Why do we try to think our way out of division and conflict? Perhaps because we do not know any other way of dealing with these, and perhaps because we do not see what we are implicitly doing when we try to think our way out of these problems. For instance, do we see that we are using practical problem-solving methods to solve a psychological problem, by thinking or reasoning our way out of division and conflict? Division has its practical uses; by means of division we keep much of our practical matters in order. So, are we to use ways of solving practical problems to solve psychological problems? Perhaps if we stop the thinking and take a moment of attention to look at what we are doing, maybe out of this action something completely different may arise.
So not knowing any other way, then by default, there is no awareness that it is the method, ie. thinking, that looks at psychological symptoms as problems. Then thought thinks it is trying to solve a problem when, in fact, it is just a symptom which has been created by thought itself. Whether the particular symptom gets solved or not, thought will continue to create psychological symptoms. So negative can be temporarily changed to positive, pain to pleasure and so on. All that thought is doing is creating coping methods to go from the unwanted side of a dichotomy to the other and it is only temporary. What happens when there is the insight that that is all that thought will ever do?
Before that can be done, isnât there a shock when one has the insight above? After all, one has used the practical method for everything and now one is left in the unknown, isnât one?
Assuming nondual thinking (thinker-thought absent, thinking present) is possible (which seems likely both from experience and reasoning), then a âstateâ of nondual thinking is division-free. ?
If this is an actuality, please say more.
Feels like itâs actual. (Afterwards. While itâs happening there is no âit feels likeâ going on.) Itâs like a flow state, but instead of the typical flow activities (sports, solving puzzles, composing), the activity is âpureâ thinking. Itâs not an esoteric state at all, it may be similar to âbeing lost in thought.â During the state, there is no felt-sense of dividing the world into this and that. But it may be that thinking itself, even when the thinker and thought are one, is inherently divisive. ?
Thinking is only âdivisiveâ when it projects a Rick as thinker. There is no Rick except as that projection. So, no Rick, just thoughtâŚas Bohm put it in the book: âThought as a System.â Itâs radical but worth considering.
Nature is not created by thought. Nature is awareness.
We were born with awareness as we are part of nature.
Society is created by thought.
Religions are created by thought.
It is a wrong turn that we took in living. Awareness is living. Without awareness there is no life. It is what makes something living, alive. Man moved away from awareness, from living to using thought as a tool to meet life. Tradition, education, society, internet tells us to use thought as a tool to meet life when thought is a dead thing. Thought is not life. Tradition is not living.
Now there will be the usual argument of making a distinction between psychological and physical thought. All thought is psychological as thinker is psychological. Thought is unaware and dead. Thinker is a dead entity. It is only awareness that is alive. Awareness being alive, true, in order can use the brain. That you can call orderly use of brain. It might use words to communicate without conflict or division. Who is using the words in awareness? There is no thinker. Awareness uses words. The awareness is not thought, not thinker.
If brain sees limitation of thought, seeing it is a dead useless tool, it is not using thought. That is awareness which is order. In that order brain is used to communicate. Awareness communicates using words, not thinker, not thought.
When there is a thinker present, thereâs a thought present, i.e. subject/object division. That seems pretty watertight, right? But even if subject/object gives way to subject=object (nonduality), thinking sees individual things and works with them: compares them, measures them, modifies them, joins them. ?
Yes: make a shoe, build a table, go to the moon and back.
It can also puzzle about itsâ âsituationâ here.
Observation is able to see (be with) the whole. Right? (Not rhetorical.)
But thinking seems different, by its very nature it needs to see parts. ?
Thought starts with a subject and then proceeds with âassociationsâ related to the subject. It exhausts all its associations or else goes off track onto a different subject. Thought uses syntax to express itself.
Does any of that relate to what youâre saying?
Are we tawkinâ about thought in general or psychological thought?
Thought is thought. Response of memoryâŚâpsychological thoughtâ is just thinking, dressed up in a Rick Scott (or danmcderm) costume? 
Iâm looking out on nature: plants animals birds trees the river my body etc⌠how is all that âawarenessâ?
We know what the words âobservationâ and âwholenessâ mean, but what do we know of wholeness and observation when all we really know is sensation, thought, and fragmentation?
Why do we talk and think about what we know nothing of?
I am happy to look at thought as thought rather than divide into practical and psychological.
Itâs the masquerade ball of life!
Definitely. The parts: subjects, associations, words/phrases/sentences/paragraphs set off by syntax.
Is the brain able to think without dividing the world into parts?
Seems like thatâs the question that haunts you. Have you gotten closer to a satisfactory answer?
Thinking is for taking things apart and putting things together and inventing new ways to do it.
When it creates a Rick Scott say (or a danmcderm) and then forgets itâs just a projection and âtheyâ start to worry about what will become of âthemâ after the body diesâŚ.it all gets weird unless or until the brain wakes up to the âtrickâ and perceives that freedom from thought is , in Kâs word, âessentialâ.
Thought has created an illusory you or me âindividualâ where there is not in actuality such a thing. An illusory individual who suffers.
Does that sound reasonable?
Do you know why you think and talk about what you really know nothing?
Is it because when I acknowledge that I know nothing about what Iâm thinking or talking about, I realize Iâm presumptuous?
The teacher, the one who knows what theyâre talking about tells you about it, describes it, but canât bring you into contact with it. All the teacher can do is tell you itâs real and that until/unless you discover it for yourself, all you can do is imagine it, presume to know what it is, and thatâs worse than knowing you know nothing about it.
I figure itâs in my nature (homo sapiens, Rick Scott) to think and talk about that which I donât ultimately know. I, like pretty much all members of my species, am a storyteller.