What are you looking at?

I don’t suppose people usually take the time to look at themselves seriously. Most of the time we are busy or relaxing, and aren’t interested in any kind of self-reflection. Even if we participate in some kind of activity, yoga, tai chi, meditation, etc., we still think of it as a developing exercise. Just looking at the nature of one self isn’t much understood. We might think of therapy, psychoanalysis, or psychology, but think of it as a way of interpreting the mind in general, and that means we are using a theoretical abstract of the mind, and not actually looking at ourselves.

What we think is a problem, a complication, a confusion, and where we might be experiencing relationship difficulties, or not being able to get life to work well, may in fact be our own un-examined nature. Working with other people we know, we are trying to get a response in a way we think is right, or necessary, and this is failing. Not understanding our own nature, we don’t see a deeper psychological reliance we have on others to solve what is a universal, common, human condition.

It is like not appreciating for ourselves the implications of what is heard, or read, but as a habit, sticking to the limited verbal communication, and so, not sharing the communication. Not sharing a communication, this is put down to the failings of the speaker or writer, and as seen as their mistake, it is thought to be given correction.

Looking at the nature of oneself, you can’t be accepting nor correcting. The looking is the reveal.

Yes the “accepting or correcting” is the way the ‘self’ functions. It is not a ‘you’ looking, but ‘light’ being allowed (?) into the darkness that is the self.

Right. It is said: Be a light unto oneself. But do we actually think of this as an insight, or do we think of it as a mantra for further self expression? Can we reflect on the self and see this insight? Not a conceptual insight, but actually be looking, as the observer, and see it is all one observing? Not my observing; nothing but the observing.

Awareness is not an action of the will choosing what it will be aware of, and analysing it to bring about a certain result.”
The Urgency of Change

Thats called conflict. Awareness does not shut stuff out, which means it includes me and why I want to be “aware”.

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Thought is a complication. Looking at oneself will start out looking at the thoughts. Not the looking for explanations and meaning, and what these do or don’t provide, and not the awareness of thought as something separate. Seriously looking at oneself is seeing the action of awareness and thought are a false division.

Thought is what the conditioned brain produces - like Bile is what the liver produces.
Thought includes the idea of self and non-self. The problem begins with the grasping/holding onto our thoughts/interpretations as truth or heresy.

When I say thought, I don’t mean the details of any content, I mean the whole movement, or whole incidence of thought. There is a movement of thought, which now with this awareness of conditioning, I might be annoyed to think is an interference. That is completely an annoyance, and I can be aware of this change in temper, not making it thought, not making it an issue, internally or externally.

When making these observations, is there the calm wise me, existing at the same time as the conditioned me? Or are we switching (at faster than light speeds) between 2 equally conditioned selves? The one judging the other.

Sensations, feelings, awareness, etc, are not a judgement. We may say I know this feeling, but that’s an entirely different matter of knowing and the knower, which is all about thought. I am asking about clearly looking at it all when the knowing is the knower, the knower is the knowing, not divided.

When there is no separation between things, this is the same as saying there are no separate things. No one that is looking, and no things to see. All that is left is the expression of the whole. Its an absence of identification.

However, when I look, all I can see is myself.

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I don’t understand? There is the word seeing, which is what I see, but this is a literal interpretation. This is where we are looking in a conditioned way. So this has been pointed out. The looking we are familiar with is identity and all that social and intellectual conditioning. We have gone over that. Now don’t we understand, doesn’t matter what we call it or what we say intellectually, this is a limited view? It is not actually looking. So we are not talking about I-look, or I-see, and not about the details of what is seen in any way at all. Can the looking be a completely natural view of the world with no boundaries, no fragmentation, and no reaction?

I would rather ask whether it is possible for the human mind to be aware without the boundaries of knowledge (aka fear, self, conditioning).
If so, this would imply that consciousness is not dependant on belief, separation nor interpretation.
I’m willing to accept this hypothesis - but maybe you are not asking for a logical analysis but rather a discussion about personal experience?

Seeing, aware, understanding, something like that, we are talking about conditioning. Either this conditioning is realised or it is not. I am not making more of this with analysis or experience. This is not educating someone. It is in the watching, looking, like a craftsperson. Let’s leave it there.