The incomprehensible is beyond explanation. It is why we use the word insight.
Isnât it obvious the preference for explanations, descriptions, information, and answers, is a preference limited to the technical, practical, and mundane circumstances? It is of no help in discovering the religious.
How can someone talk about any thing greater than ordinary people? Yet in fact most movements in human societies are led by contempt, and the offer of the greater good. This is what we call dictatorship. Then appalled by this prospect, we are imbued again with contempt.
Do we see there is a sense of elevation in talking about the religious, climbing the mountain, or speaking about the whole, like civilization, or the cosmos, etc. It implies something is wrong. It implies aspiration. Then there is an intellectual reaction to what is thought to be implied, isnât there? This is the contempt.
The conflict between what I am and what I should be is what drives this discussion until I see that by believing I know what I should be distracts attention from what I am now to what I must become.
The conditioned mind knows it creates confusion and conflict by compulsive thinking, and knows it canât stop thinking for fear of dissolution, so it is âproblematicâ.
One thing that comes to mind is the amount and variety of âcreation storiesâ that have been spun since our beginning. What happens to us when we die? âThereâs the rub.â Karma, Hell, Eternal RecurrenceâŚ? Hard to have not picked up any of that along the way.
So carrying any of that business (and any âbusinessâ for that matter) in the mind, means that that is the lens or âpatternâ that the world is seen through. The past. Can the mind be aware of the stream of the past that is constantly flowing through it? Can it simply âstep out of itâ? As K said, watch the thoughts but not âchooseâ any of them. Choosing any of them means becoming âoccupiedâ by them. A mind that is occupied is occupied by the past and is not free.
The conditioned mind fears the dissolution of its false reality, the bubble it inhabits, because the thought of living without it is terrifying. But what it doesnât realize is that it itself is entirely thought-driven and sustained, and the dissolution of this condition is nothing to fear.
Are we suggesting the mind fears the end of conflict and confusion? ;o)
Yes.
Because they donât realize that a free mind has no me, no I, no mine; that freedom is the end of everything one knows.To be bound by beliefs is the antithesis of freedom. Yes, I, me, mine, are beliefs.
It is our ideas that terrify us - we make up the ghost stories
This is because we are the ideas. âIâ am an idea, an imagined entity that is no more real than any idea, but because the living being identifies with its idea of itself, it is terrified of realizing what it is doing.
The make-believe mind is terrified of existing without the power of make-believe because, being more psychological than actual, it can be forced out of its dream-world into that which it is bound and determined to deny through distortion.
Consider the suggestion that the deepest fear of the mind is loneliness, to be completely alone. That that is what it avoids, avoids facing in itself without escape. Our attachments are a result of this unexamined fear. To find security, there is attachment to âthingsâ, to people, to ideas, with all the inevitable violence and suffering that flows from that futile search for âsecurityâ. Can that fear be looked at simply and allowed to dissolve?
The mind can imagine the most horrifying things, and whatâs worse, make them manifest. But if âthe deepest fear of the mind is lonelinessâ, oneâs deepest fear is of oneself for isolating oneself from all others by insisting on imagination over nakedness. If I am fooling myself, I can only go on until thereâs no fooling.
Steadfastly insisting on being who/what we think we are precludes desisting from thought.
Is the mind the maker of images and thoughts or do the thoughts and images arise in the mind from memory? From the past? If that is the case, then the mind/brain can, in Kâs word âwatchâ the arising of thoughts without âchoosingâ them. Choosing a thought or image results in its âoccupyingâ the mind, occupying the mind with the past. No choosing means no occupation which leaves the mind free of the past in the moment.
So why has the mind âchosenâ this frightening image of being alone? Is it the residue from early childhood when being âaloneâ would be fatal? Can the mind look into this fear and understand dependence and attachment in a new way?
It knows it is alone, and is afraid of being reminded that this is its choice. It chooses to steadfastly insist on being who/what it thinks it is, and rarely, if ever, who/what it actually is.
Is it the residue from early childhood when being âaloneâ would be fatal?
I would say No, because thatâs a rational fear. The fear of being what you actually are instead of who you choose to be is irrational - insane, really - because itâs defying fact with fantasy. A baby in a room all by itself, separated from its mother is not imagined. The baby brain isnât upset over what it thinks, but what it knows from experience.
Can the mind look into this fear and understand dependence and attachment in a new way?
It depends on how weak the will (the chooser) is. If I remain determined to choose my reality rather than abide with what actually is, the mind is not free to see what it doesnât choose to see.
So can I choose not to choose? I know I can choose what to think and choose how rigorously or casually to go about it, but can I choose not to think? Who/what is asking? Is it I, thought, or I, the mind that is burdened and bedeviled by thought?
âThereâs too much confusion. I canât get no reliefâ, as the song goes. So what am I to do when I donât know exactly who or what I am, and all I have are the words of Krishnamurti to give me a clue? If I keep poring over and pondering those words, those phrases, will my confusion dissipate and dissolve, or will I just become so saturated and marinated in Kâs teaching, that Iâll have all the answers?
The instinctive flight and fight mechanism arises without the need for thought. And this is part of our evolutionary survival mechanism - and it can produce sensations that are sought out (like hot chillies).
The idea is not that we should fear or hate fear (want to get rid of it), rather that we see its power in our life - how it creates unnecessary conflict - how it is in some way the core of our self and experience.
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It does in the survival, well-being of the body. Then âfearâ is intelligence. A sensitivity to what might be dangerous. But âpsychologicalâ fear is based on the illusion that there is a âmeâ that exists as an entity separate from the body and âdependsâ on the body for its continued âexistence â. The illusory self-image becomes âfrightenedâ when its well-being is perceived to be threatened, humiliated , ridiculed, ostracized, disease of the body, etc,etc. This âfearâ has no place in the human experience except the place it has made for itself.
What is this a reply to?