Hope is real. I haven’t made anything up. It’s important to understand hope, when it is necessary and when it has no place.
When one aspires to something that cannot be attained or achieved, hope is misplaced. “Becoming” is K’s word for such vain hope.
I would say that “everything in the psychological is poison”, but saying it is not living it. Psychological reaction and response is so deeply conditioned, and we are so profoundly identified with our self-image that we’re not acutely attuned to the difference between psychological and practical thought. This poison is present in all of us in varying degrees.
I can tell the difference. There is the (practical) body and there is the (psychological) self inhabiting the body. Anything I am up to - that is not related to the welfare of the body - is poisonous.
Right or wrong?
As I said, when emotion is clouding awareness there’s no clarity, and psychological thought is always emotional. Detecting its influence requires equanimity.
Ok, let’s stay cool in dialogue and discuss with objective detachment. Keep the discussants out of the discussion.
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Isn’t self made up of psychological thought Thomas? Doesn’t self then feed upon psychological thought constantly?
Self needs to be fed in the same way that the body needs food. The body is real while the self is an idea, a ghostly presence that subjugates the body and denies it of sustenance.
Is it possible to live an objective (as in ‘not subjective’) life, wherein technical thought functions in a totally practical manner only when required?
Is it possible to be completely aware of the movement of thought?
A clarifying reply Paul - thank you.
So does one then understand the movement of thought? Which is being aware of pure thought acting technically and practically in its place, but also observing deeply every moment that psychological thought takes over to build up and feed the self?
Isn’t that what is important here?
Hope is real for the self.
Technical thought does not require hope. Only the desire for a result requires hope, and that desire is - quite simply - self.
But you are correct Inquiry: It is important to understand hope.
Where there is hope there is disappointment - again an emotion of the self. (emotion being etymologically: agitation of the mind).
Or there is satisfaction if all goes really well. Another emotion of the self.
So are we understanding hope?
In practice, are you able to separate one from the other, the practical from the psychological? It seems to me that so long as self is there, all tasks will be infused with it, whether practical or not. Your comment suggests to me that needs can be neatly separated into practical and psychological. I question that.
This seems to suggest the same possibility of separation as Sree’s question. It may be a mechanical metaphor. Maybe look closely at that.
I do not know of thought without self. I do not know of ‘pure thought’ or ‘pristine thought.’ I only know the thought that exists. If I speculate about ‘pure thought’ that speculation would still be thought. And in the terms of the mechanical metaphor, that speculation would be impure. Therefore I do not go there.
As Jack Pine wrote earlier on this thread, K dismissed hope completely, pointing out that hope is a movement away from ‘what is’.
There’s no self separate from psychological thought. It’s one thought feeding upon other thoughts and emotional reactions, isn’t it? Self and psychological thought are one and the same.
Paul - can one understand the movement of thought without going there?
Yes Thomas-Paine - that is what occurs.
Is one’s understanding of that technical thinking? Or it may be insight - or perception.
What is it that understands the movement of thought? Not the self - too much to lose!
No…not technical thinking. Understanding comes from perception…awareness…observation…insight. Of course the self cannot understand. The self already knows and therefore can’t see/observe.
Does the question come from ‘there?’ Or does the question come from ‘here?’
You will have to answer that one Paul.
If one really does not know, can there be pre-conceived rules about where one goes or does not go, or what one looks at?