The term ‘vital’ implies we have a choice: Keep what’s vital, drop what’s not. There is no choice involved, we are the process, and the process unfolds over time. Hence: everything. We do have a choice about how much we want to ‘feed’ past phases of our unfolding. Some might identify deeply with their past, both individual and collective. Others very little. Perhaps we should talk about that, the consequences of feeding or not feeding our past.
Alright, is there one piece you can’t let go of, something that returns again and again from the past?
There’s a whole slew of things from my past that return again and again. Aspects of me that feel essential: experiences, ideas, views, tendencies, patterns. Sometimes they enrich my life, sometimes they are burdens.
If you want something specific: A pleasurable-painful longing for the period of time (long ago!) in which I happened to wander into an amazingly creative community of friends and peers.
Are not jealousy and therefore hate the cause of this war and mass murderer that is going on?
Jealousy definitely seems to be a big driver for Putin. In his eyes (afaik) Russia doesn’t get anywhere near the respect it deserves. The perverse irony is that his actions in Ukraine are going to get his Russia not only marginalized but cancelled in most of the western world (eastern too?).
Which is exactly where you are now. This is a community of friends and peers. Are we not creative enough? Or are you comparing this with that and in the comparison both become burdens?
That sounds about right. It’s easy to look to a peak experience as a, well … peak. All subsequent experiences get measured against it and are found wanting. The peak gets a kind of mythopoetic status, and the subsequent experiences are diminished, disparaged even because they remind you of the peak joy that once was and will never be again.
“Yet the past can never be put aside. There is a watching of the past as it goes by, but not occupation with the past. So the mind is free to observe and not to choose. Where there is choice in this movement of the river of memory, there is occupation; and the moment the mind is occupied, it is caught in the past; and when the mind is occupied with the past, it is incapable of seeing something real, true, new, original, uncontaminated.”
K. The Book of Life
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Freedom from the past in this sense resonates for me. Freedom in the sense of ‘ending’ the past seems far fetched, like a spiritual ideal.
Yes I think the ‘ending’ being pointed to in the quote is the ending of the mind being “occupied” by the past,i.e. ‘choosing’, rather than a choice less watching of the movement of thought / memory, i.e. ‘non-occupation’, or freedom.
Nobody,
You say that such freedom resonates for you, so one can really ask whether you are serious about this? What does resonance mean for you? Does such resonating just imply some sort of entertaining idea? Does this resonance just jiggle a few ideas around in that head of yours, or does it reach deep down within you? Please understand that one is entirely skeptical that this phrase has actually meant very much to you.
Freedom from the past includes not seeing K’s stuff (or anyone else speaking spirituality) through idealistic-coloured glasses. You see, were one to be free of the past, that implies being free of the idealism which makes you interpret the world in that way - as you said, “like a spiritual ideal”. So, when there is this clarity stripped/emptied of idealism, one sees the facts instead of projecting one’s conditioning - whether it be idealism or intellectual or material.
Again, makes sense to me, as long as it doesn’t become a rule to live by, in which case it serves to limit freedom. There might be times when choosing, not watching is the right way.
To whom does it sound right? Who is listening to all of this? Surely, none of this starts to make any sense at all until it sounds completely wrong.
Not in the realm we are talking about as I understand him. In the ‘practical’ you choose the color of this or that or what material you need to make this or that…but in the psychological, he is saying as I read it, that ‘choosing’ any thought, good, bad or whatever, is, occupying the mind with the past.
What theory? DId Krishnamurti and Bohm have a theory?
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Me!
How would you describe this realm? I’m not sure I understand.
Krishnamurti and Bohm presented ideas, individually and together. By ‘theory’ I mean these ideas. I’m interested in seeing how the theory/ideas are lived rather than just thought about.
You can’t live a theory/idea - you can only put it to the test. Why do you think K and Bohm were theorizing?
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Their dialogues are filled with ideas based on their experiences, conditioning, and observations.
You can allow your life to be guided by an idea or view or theory.