"The house Is on fire."

Is it that our burdened, inertia mired brain :brain: when freed from its habitual ruts, can resonate with and be, ‘Mind’? Freed it can receive and reflect the finer vibrations that some have called Love, Compassion, Wisdom?

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That’s merely another belief, another hope, another theory, and so just another idea. Ideas are not the way out; they only take us round and round. Is the brain burdened? That’s the first thing to find out. This too may just be another idea.

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**Great question Dan. Unfortunately, the resistance to inquiring into this (the inertia you point to) prevents finding out. On the upside, if there is an interest to explore the question you presented, the resistance is available for observation. The resistance, in the form of psychological reactions, are available for observation. All of the various “psychological opinions,” like, “That’s merely a belief,” which is a ‘conclusion’ that blocks inquiry. The system of thought we are all conditioned with has an endless supply, it seems, of ways to distract attention from observing what thought is doing.

K: So does a human being, Y or X, listen at all? And what takes place when I do listen? Listen in the sense without any interference, without any interpretation, conclusion, like and dislike, you know all that takes place, what happens when I actually listen? - San Diego Feb.1974

Yes how bitterly thought fought against the heretical idea that the earth wasn’t the center of the universe, that the earth wasn’t flat. My question about the brain seemed modest enough, that it is basically ‘unused’, that its potential except by a few, is “undiscovered country”, it hasn’t been opened, hasn’t ‘flowered’, etc. As you say, it is a knowledge of the self which is itself “resistance” has to be examined totally. That our brain is a receiver that has not been ‘switched on’ except for the material treasures that it has created and that the true treasures of love, compassion, intelligence, silence, lie undiscovered …seems almost a given when looking at the pickle Mankind is in.

I wonder, is it understood what is meant when it is said we are talking about the mind. Look at the mind. I mean now, in the immediate. The mind is listening, watching, reading, etc. This is, with the mind’s senses, an experience, a sensation, together with the nature of what is seen, heard, etc. This is a simple, straightforward awareness; looking listening, watching, feeling, etc., with the visual, the audible, the tactile, etc.

Then there is an addition to this natural experience, and this is thought. Thought is a secondary experience, away from the natural. All that we don’t understand about the natural experience of mind, is thought. Talking together about mind, we use thought, but thought is extra to the mind. We call it thinking. This thinking is limited to thought, and thought cannot discover something like a fundamental mind, free from thought.

You may be aware this natural mind free from thought is not so odd, and can see this quietness, stillness, effortlessness, of mind, is there for the looking. Or, as you can read for yourself, negating thought, negating all the distractions we want to throw up with thought, there is a chance to see this mind free from thought. The annoyances we might find with this proposition, is more of thought, with the ego, and all that. Just see the annoyances, the puzzlement, the need for answers, and solutions, that is thought. See them as they arise, and see there is this step away from a mind not in thought.

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No, it is the belief itself that blocks enquiry. If you say to me that there is something called love, compassion and wisdom once we are free of our conditioning, does it change anything? We are still trapped and yet dreaming of freedom, therefore trapped in dreams. But are we actually trapped in the very first place? Are we actually conditioned at all?

How can ‘I ‘ see myself in everything? As being everything? Is it what we are calling ‘conditioning’ that keeps us ‘thinking ‘’ ‘feeling‘ that we are divided as ‘individuals ‘ from the rest of creation? And that keeps the dark fear of not-being, of ‘death’ , in the back of our mind and poisons the joy of living?

Do we need to hold any belief at all of what we are? Is identity essential? Do I really need to hold on to this or that concept as being me?

No I guess not but especially the “beliefs” that foster division, conflict, fear, suffering, and cruelty?

PS Is it a ‘belief’ that all being is one, if all being is one? :face_with_monocle:

**Let’s look again, as if for the first time. Dan asked a question…than what actually happened? A psychological opinion, from memory, asserts, “That’s a belief.” What happened to the inquiry? The thought-assumption diverted attention away from the question. Am I missing something? A question was asked, it wasn’t an assertion that there was something called love, it was a question, wasn’t it? Isn’t this what the conditioning is constantly doing? Not “Paul’s” conditioning, or “Howard’s” conditioning, but rather, humanity’s conditioning. In inquiry there’s no requirement to agree or disagree, but rather it’s about “exploring the question,” isn’t it? And what is it that appears to be constantly obstructing inquiry, a further exploration? Isn’t it all of the theories, opinions, and beliefs that get expressed in response to a question? The “known” responding to a question, versus an openness to looking? A dying to all of the psychological views of the “centre” the “me?”
I don’t see how Dan’s pointing to an ‘inertia mired brain’ is in any way denying what you call “still trapped.” Do you?

What I know about “existence/being” is either insignificant or wrong/imaginary/conceptual - the same goes for my understanding of “one/all” - so to go any further in my world view would be to construct my security/world view upon fairy dust.
Why should I depend/hold on to my conditioning/world view/security/identity if I can see that its just beliefs from the past (fear/conclusions/need for security) forever being reborn?

All beliefs (dogma/rigidity/imagination) are in conflict with “what is” (mysterious infinity in flux?)

It was a question about a hypothetical future event - ‘when the mind is freed is there love?’ - so it is not a question about what we are actually faced with, which is our total lack of love. That’s what matters, not our dreams about it. I am not putting forward a conclusion or a belief; surely it is plain common-sense to deal with the facts as they actually are and not our personal ideals of a better life.

The question is: are we conditioned? To answer this question, what shall we do? No-one has an answer to it. So how are we to find out the answer to this question?

Yes, it most certainly is. The belief belies the fact.

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If I in days of yore ‘believed ‘ that the world was round, that would not belie the fact…it would be the fact.

Your ‘belief ‘ that the world was flat would “belie” the fact. :face_with_monocle:

[quote=“PaulDimmock, post:33, topic:467”]
The question is: are we conditioned? To answer this question, what shall we do? No-one has an answer to it. So how are we to find out the answer to this question?

Why do you say that no one has an answer? My answer is yes and to watch that conditioning as it unfolds in psychological thought, images.

Why bother with belief? It is only our insecurity that seeks belief. We are two people talking to one another, which is a fact. Anything else is supposition. There may be God or some other vast mystery outside of the casual appearance to our everyday life. Belief in such mystery destroys the very thing you are seeking because you can’t meet the sacred through belief.

Why? Has the watching of it brought it to a complete end? Or are you just following someone else’s advice in the hope that the watching will work its magic? So time is still involved. But what is conditioning? What is at the heart of it if not time? When we negate time as the answer to any of our psychological problems - as belief, as idea, as principles, theories and opinions - we have already begun to destroy the foundations of what is generally called our conditioning. But, apparently, we are all too reluctant to let go of both the past and the future; and so time continues to infect the present, which is our relationship.

Question : would we be justified in our belief ?(of something that we had no way of knowing - and that totally contradicted what was right before our eyes)

It seemed pretty clear that this symbol ‘?’ indicated a question, not the assertion of a belief. How does the question Dan asked differ from these questions:

K: Can there be love when there is attachment?
**Is that about a hypothetical future without attachment, or simply a ‘question’? An invitation to ‘find out’?

K: So we’re asking, what is the relationship of love to suffering?
**Isn’t this question an invitation to look, to inquire? It’s not “asserting” a belief that we all know love is, is it?

K: And we also should talk about, together talk over the whole immense implications of death because death is part of life, though we have postponed, avoided even talking about it, it is there. So we ought to go into that too. And whether love , not the remembrance of pleasure which has nothing to do with love and compassion, whether that love and compassion with its own peculiar all-comprehending intelligence, whether that love can exist in our life.

**What’s the response to K? Is it, “That’s a belief, a hypothetical future?”

What relationship does evaluating what Dan is doing or not doing, have to do with ‘our’ dying to the “observer,” the “evaluator,” comparing what we hear to an ideal of being “free of belief?” What does making an assumption about what another person is doing have to do with observing ‘ourselves’ in relationship, observing the shared conditioning, what thought is doing? Isn’t this what the conditioning is frequently doing, moving away from what is, over to judging the messenger? The “other?”

K: Living with death means ending everything every minute, all that you have accumulated as memory?

**Where does this assumption, “This is a belief,” come from if not from what the “observer thinks?” The observer structure of psychological opinions, that thought asserts as what “I believe?” Who or what is saying “That’s a belief?” Isn’t that the movement of conditioned thought?

K: So observation is not analysis. Analysis implies the analyzer who is analyzing something outside of himself. The analyzer thinks he understands, has superior knowledge and he is analyzing something outside of himself. But if you observe very carefully, the analyzer is the analyzed.

**Isn’t the assertion, “This is a belief,” the product of analysis? An assertion of conditioned memory?