But, again, your greatest problem is not the thinker/thought split. That’s only where you are placing the problem.
But you are the one with the concept answer, and labelling everything an answer. That is your brain at work. There are no answers here, there is no end or ending here either.
So human being is isolation, and now can I look at that isolation without the possibility of an end to it, which is like life without the possibility of parole, and look at it without flinching. Can I dive deep into isolation with no possibility of there ever being an end to it, in the way I might happily dive into pleasure without the possibility of an end to that ever being?
What does it take for me to just drop it? Drop the endless concern with the whole thing. What role is this entire reality playing? I can take great pleasure in my suffering, endlessly chewing the cud round and round. I like it, it’s part of me, it’s who I am, it gives me something to be. What exactly am I going to be without it? Am I not exactly where I want to be? Would I really ever have it any other way?
No, I cannot look at isolation except as an idea. For I am the isolation. Therefore to look at it as though it is some part of me is impossible. It is the whole of me. I can look at you; I can look at the world with all its beauty and ugliness; because I am separate from you and from the world, I can look and listen to you both. In the looking and the listening there is never a trace of isolation until thought comes in, saying, ‘I must do something about that. I must keep this memory of beauty. I must change that ugly way of behaving.’ Then my isolation has manifested itself in our relationship.
So then can I be the feeling of that isolation, and be the experiencing of it in a way that is overwhelming?
I can look at a flower or an animal with enormous tenderness just in the act of looking. It is only when I don’t give a hoot about my own feelings and experiences that I can also look at another human being with this same quality of affection. Then there is no more talk of isolation because I don’t mind what I am.
Can I be the full unexpurgated experiencing of that thing labelled isolation?
If it is true that I don’t mind, then looking at this in this way will not present a problem will it?
I don’t know what my greatest problem is. The thinker-thought split is obviously creating a further problem when looking at my problem…the problem of trying to do something about my problem/s.
Are you separate from what you are talking about…the self? Do you have any choices here? Though I doubt anyone enjoys suffering. It can be so painful that some take their own life rather than endure it.
This is the tyranny of thought, isn’t it? The cunning of thought.
Another example of the tyranny of thought?
Yep…the authority of thought.
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No Dominic is all that, everything is there, just like reading a book. I feel there is no choice concerning what is.
Yes this is a deadly serious matter. Anxiety is on the rise in children as well as in adolescents and younger adults. There are young people experiencing panic attacks and being put on prescription drugs to suppress symptoms which in many cases can makes things worse, particularly when they try to come off of medication. So very deep fear in the human animal, triggered in a lot of cases by the failure of the societal escape mechanisms, such as careers and marriage, as futures are interfered with by forces such as war, economic collapse, poverty, or as now pandemic. This is the crisis in the human consciousness itself, in the psyche. When I have spoken of fear, and I have spoken of isolation, and I have mentioned escape, and avoidance, and what really lies out back of all of this, I am speaking of the energy as great as, if not more so, than that experienced in panic attack. I am talking at all times of very deep, very strong elements that can and do overwhelm. But I am saying that in my case there is no suppression of any of it, and no need for any. I am pointing out, that everything involved in the severest anxiety, and strongest panic, has its being in the fact of being separate from it, while ordinarily being involved in patterns of behaviour which are the escape from it all, which when they fail, can then tip the brain back out into it with no understanding of what is happening. I am further saying, that nothing of this is taking place outside of the fact of being at all in the first place, that the context for all of it is my being.
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Yes, it is the power of thought to make a bed for itself anywhere, and to make do with anything, even suffering.
Maybe if you like, we could go into this a bit more?
By all means, ask anything you want. It is late where I am so I’ll catch up with it later.
Why are you naming it? Without its name, what is it?
Then look at the nearest, the closest. It is all there. Any one relationship contains the whole story of human relationships.
You have named something ‘greatest problem’ for the purpose of verbal communication, and to look at what that is.
I have pointed out that there is no greatest problem that is not the fact of my being at all to begin with, and have also pointed out the issue of isolation.
You have said relationship is isolation, and I have asked whether that isolation can be looked at without the possibility of an end to it.
You have said you cannot look at it as you are not separate from it, but that you are isolation.
Then you have spoken about tenderness in looking at a flower or an animal, and stated that in looking at another human being in the same way there is no talk of isolation.
Now you are asking why name something isolation, and are asking what is it without the name. So given naming things is an issue for you here, are you able to say why you have named something problem, and what that is without the name?
The car has broken down. Or I have lost my keys. These are our daily problems. And in naming the elements of these problems we can set about solving them because the name has a direct reference to an actual thing, something we can both see, touch and utilise: car, engine, brakes, key, house, garden etc. etc. But to what does the name ‘isolation’ refer? How does one know that one is feeling isolated, depressed, suicidal, unless there is a reference to a previous experience? How do we recognise fear, anxiety or panic except through comparison to a former memory? So the naming prevents the very thing you are talking about, which is the unexpurgated experiencing of the thing itself. There may be no thing itself separate from the name, which is always tied to the past. For any problem with my car or my keys, access to the past is necessary, vital. But here is this overwhelming sensation and yet I refuse to be overwhelmed, therefore the naming, bringing in the past to protect myself from obliteration.