Okay, Does it have power? Meaning are we (people generally) confused and conflicted due to this illusion of self?
Do you think this ‘dialogue with the world’ is also what K referred to as ‘meditation?’
. . . I don’t feel you really mean that 
There is a subtlety about that. I see that Dan have put it well when he said:
The me is the accumulation, by an act of identification and division to the content of my consiousness. But as Paul said it doesn’t reflect the truth. The me doesn’t exist. It is a false act of division and identification made by the thought process, if I may say. But at the same time the me cannot be different from it’s attributes, which is the content , which is what I am. whether it be desire, fear and all the rest.
Isn’t it the ‘perception’ of this ‘situation’ that brings about, in the moment, the stopping of thought? This ‘attention’ which ends the self? Without the perception of the ‘totality’ of the ‘me’, the effort, or search, or will to become goes on? The perception itself puts an end to it, not gradually over time but in the moment of the perception. As K has said it is thought, the movement of thought, that “terminates” the insight. Real relationship with another can only take place in this state of perception or ‘attention’. not through the ‘contents of consciousness’ or the ‘me’.
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I think that fact is so often overlooked. Consciousness, taken as a whole, is an activity, not a ‘thing’ in the sense of something static or fixed. It is a process which is constantly reinventing itself.
Note that I have accentuated the word ‘act.’
Therefore the ‘me’ is an activity, not an entity.
With regard the ‘accumulation,’ it is also an activity, not a done thing. It is not something apart from ‘self’ in the sense that self acts upon it. It is imbued with self. The accumulation has taken place and is shaped and reshaped on the basis of the changing activity of self-hood, the ebb and flow of what rises to significance in consciousness (including its ‘unconscious’ aspects, which are the greater part).
But consciousness is not an activity of the self: It is an essential activity of the whole material process of life. It not only includes thought and emotion but also enervation, instinct, motor behavior and so on. In that sense, a tree is also conscious or possesses consciousness at its own level, sending its roots out to feel their way towards water and light, for example.
As life evolved, so did its conscious element, right up to humankind. The human is in a strange predicament however. Through us, nature can look back on itself, to whatever extent. It is this power of nature reflecting upon itself that presents so many problems, not simply man and his relationships.
The appearance of separation starts with nature. We talk of the natural world as if we are apart from it, the guardian of it or its destroyer. But it is more that nature has set itself a problem which it has to solve: How to rise above itself. For man the problem may be put (in its aspectual form) how can man overcome himself? How can he stand upon his own shoulders and evolve? (Nietzsche)
"I teach you the ubermensch. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the ubermensch: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment.” (Friedrich Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
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Thank you for bringing this out. Because it is a ‘dynamic’ process and not something static and dead, it passes itself off as a living entity rather than an activity of accumulation and discarding…It can’t ‘help’ but strive through will and effort to ‘become’. But it can never become what it imagines because it’s imagination is always limited. There must always be a level of frustration and anxiety and suffering along with the joys. Is the “ubermensch” the ending of the ‘me’?
I don’t think Nietzsche meant it in that way. I think he envisaged some kind of ‘superme.’ In the K sense it would be the ending. In the Hegelian sense it would be the negation of the negation. Pick your philosophical tool and you get your philosophical answer - I am being deliberately cynical, but just for the purpose of humor.
The ‘it’ in question being the activity we are calling human consciousness, which is a particular kind of consciousness, particular in the sense that it has the limited ability to self-reflect, an ability not shared with the rest of the animal kingdom - except some apes to a far more limited degree…
Yes, and this is the limitation of Nietzsche’s view, which lauded the ‘will to become’ above all else. K read Nietzsche. I wonder what he thought of the chap.
Yes, the highs and lows. Remember though that the ‘it,’ being consciousness, is also its own imagination - which is not to say it is imaginary. Imagination is part of consciousness.
How profound was K’s realisation that consciousness is its content!
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No. In and of itself it is nothing but an image, a fantasy. But your desperate desire to be somebody gives it power over you. When you realize this, the insanity is over and you’re free to be nobody.
This is a nice and enlightening distinction ! 
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K was concerned with his appearance. Why?
I will note that he shined his shoes, creased his trousers, parted his hair and so on. He advised pupils at Brockwood School to cut their hair short, lest the neighbors would gain an unfavorable impression. Why?
On a practical note, applying polish to shoe leather helps preserve it but applying a hot iron to trousers has the opposite effect.
In short, in such matters of dress and physical appearance, he was concerned with what others thought. Why?
Just a point to consider and discuss
Interesting. I like to look good …why ? I like to look clean with nice hair and nice clothes. When I see a beautiful woman in a beautiful dress with beautiful hair … it make me feel beauty in the human being. Isn’t it natural to try to look good physicaly ? It could be for myself…or about what other think. In K’s case, maybe he has this preoccupation about what others think of his appearance…go figure . He maybe has a touch of pride about that 
As I see, it’s a simple fact of conditioning with roots in his theosophical upbringing.
That make sense Nat.
Are you saying that K allowed himself to remain conditioned in these small things?
But he was educating the students to it too. What is the significance of that? Or has it none?
You are attracted to superficial beauty, I feel. And this creates a generalised feeling in you. But I question if sexual attraction really inspires a deep feeling of beauty.
You’re totally right it is a superficial feeling of beauty. I think that beauty in essence is something different. One can have the nicest clothes, be clean with beautiful hair but that doesn’t make the human being.
But you say :… inspires a deep feeling of beauty. What is beauty Paul ? What is it that can bring out this deep feeling of beauty in us. What is it that make us say: it is beautiful ? Like nature, in his extraordinary and without limits beauty ?
Yes , I would say small things. It is like brushing our teeth and comb our hair.
it turns out to have implications. Long ago, in my work days as a computer scientist, it turned out that when I went to clients, my words and actions were taken less seriously when I appeared in my casual clothes and taken seriously when I went in a suit. So it seemed practical to me if I knew I had to go to customers that day to dress accordingly. Now in my retirement years it turns out to work the other way around, when I show up in a suit they look like I’m a relic.
Haha - very true Wim
The conditioning of others can have serious external impacts on our lives. ‘What others thought’ certainly had an impact on Jews in Nazi Germany.
It makes it all the more relevant to pay attention to what we think of others. You know Sartre said, “Hell is other people,” by which he implied it is never ‘us’ and always the ‘other’ who we demonise.
It may be seen as being just as brutal to characterise a symmetric and unblemished face as ‘beautiful’ as it is to call another face ‘ugly.’
Someone wrote a remembrance of K where they were in a cafeteria when two young women walked in. The writer reported that he said to K, “How beautiful are those women” and K responded, “They are not beautiful. They are merely well-fed.”