusion of being of the present? ‘I’ exist (as thinker) and am in the present and these are ‘my’ thoughts. This is ‘my’ knowledge different than ‘your’ knowledge etc.
I think there needs to be awareness of the ‘me’ who thinks ‘I’ exist and not only the content of what ‘I’ think but also included, this illusory ‘I’ who thinks that ‘I’ am thinking it.
So you are separating the content of thought/feeling from the thing that thinks/feels?
Why do you want to do this?
Does awareness make this separation? Or is there only the awareness of a process of identification (with a country, religious belief, class, etc); or awareness of a process of reaction (as anger, jealousy, hurt, etc)?
Both identification (with a country, religious belief, etc) and reaction (jealousy, hurt, etc) already imply a sense of ‘self’, of ‘me’ (that is identified or reactive) - so a simple awareness of that process (of identification or reaction) is sufficient, isn’t it?
Isn’t it only afterwards, through analysis, that this process is broken up into a separate ‘me’ who is identified ‘with’, or a separate ‘me’ who is reacting ‘to’?
You didn’t answer yet whether the ‘me’ is a separate movement from the movement of psychological conditioning?
The ‘me/mine’ image was the ‘wrong turn’ that has led to a ‘self’ wandering in the wilderness of ‘division’ filling the brain with knowledge, experience and seeking paths to lead it out of its loneliness and misery. They’ve all failed. Then a ‘voice in the wilderness’ says “There is no division” …”There is no path”…and it either hears that or it doesn’t?
Are you asking what makes conditioning ‘psychological’?
That is, we know that the body is conditioned by millions of years of evolution - so that the eye can see, the brain can operate in the way it does, etc.
But in addition to this natural evolutionary conditioning there is ‘psychological’ conditioning. What is this?
It’s not far from my reality. My actual reality is that seeing that humans are slaughtering each other and realize I cannot do anything. I see how almost everyone is choosing a side and blame me for not participating in that.
If the brain views itself as being more than just a brain, it is predisposed to react when its view of itself is not supported or threatened.
So why does the brain distinguish itself from other brains? If the brain was aware of what it actually is, would it feel the need to be something more than a brain?
That seems to be the ‘problem’? The brain is (when silent, quiet, empty) mind? The brain is now instead, occupied by all the garbage that has stuck to it since childhood in its misguided quest to ‘be’ something. If it becomes aware of its desperate folly of entertaining an image of itself and through “understanding” how such an image divides itself from the world, perhaps it has a chance to shed it?
Yes. What is taking place is completely horrifying - it is deeply distressing.
Both Hamas and the Israeli leadership are at fault in this present crisis, and there are clearly victims on both sides of the conflict. The ISIS style attacks by Hamas on ordinary Israeli civilians - as well as their kidnapping of ordinary Israeli civilians - was unjustifiable and abhorrent. One can understand the horror, agony, fear and outrage this has caused in Israeli society. But the bombing campaign by the IDF in retaliation is also horrifying - the suffering and death of ordinary Palestinians (many of them children) is simply terrible.
However the momentum of violence is now in full swing, so only the great powers (America, Europe, Russia/China, the Gulf states, etc) can really do anything to mitigate this in the short term. Through petitions and peaceful demonstrations we can maybe attempt to put pressure on our governments to find a solution to the violence, to restrain Israel (or Hamas and Hezbollah etc, if one lives in Arab states). But the situation is out of our hands.
Individually we can also pay attention to our own aggression, our own habits of identification. - I feel this is where our real ‘power’ (by which I mean our agency) lies.
I agree! Having a friendly attitude towards a mental state tends to release neurochemicals that make us open to exploring these states, having a hostile/fearful attitude tends to close us off to exploring. Feeding our demons is a kind of ‘hack’ that encourages our brain to be open to exploring the emotions that arise.
Yes, but being more interested in shedding its contents than finding out what they are and why they persist is escaping from what it needs to attend to. Until/unless the brain loses the tendency to escape itself by imagining freedom, it is the captive of its contents.
Perhaps all the brain can do is take an interest in its contents, which means being aware of its conditioned response, its reactions.
‘Partial’ insight into the ‘rackets’ of organized religions and the charlatans as well as the corrupt societies with their flags and money and wars dissolves the belief one maybe had in all that business…but it seems that in oneself, only a total insight into the ‘complex’ of the self could make the brain regurgitate it. It is dulled to the danger of it. As long it can get enough pleasure, get high enough, get rich enough, be smart enough, be respected enough, be comfortable enough etc , why waste your time on enquiring into all this egghead ‘stuff’? ie. Leave ‘well enough’ alone?
