We can’t …except in this case where the brain is watching itself be what it is?
It’s Art in the sense that thought which is the past, memory, can’t grasp it, can’t make it into a technique. It can attempt to describe it which it does but the description is always only a memory? If art is ‘putting things in the right place’, in this case thought is being put in its right’ place.
When the brain becomes ‘sensitive’ to the fact that it has become ‘neurotic’ to one degree or another and that the psychological reality it finds itself in may be a result of its conditioning, it may want to see if something else is possible. So it searches. But the search is also neurotic because it brings in time, an illusory ‘future’ when it will be hopefully free of its conditioning…the very desire to be free is a reaction to its neuroses, its suffering, fear, anxiety etc. K is suggesting something very different here, isn’t he?
A different approach?
If I am a liar, how could I know what I am?
Is this about labeling and describing or just about seeing, watching what is?
Can the conditioned brain do something different from what it is conditioned to do? If it can, how different can it be? The conditioned brain is bound to believe or disbelieve, to choose this or that. It is dualistic and deals with the known, with concepts, simplifications, rather than with actualities, which are complex and always new.
So when the conditioned brain realizes that it is limited to choosing what is true (actual) having escaped from the truth of having no choice but to be inseparable from and entwined with what is actual, all it can honestly do is acknowledge what it does not know until the unfolding of events reveal what is significant.
If the conditioned brain can take a “different approach” to its conditioned limitation, it seems to me that all it can do is turn its attention to the severely limited approach it has chosen, and perhaps find out what it truly is.
Is the conditioned brain capable of doing anything more than “labeling and describing”? Is it capable of seeing unconditionally, watching what is without labeling and describing? If it is, it isn’t conditioned.
It seems to me that the only thing it can do that isn’t what it chooses to do is to be more interested in what it is actually doing in the moment than it what it hopes and tries to attain in the future.
Yes that’s the part we’re talking about, the part that’s not so neurotic that it can watch what it does, says, thinks, etc without “condemnation or justification”…just watch.
Is there any doubting that “I am what I am?” Not: “I know what I am” rather “I am what I am.”
It seems like the only way “I am what I am” could be wrong is if “I” don’t exist (as a ‘what’). ?
Hey if I don’t exist, who the hell is doing all this suffering?!
What’s the expression: That’s the $64,000 question!
“I am what I am” is wrong because it is not a what but a pronoun.
The organism is suffering from its confusion, its mistaken identity.
There is physical suffering of a toothache and so on and there is psychological suffering. Physical suffering leads to psychological suffering if thought takes it over. Thought has no place psychologically . Thought invades the psychy by using the fear/pleasure phenomenon.
It can watch itself condemning and justifying without condemning or justifying its condemning or justifying.
It can just watch itself……it can be in relation to what is happening because it’s not identified with what is happening.
For this expansive awareness, K is saying certain traits are “demanded”: “ wide patience, sensitivity, eagerness and sustained attention “.
Perhaps the pronoun “I” points to a what. Not a fixed what, but a process?
I wouldn’t say “it’s not identified with what is happening”. It’s like looking at my reflection in a mirror. It’s me looking at my conditioned response instead of me looking for validation, verification, vindication.
The mirror reflection is not distorted but my response to it is distorted by my conditioning, and that interests me more than how well my conditioning serves my desires and fears. Attention has shifted from improving my conditioning to revealing my conditioning. Conditioning has gone from being the solution to being the problem.
I’m not sure what exactly K is suggesting here Dan. He’s saying that a neurotic mind that has retained some balance can watch itself. That strikes me as very interesting. I suppose we all have to ask ourselves how far our neuroses have gone. Are we to some extent balanced?
What do we mean by balanced or neurotic in this context? In what way is the balanced person différent from the neurotic one ?
Balanced between intellectual, emotional, physical…not too lopsided?
Neurotic: mental stress, anxiety, fear, guilt, obsession……not too loaded down to be incapable of functioning?