I agree that the way I see is the problem, but agreeing is not seeing, so what’s the solution? Can I see the way I see, or can I only lose confidence in it, mistrust it, doubt it, question it? I can learn a lot about the way I see and why it’s the problem, but will that reveal the way I see in the light of selfless seeing? Is there such a thing as selfless sight; such a thing as seeing what actually is rather than seeing things the way I see them?
I have reason to believe there is because Krishnamurti and others have convinced me, but conviction is just belief, and believing is not seeing. So what am I to do? I can’t stop believing because it’s all I have when I can’t see clearly. And I can’t stop hoping that I can see clearly if I just keep looking askance at the way I see. But isn’t all this just perpetuating the way I see?
It’s a “damned if I do and damned if I don’t” situation because everything I do is damned by resistance to seeing what I’m doing.
If a blind person is conditioned to deny that he’s blind, despite all the evidence that he is, he’s damned by his denial of what he is. We’re conditioned to believe we’re not blind because we seem to get by, to manage, by following someone’s lead,…the blind leading the blind.
If the problem is not that you are blind, but that you are blind and (make-)believe you can see, why not just admit you’re blind, own it? (I think you’re doing this already, but maybe not 100%.)
We are blind to what doesn’t support or justify our conditioned response because conditioned response is what we are…at least, until or if we see this.
I’m using “blind” figuratively, not literally. It isn’t that we can’t see, but that we see distortedly, according to our conditioning. We don’t see things as they are, but as the conditioned mind distorts things to comport with our beliefs and expectations.
We know we perceive a distorted version of actuality because the evidence makes it clear how biased and mistaken we usually are. We depend more on hindsight than sight.
We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are … so not so much blindness as profound near-sightedness.
Glasses treat vision problems very nicely. Lasik too.
Is there a ‘fix’ for reality near-sightedness? (Do you want a fix? Seeing clearly, I imagine, opens you to deeper levels of everything, including pain.)
You’d need to pay attention to everything right? Including subtle things you don’t normally pay attention to like: What is your motivation for paying attention? If you fall into paying attention to those things you always tend to pay attention to, you’ll end up just deepening your conditioning.
If this is true, what does ‘freedom’ mean? Can we only be as free as the boundaries of our conditioning allow? I.e. some wiggle room within our limited region of possibiility?
Considering where we are, doesn’t the way I see it relate to what is called the teachings of K, and what I do with this? I might disagree, object, reinvent, invert, oppose, denigrate, etc, but essentially here I am. Surely it requires some kind of deeper self-reflection in light of what k has said? This self-reflection will show what I think, and what I think is not what to maintain or cultivate as my own philosophy to discuss, but is what to realise as being a self center.
What do you mean by self-reflection? How does it work? Is it some kind of effort on my part? How will I know if what I see is not just more of my own interpretation?
Either I see that thought is just more of my own blathering, empty, neediness, which means silence - or I just keep hopping from one seemingly interesting thought to another.