What does the mind do when its certainties and convictions are just words, images, stories that it identifies with, and it is suddenly bereft of its identity?
What does the mind do when it doesn’t know who or what it stands for, who or what it serves at the pleasure of, who or what it should and shouldn’t be?
What does the mind do when it isn’t doing what it must to maintain its identity?
Am I losing my mind, or is the mind losing its I?
We know that I doesn’t have a mind because the mind creates I and pretends I is a person with a mind, but do we know why the mind does this?
No, we don’t know but do you equate “mind” with the thinking process? The speculation is that somewhere along our way , the thinking process jumped the wall and considered itself a ‘thinker’ apart from the thinking that was going on. Then there was , not just ‘thinking’, but an individual entity that was ‘doing’ it, the ‘Thinker’, you and me. As Bohm said (I think), it happened because it could happen.
The mind imagines itself as I, a person that has a mind, instead of simply being the outward manifestation of the inward activity that it is. Why? Why does the mind imagine itself when everything it says and does identifies it?
Wasn’t another speculation that it created the ‘thinker’ to give itself ‘continuity’. If that is so , why would thought want to have such a thing?
When fear is absent, it does not do.
But strong biological habits come with this body and will kick back in. However, memory will create the experience of peace, which becomes a tiny but fascinatingly significant part of this new self. (Just like many people with NDE’s or LSD trips are forever affected by what they think they experienced)
With the conditioned mind, is fear ever absent? Isn’t it built on the fear of being discovered, exposed, revealed, enlightened? Isn’t the conditioned mind the means of escape from naked actuality to a disguised distorted version thereof?
But strong biological habits come with this body and will kick back in. However, memory will create the experience of peace, which becomes a tiny but fascinatingly significant part of this new self. (Just like many people with NDE’s or LSD trips are forever affected by what they think they experienced)
The mind that is designed and driven by fear to disguise itself and distort perception does whatever it must to maintain the illusions that support its structure and fuel its activity.
No - but in the silence, where is the conditioned mind?
There is no actual existing mind that can be grasped (intellectually or otherwise) - mind only arises when in contact with its contents (we can also say in contact with the outside world). And its function is to produce thoughts and words - like the stomach produces bile - too much bile and you get heartburn.
nb. Also in reponse to stuff you say elsewhere : there are no magical santa claus gurus either. (in summary, neither the intellect nor some enlightened guru can free anyone’s mind - necessarily so as thought and desire are part of the problem)
Aren’t the contents “actual existing”?
in the silence, where is the conditioned mind?
What silence?
Also in reponse to stuff you say elsewhere : there are no magical santa claus gurus either. (in summary, neither the intellect nor some enlightened guru can free anyone’s mind
Please be specific. I don’t know what you’re referring to.
This is the conclusion that you keep using. What is it based on? What action arises from this conclusion? Apart from complaints of injustice, blaming the imagined enlightened people for not being able to assist you - why hold so tightly to this conclusion? Because it is particularly clever? Comforting? What is the goal of pushing/sticking to this idea?
Because it can? The brain can image things that aren’t there. The possibility of danger, of pleasure. The human brain evolved to be able to do that, to image scenarios that may or may not exist, that may or may not come to pass. Negative images can create anxiety and suffering even suicide if intense enough. Imaging has a place ‘technically’. Where does it run off the track?
Where there is no distinction made between the image and that which it image-ines?
Never mind the ‘monster’ form, just stick an automatic weapon in the shadow’s hands.
very good! However, on kinfonet it is usually affirmed that the confusion arises when the distinction is made.
So : Q. “Where does it run off the track?”
A. “Where there is a distinction made between the image and the imaginer”
We all have ideas, notions, beliefs, convictions that we identify with because we are intellects without intelligence.
Does the mind, the intellect, thought, imagine itself as a person because it exists and operates in a society where every other mind is doing it? Each one of us is identified with and by, the content of one’s consciousness, and each of us is distinctively different enough that we don’t need to pretend to be someone. Or do we?
With the animals it’s get born, get big, and get out…the human child needs a strong sense of self esteem to go off alone into a dangerous world. The timid get trampled.
We mistake the map for the territory, the pointer for that which is being pointed to. We can’t (reliably) separate real from fake news.
The brain is eminently foolable. All brains. Assuming this is right(ish), and assuming we are interested in finding out what’s really going on, what do we do?
Because it seems that intelligence is not using the intellect; that intelligence may be asleep (if it even exists), we have only the scientific method to rely on. This means we are mistaken to accept anything that isn’t demonstrably true or self-evident.
But not everyone can live this way. Most of us are inclined to believe and assume and opine without hesitation, and what’s worse, to defend our hasty conclusions.
The best we can do is hypothesize and test our hypotheses. That’s the limit we have to respect if we are intelligent enough to know we’re not intelligent enough to act without circumspection. If the spotlight is not on our stupidity/cupidity, it’s making mischief.
