Look at what’s going on in the world, the inhumanity, violence, exploitation, degradation, all of that. There is no way anyone can earnestly have a position of superiority, or indifference. To do so is a gross ignorance. This practice of disparaging and belittling what other people say is pointless. Either you see the total responsibility or you don’t. Making an argument, no matter how well it sounds, is limited to the intellect.
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Total responsibility is losing one’s ability to believe anything; to live with what actually is, irrespective of what anyone says or insists is the truth. As long as I can believe something, I am irresponsible, reckless, colluding and collaborating with other irresponsible, reckless, people. As long as I can believe, I am the world, the world of believers.
On this site, we all believe K’s teaching is the truth, even though we can’t fathom it. Belief, conviction, certainty, is all we know, so we must have something to believe, and K’s teaching is it. Like all believers, we believe our belief is more responsible than all other beliefs. We are the world.
I don’t really know what to say. This approach of yours is academically clever. It is like saying I am what I am, and that’s all there is to it. It is like I have my ethnicity, nationality, religion, and education, and I am not going to consider them as relevant to my way of thinking.
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I am sitting here together with other people, whose response, by implication, is to say, “ Why don’t you ask yourself?”. The actual context is not considered. The first impression is about authority and individual relevance. So together, can we look at the meeting together and what is being talked about, and share the context? Or is it always going to be the individual perception and a competition?
What is the context? Is it reading, listening, and considering what is said by someone, or is it in regard to the human condition and the state of the world we all live in? Can I see the context is not limited to my self perception, but generally, I think in a way that does not allow this understanding?
Is it possible to not put the meeting down to individual perceptions? Is it possible to not limit the considerations to an individual ability? The meeting is not about nationality, sovereignty, social standing, technical skill, although this what may underlie the thinking. It may be a deeper psychological condition for us all.
Don’t we actually start with the question, “ Why don’t you ask yourself?”. That is, what does this all mean to me? What is taking place in my life, and my thinking, my emotions? What ever question is asked, what ever issue is raised, can I see it is something to reflect on within my self and see there is this separate way of thinking, and I am putting it into this individualised perspective? By making it something only of a personal state of mind, there is a violence, which we don’t see.
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If I know what I can or cannot do, I know my limits. But do I know I created those limits, or do I believe they were always there? There’s no me, no I, without definitive limits, and one of those limits is that, as a product of thought, I have no existence without thought, and that within those limits there’s constant conflict, so how is the mind to free itself without losing everything it knows?
The voice of authority reminds us of its power over us. We hate it but it’s all we know, and we can’t help but make authorities of ourselves by making our voices heard.
As it is often said, this is a truism, and I wonder why anyone would stick to this as some meaningful point. As for the question,
it is not really a question is it. Its more of a statement of limitations. The wording tells of a problem, and this reflects the problem solving approach. When I immerse myself in the actuality of my whole being, as in meditation for example, sitting, watching, listening, thinking, feeling, all of it without distraction, it is the whole distraction, the whole conflict, and there is no division, me, mind, inside, outside, then there is a different quality, a different nature, not about knowing.
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An author, as in a writer or thinker, is the authority. Where does this writing or thinking come from, but from knowledge. So there is also the authority of knowledge, of the past. Now we say we are looking at that, the idea of an author, of knowledge and the past, and it is finished, nothing to do with what we explore together.
But this could be delusion, wishful thinking, the new self one has hoped for, sought, and made real by believing.
I ask myself, am I delusional? What does this mean? How does it work? I look into it, right through, to see the mental disorder I am maintaining. Then I am asking what is order, what is disorder. Surely it is obvious? The automatic involvement with thought, and the way thought is searching for a solution, and creates answers, psychologically, is the disorder. So I didn’t, I don’t, see the actuality of this thing called thought. Yet I am intellectually familiar with what might be called an “internal dialogue,” “the voice inside your head,” an “inner voice”, " day dreams" and “stream of consciousness”. All this is thought and can be carefully observed by oneself. The watching is the discovery.
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Waoh! Something has changed. @Peter is expressing the situation quite clearly - I wonder if this rather tense and conflictual relationship has prompted this shift? 
The inability to look - just look merely to observe, for the sake of inquiry - is a sorrow.
I may be muddying the waters again here, sorry, but I would say that when there is just looking, there is nothing (no thought/reaction) to be seen. When we find that we are reacting to what we see, this is usually due to some motive.
There is the understanding of thought as the labelling of things, the image making process, and there is actual thought as memory coming to mind as in an inner voice. Depending on its content, it is worry, romantic, juvenile, petty, silly, devilish, etc, and can lead to some externalisation. Hear this, and see it for the inner voice that it is. That’s the end of it. When we say we are looking and there is no thought, that is usually some temporary experience, and the inner voice will recur. See it and that’s the end of it.
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If your “mental disorder” is obvious, only order can say. But if mental disorder continues and order can do nothing but acknowledge it, it can’t be order…it can only be a modified version of disorder, disorder updated.
an “internal dialogue,” “the voice inside your head,” an “inner voice”, " day dreams" and “stream of consciousness”. All this is thought and can be carefully observed by oneself. The watching is the discovery.
“Oneself” being thought pretending to be objective, free, empty. Its “watching” is using a mirror to make oneself presentable.
Wow!! You lost me here. Can you explain that a little bit more ? And what is order ?
Lost again. Can you elaborate ?
It is just verbal, analytical, offensiveness. We have to ask ourselves, am I defensive?
Ask Peter…
Say a meeting between people starts from the separate selves, or ego’s. There is no common fundamental common understanding and we strive to build this with words, with language. Then we are stuck with the mechanism of thought, and this is a conflict, which we take to be each other.
Of course there are answers, verbal answers, knowledgeable answers, like we are at school, but we are saying that is the past, and I am open to exploring together, without any teacher, without any ego’s. Not exploring the knowledge, not elaborating with the known, but exploring the nature of this self common to us all, as it presents itself, with all of its tricks. So we see the tricks, and realise these are all basically an avoidance. Doesn’t this bring about some sense of shared understanding, or at least see the division as a fact; full stop? Nothing to rely on anyone else for information or instruction.
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Feeling sorry for someone is the sorrow we wear on the outside to conceal the good fortune we feel on the inside.
Looking for some new knowledge, a new experience, and to arrive at some response, is to continue with the conditioned craziness.
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