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Speaking Freely

Kinfonet Discussion
#1

Speaking Freely.

In a meeting people are expressing themselves. For example, it could be a social, business, or community meeting. People come as they are and talk about their perspectives, interests, concerns and beliefs. The interaction people have can be therapeutic, or it is complicated. It is where each other maybe thinking about some common concern or interest, but they are viewing the world through the prism of their own personal state of mind, conditioning, beliefs, ideals, etc. We see in the way we have been taught to see, and what we have is what we have created, maybe not personally, but socially, culturally, religiously.

People expressing themselves is the repetition of the conventional mind, wanting, searching for something, or inventing something. It is this same mind that has created all the way of life. Mixed up with all of the conditions of a day to day life, this is a complex and confused mind. There is no clarity for the mind to freely look, listen, and respond to a liveliness of the world people share.

People don’t see they are looking at their own self image. They find self expression pleasing, comforting, and think talking about what’s on each others mind is helpful. I have a different reason for talking together. For me there is an urgency of awareness of a free flow of mind. Not your mind, his or her mind, but the mind we all share. It is the mind not distracted by identity, by self image. It is a mind which is alert to all the psychological habits of the conventional mind, and all the separateness and division this has created. It responds freely, not to make claim to some point of view, but because it is obvious what is not free; what is conditioned.

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#2

And you will agree Peter as we all must, that one could be wrong about all that? K said if you’re not certain, be certain.

#3

The wrongness is obvious not the mind freely responding.

#4

What does the notion the human mind is conditioned really mean?

#5

We (and our minds) are a product of evolution - we are of life, conditioned by it.
We are a product of evolution and everything we are and see is our evolutionary baggage.

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#6

@macdougdoug
Yes but what does it really mean to say that the brain is conditioned? Ordinarily around here conditioned is viewed as a problem, which needs to be overcome in a sense, which implies that there can be life without conditioning. So what is conditioning actually making for, that the self same conditioned thinks or imagines would be different were it not?

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#7

When K talked of “setting man unconditionally free” , wasn’t his conditioning what he was referring to? Not overcoming it but being free of it?

#8

@DanMcD
Yes that is my understanding. I say overcome, but free, or being without it is the essence of it. Given being without is an actuality, what is the thing with the label conditioning really pointing at is what I am asking, as set against ideas or associations of what it is, which don’t seem to shift it any.

#9

Which is most probably that very conditioning expressing itself - in the form of analysis of the known, which produces conclusions and more knowledge/imagination - just conditioning conditioning itself.

All we can “share” here is ideas. Unfortunately the only ideas that we actually recognise are the ones already embedded in our own heads.

The actual shifting is something that happens due to circumstances beyond our control, when we are naked and alone. (naked meaning powerless, alone meaning fearless, shifting meaning liberation)

#10

Can the brain be clear that it is in fact ‘conditioned ‘? And if so can it be clear that any move to free itself from the so called ‘conditioning ‘ is the movement of that very ‘conditioning ‘?

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#11

Isn’t it the presence in the brain of a psychological ‘center’? A finite accumulation around a center that has been called the “I-process”. Also called the “me and the mine”…The restrictive selective “prism” that Peter mentioned? Isn’t that the conditioning in the brain that is being referred to that can’t be dissolved by any ‘positive’ action?

#12

We can describe “conditioning” - I kinda like the words “evolutionary baggage” at the moment. “Worldview” is also a good one.

We can read huge books describing the historical process of how we came to hold the beliefs we have and the world we have created for ourselves.
But descriptions shall not set you free. The truth might not even set you free. Seeing the truth might - but in order to see the truth we might need first to be free (from the known, from fear).
Tricky

#13

Doesn’t the seeing have to be by the part of the brain that is not conditioned? The brain realizing that it is the same as all human brains, the main difference between them being this ‘conditioning ‘ , the ‘I process’, the ‘wrong turn ‘, the ‘noise’, etc…The seeing done from the silence and solitude, not a product of the ‘contents of consciousness ‘?A pure seeing or ‘choice-less awareness ‘? Brains communicating with each other from this place would not be in conflict.

#14

Yes but when we transmit them using language, words can make us explode, or even get us killed, so it is a strange situation we are in.

So control, which is everything control actually is, and fear, can be factors in maintaining things as they are, as in a holding pattern.

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#15

That would be the first thing yes as I may hear all the descriptions of it which have been done to death, but still not see what it is really doing in my own case.

It has logically to be the fact of myself otherwise there would be me with conditioning, and the possibility of removing the conditioning to leave just me.

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#16

So the ‘me’ and the conditioning are one and the same. An illusion created and maintained by psyche thought. A network of patterns that are habitual, continuous and damaging the brain according to K. Can this situation end now not in some future? The brain is asking the question of itself. If it is not attentive, the movement of thought will continue. Thought will create the ‘thinker’ and talk to itself.

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#17

The whole planet is conditioned - no part of planet earth is in its pre-primordial state - so, I’d have to go with No. But really we don’t know, though it is fun to speculate - my brain however cannot grasp the concept of the non-conditioned brain.

It is not any extra or novel concept that frees us from the known - more like the realisation that all resistance is useless (or worse than useless) - which leads to powerlessness

Even after psychological death, concepts will continue to arise - very exciting concepts I’m sure, because the reborn self will always try to make sense of and communicate its experiences.

#18

The furthest that the self can go is to realise intellectually that the security of the known is a delusion.
This allows for the habit of non-grasping. This allows for the familiarity with openess.
Further miracles are not of your jurisdiction - there is no recipe for Psychological death.
All we can do is to make sure we are not in the way.

#19

Why not? You can imagine a heart without a blocked vessel, a liver without fat, a lung without cancer, a brain without you, (as ‘owner’) no?

Why is it a novel concept to see that all brains are basically the same, like eyes, hands, feet, etc.? It’s the type of ‘conditioning’ in the brain that is causing the conflict and suffering within us and without us, as I see it. The ‘contents’. Emptying the contents is what is called for. Can it be done or can’t it? And if so, now, not in a ‘later’ that doesn’t exist.

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#20

Thank you, Peter. That was surprisingly lucid.