K gives the word a different feeling when he makes it synonymous with “caring”?
Exploring anything has the sense of uncovering something new for me. K talked about seeing things like greed and this seeing bringing immediate action and change. What did he mean by this? Is this something we actually do? On a K forum, raising these kinds of questions and exploring in this way seems to be a way of deepening our understanding of the teachings. Clarity would be an important element in this exploration.
Yes, and like inquiring, it’s an intentional, deliberate attempt to find out what one has overlooked or misunderstood about its conditioning. It is not choiceless awareness in which nothing is hidden or distorted or reacted to, but the conditioned brain exploring, examining, inquiring, questioning itself to uncover and reveal its stubborn determination to sustain its condition. One could say that practical thought is applying itself to examine, explore, and inquire into the nature and structure of psychological thought.
Apparently there is no inward or outward security. That is something that we in this site don’t want to realize…
Well, coming to this forum is obviously intentional and deliberate. However, I think the question is the quality of the inquiry that goes on here that is important. If we come laden down with past knowledge and heavily influenced by our conditioning, the quality of the inquiry will probably be poor. If we come here with an open mind and heart, ready to listen and be attentive, surely there is the possibility of actually finding out something new, isn’t there? Is it possible to put our past knowledge aside about the conditioned brain, choiceless awareness and all the rest of it and actually have a dialogue that uncovers something new?
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It isn’t a matter of this or that. We are “laden down with past knowledge and heavily influenced by our conditioning”, and there’s no way around it. But with awareness of this content, this influence, this weight, “the quality of the inquiry” is good because there’s no denial or escape from what actually is.
Is it possible to put our past knowledge aside about the conditioned brain, choiceless awareness and all the rest of it and actually have a dialogue that uncovers something new?
Yes. The brain’s awareness of the content that sustains its conditioning is what puts it aside so as to allow for “the possibility of actually finding out something new”.
Plz… does awareness has anything to do with the brain’s activity?
Or should we give it another name, like consciousness?
I do not want to split hairs about words, but in this context i find it necessary to ask about.
How about these working definitions? :
Consciousness : the space in which experience is taking place - ie. the things I see and know (chairs, computers, people, cars) and the thoughts and feelings I’m having.
Awareness : the state of noticing the quality of the experience that is taking place. ie. realising that I am caught up in some experience.
We don’t really know. Awareness may be beyond, outside of the brain, and the brain is informed by it. What the brain does with it is our concern because for the conditioned brain, awareness is distorted or denied.
If I may add : consciousness is what we know, awareness is what we don’t know, but pretend to know (which is stil consciousness.)
Do we agree?
Its tricky. What makes you say that?
Is it to do with the seeing of the knower? Thus absence of resistance and discrimination?
Knowing is one thing, but knowing what I know is another.
The brain can know something by finding out through experience or insight, but until it can articulate (find the words for) what it now knows, this new knowledge is inchoate until it has the words or signs that denote/describe it.
In other words, I can know something, but until/unless I can articulate what I know, only my behavior can communicate what I know.
There is also unawareness, no? So, one may ask what unawareness is? Or what it leads to …?
What become with our lives if we live in a state of unawareness ? Isn’t society the result?
No. There is always awareness, but the human brain chooses what to make of it instead of being choicelessly aware.
So, one may ask what unawareness is?
The conditioned brain doesn’t know. All it knows is that it chooses to distort, deny, or dismiss awareness when its beliefs, desires, biases, etc., conflict with it.
What become with our lives if we live in a state of unawareness?
As I said, there is no “unawareness” - there is only what the conditioned brain does to awareness.
I suppose by unawareness we mean our habitual response to experience, our mechanical reaction to our projected reality - and which obviously has certain results in the world around us. This seems to be what K is asking us to face.
It is unawareness in the sense that we are unaware that we are riding a roller coaster of our own mental projections.
We’re as aware as we choose to be, so when we’re “riding a roller coaster of our own mental projections”, our awareness of what we’re doing emphasizes the effect and ignores the cause.
Thought is unaware but believes it is aware. It does not know awareness which is direct or pure.
Thought does not accept it is unaware.
Thought believing it is aware is the biggest illusion.
It believes it’s illusions are real, fact.
There are people who believe thought is aware. To be honest, I have given up discussing with them on this basic point.
Me too, but I haven’t given up reminding them.
@Inquiry you stated that unawareness doesn’t exist. You must have found this out for yourself, no? And you mihht be right and I might be totally wrong. Does this matter?
But here we are asking about it which means that we want to go into it.
Are you willing to do this?
Yes - this sounds quite normal - normal behaviour for us humans (for the known/self)
For example : I get angry (eg. because my ego is hurt) and as I have been studying and accumulating knowledge about love/compassion/intelligence & the self for many years, the recognition of my anger is exacerbated by the recognition of my failure to become the enlightened being I feel I should have become by now.
Rather than call this awareness (in the sense of an awareness of the movement of self based in an understanding of what the self is) maybe we can call it recognition (in the sense of knowledge and judgement) - for clarity’s sake.