What is a belief? Surely any belief is the denial of the truth. A belief in God is a denial of the truth that our lives have very little meaning and order; therefore we feel impelled to invent all sorts of crazy beliefs and creeds. Rather than face this truth, we attempt to impose a meaning on the world from our own limited resources. This is a disorderly reaction. So how do we face this truth that essentially we are disorderly human beings? Here is now our question. There isn’t a single answer to this question that doesn’t have within it the whiff of belief, misconception and bias. Therefore, is it possible to put all of our energy into the question only, so that the answer comes directly from this energy and not from anywhere else?
This is not then about denying or avoiding questions. We must put questions to each other, as we are doing now.
Yes, that’s generally what happens. With effort we can be more of a fly on the wall and observe without intruding upon the thought process. But normally, yes, thought has a mind of its own and tends to carry us away.
It takes no effort to observe, to look, to listen. That’s the whole point. The effort comes in only when thought tries to translate what it is seeing and hearing into something else, either to fit a preconceived pattern or to bring about an elevated transcendental experience. Then comes the effort to sustain this experience.
It might seem that it takes no effort, but effort is being made (energy is being expended) to parse shapes into known visual objects, sounds into known linguistic objects, etc. It’s not effortless, we’re conditioned so deeply that it feels effortless, a nontrivial difference.
Get rid of the ‘only’ and I agree. Thought, in many forms, hijacks what arises in the mind and starts fiddling with it: annotating it, modifying it, interpreting it, comparing it, sustaining it. In this fiddling a great deal of effort is expended, although, once again, our conditioning is so deep that to most of us it feels effortless, natural, unseen most of the time. It feels effortful not to do it!
Then it’s a worthless agreement. Effort is the conscious exertion of power; and that’s what is happening when thought interferes: it is the conscious exertion of power. It is thought saying, ‘I am the arbiter, the judge, of everything I see; so the world will make sense according to what I believe and know.’
Paul, you have said that people with limited mindsets are imposing their own meaning on the present-day world around us. You replied to your own question “How to face the truth with the disorderly mindset we have?”, that there is no single answer without belief, bias, and misconception.
I personally think, your answer will hold for some set of people around us but there are other cases too. Researchers will keep experimenting to validate the statements imposed by other fellow researchers for making further possible improvements in their line of research. In this case, there is no scope for bias, belief, and misconception.
You asked me a doubt whether is it possible to put all energy into the question only, so that answer comes directly from this energy. In my view, formulating a question takes some energy but getting an answer from the question itself, I do not know. In most cases, if I feel uncertain about the information that I had, then I get different sorts of questions that will arise inside me. In my life there are some questions, I haven’t got a meaningful answers which holds the reality.
Hi Inquiry,
I am not able to get a conclusion after reading your comment, as I am average person to understand your idea and perspective behind the statement. Please make your statement as simple as possible, such that every one can understand.
I don’t see thought as being necessarily conscious of what it thinks and does. In fact, more often than not it’s pretty clueless, blindly following its conditioned program, trying its darnedest to strengthen and protect the self with whatever means it has at hand.
What is the point of validating any statement? Psychologically, this approach creates more problems for us simply because we are borrowing a model that works well enough elsewhere and applying it to the inner workings of the mind. But the borrowing of any model is itself an example of the mind taking a false step, of the mind working blindly. So how do you approach this question? How do you look at your own disorder?
So can thought switch itself off? Because this is the only way you are going to answer your original question. While thought is active, you are always going to arrive at a conditioned answer.
Sir, it seems that you have experience in different approaches to see things, which I am not aware of. In the present case, for the question “How to face the truth with the disorderly mindset we have?”. I felt there are multiple points of view to answer and that is the reason I shared my point of view, just to improve the answer.
Is our question clear? That’s all that matters. Then we won’t need any points of view. How do we look at our own disorder? How do we face this fact? Are we separate from it? If we are, then we can look and have a point of view. But if we are not separate from the very thing at which we are looking, all our points of view are blown away, are they not?
I don’t know if thought can shut completely off. It can definitely move from a foreground shout to a background whisper, a dimmer, not an on/off switch.
But is it thought that turns the dimmer switch on itself, or something else?
Which are all projections of thought as vague possibilities. Why can’t thought itself, being highly intelligent and responsible, shut down its whole operation?
To end its movement except when necessary and useful, means the end of the ‘thinker’, the ‘experiencer’, the ‘observer’, etc. It can’t imagine not being all those. That situation of the ending of ‘me’, is frightening, unknown. It is death, not physical which thought also fears, but psychological death. To not be ‘me’, to be ‘nothing’, could be madness, dementia. …
This question of whether ‘thought’ can be aware of itself has been posed. Be aware of the misery it has caused with the ‘thinker’ duality. Be aware of the fact that it is itself fear. That it is itself time. Aware that psychologically, it is in the wrong place. It has created and maintained the illusion of the separation between the observer and the observed. Why has it settled for the pain, suffering and violence? Obviously because I fear the imagined alternative: to be nothing.
Thought … highly intelligent and responsible? I doubt it. Its intelligence seems a bit lopsided, and it only seems to be ultimately ‘responsible’ to itself.
Why would thought shut itself down? Its raison d’etre is to persist. The self, just as the body, fights tooth and nail to survive.
