Not only the ‘me’ illusion but the ‘my’ illusion that accompanies it.
I don’t insist that we do exist because I have more reason to doubt it than to believe it. But I can’t honestly say that we don’t exist because, as with everyone else, the illusion of I, me, mine, prevails.
We are the world of self-deluded brains.
Yes. I, me, mine…
Right. It’s no ‘flash in the pan’ but I feel it will turn out to be one,
What I feels is just more I, so nothing new or transformative will turn out to be true.
If I is as false and non-existent as suspected to be, it is no less extant if I don’t doubt its existence, because believing and not believing is what I does.
If the “me” is gone then so is all forms of suffering, which is a long list-for all time. I don’t think youve done it Dan, I know I haven’t, but the reason I don’t think you have is in your articulation… stating it like a clever phrase which is supposed to “blow your mind”. That isn’t how it works… So I question his point of there being no “me”, which is a lot healthier than merely accepting it, like you are doing. Whether or not our identity disappears to us does not mean there is the negation of existence
That may be true, but we don’t really know…we just assume it is true because K (and others) said so.
Well, sure. But if it is true, IF we never end our suffering then we never find out if it is. (If the absence of me only comes through the absence of suffering.) I would say start with ending suffering, agree or no?
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The flame,
In seeing within a few people, goodness looks a tad like a gas burner, one would see if one was sitting down looking across at a stove. One has seen such flames flicker in “the other”. One has also seen these flames flicker and go out. Please remember, there is nothing permanent in the world. The awakening of intelligence is no guarantee either that it will continue to grow (to a fully awakened stage…) !! It may very well disappear. 
I think the important thing is not to reject it out of hand.
Yes we don’t know if ‘it’ is serving some purpose.
That’s all you can ‘know’.
It isn’t a matter of choosing, as if the problem (the self-centered condition of the brain) can be solved by the problem.
The question is whether the self-centered brain can awaken to what it is, thereby ceasing to be what it has been for millennia. Whether this can actually happen, we don’t know and cannot know until/if it does happen.
Ha, ha. Thanks. Did we have this same discussion once before? The “flame-orange of the montbretia” definitely rings a bell.
Is it, or is that your opinion? You have no say in what I “know”. You’re continuously proving that you aren’t actually concerned with mankind, you’re concerned with yourself. Just like most of us
Yes, and it seems to begin with self-knowledge because one can’t work at self-knowledge by assiduously practicing self-knowing. It seems that the brain’s awareness of what it is doing occurs spontaneously - not intentionally - because such awareness doesn’t support or sustain its current condition.
Ah, right! I’m not sure I’m really getting what you are saying about consciousness. It sounds quite a scientific approach to me. Is that fair?
For me, when K described moments of “the observer is the observed”, that communicated a lot. A while back James posted one such description of K relating an incident when he saw a woman from a local village walking along the road in India and he had a moment of “no separation”. Scientifically, there is no proof that this was not simply K imagining a moment of no division but his description conveys a moment of intense unity and feeling which rings true.
What do you make of that?
Of what good is it to be “concerned with mankind” if the self persists, the ‘me and mine’ that has made mankind the mess that it is? As long as the self rules ‘inside’ what significant change can there be ‘outside’?
The brackets? Their separation?
Everything you name here is different from every other thing, and (in consciousness), this difference is what distinguishes, separates, one from another.
It goes without saying that every thing - as unique and distinctive as it may be - is inseparable from every other thing, so what are you saying?
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