Perhaps the confusion is that of a thinker being seen/felt as separate from the thought process. Maybe if that is seen differently then the conundrum (?) disappears? Then the fact is :thought with awareness and thought without awareness?
Yes - I realise that logically, if there is no thinker entity separate from its thought - the idea of something observing the thought that it produces is problematic.
Also there is an intellectual paradox with the the idea of there being awareness and habit at the same time - especially if we take as true that unconscious habit cannot exist under the light of awareness. (if thought is habit and awareness is awareness)
But, my suspicion is mainly due to experience - ie. what seems to happen when experimenting with this stuff.
Well as I said Iâm only doing it because K suggested it and though I might have given it some passing interest in the past, this time it actually âstuckâ. The different sensation of thinking with and thinking without being aware of the movement is thrown into contrast it seems and any effort there was in the beginning is now gone. Itâs very strange to realize that thought is going on but there is no âmeâ doing it!..It was Kâs intimation that you CAN watch your thoughts in the same way that you watch a bird in flight.
The same inquiry can take place with regards to birdwatching
I think the question, Douglas, is what do you do about it? Not the Buddha or humanity or someone else. Learning without accumulating is simply to find out what you think, and what happens when you think what you think, from moment to moment.
The expectation that something should happen is simply another form of thought, is it not? So if this is what you think, then you can learn about that, you can find out why you are thinking that thought, what is motivating you to think that way, what its background is.
Intellectual understanding is insufficient because it always goes round and round in futile circles without ever being aware of the slightest thing. But one can be aware of oneâs mind churning out thought after thought, and watch it - as Dan says - like birds taking flight.
Thoughts are happening whether one wants them to be there or not. So one can take a time out to just watch them generating themselves, just happening as they happen - like birds crisscrossing the sky.
Yes.
Yes!
There seems to have been a misrepresentation of the questions here - and I am at a bit of a loss - but yes, Dan and I have been discussing our personal experience of awareness, and despite having apparent differences, I do think we have managed to share and communicate somewhat.
It certainly is - so is the idea that there is no transformation.
I think that the transformation is the transformation of our relation to thought - which is, in effect, a transformation of our relation to experience and being itself. Whether this relation to thought happens via intent or insight, moment to moment, or with far reaching effects, is a huge topic of discussion.
I do believe that meditation is essential, and that intellectual understanding by itself is insufficient.
I do wonder whether we can, and even whether we should discuss the minutiae of our experiments in awareness, it being ultimately something we go through alone (and hopefully free from authority)
When thought realizes not intellectually but in the âlight of awarenessâ that it is in fact talking to itself, the decision to continue is its alone. Nothing it seems can stop its dialogues with itself but it itself. This âtransformationâ if it were to take place, would mean that it would cease to operate âunnecessarilyâ as it does now. Which is to say that in the light of awareness the âpersonâ that it has imagined itself to be, the entity, the âmeâ, it long ago created will be seen to be what it is and what it has always been: an illusion.
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Did thoughtâs creation, for whatever reason, of a âmeâ entity apart from itself, completely throw off the balance between it and the body? Instead of a harmonious relationship, I as thought, became the âoverseerâ of the body, the caretaker, the ownerâŚthe body was something of an albatross, something that would suffer pain, give some pleasure but something that I would have to be a nursemaid to until its death.
All we can honestly agree on is that we donât know what transformation is or even if itâs real. What matters is whether weâre interested in Kâs teaching because we believe it leads to what we canât imagine or desire or do anything to bring about, or weâre interested in getting Kâs teaching the way he intended for us to get.
As far as I can tell the story goes thusly : the ârealityâ that we are experiencing is a projection created by our conditioned (biologically & culturally) brain.
You may have heard that some Australian beetles prefer to mate with beer bottles, because in the reality that they are projecting to themselves, beer bottles are far sexier than female beetles. In order to save these beetles from extinction, the sexy beer bottles have now been banned.
Humans have the same problem, the reality that we are projecting for ourselves is not always useful, sometimes even detrimental for our survival.
Our super power though, is the ability to be aware, of this fact, and be free (until the next beer bottle, or ferrari, or other emotional need).
The above is of course an intellectual narrative of the situation - in order for there to be a transformation of our relationship to experience (thoughts, feelings, ferraris, my neighbours, their dogs, angry folk, smiling children etc) : either some revealing magical insight must occur (which we obviously have no power to provoke), or we must simply pay attention from time to time - pay attention to the reality that we are creating in this moment. (Om mani padme humm boomshakalak! brothers and sisters)
PS - Attention transforms reality, which becomes the new reality, which may be further transformed by attention, until⌠what ?
Yes! - awareness may be our (unheralded, overlooked, deceptively ordinary) superpower. 
And I thank you @James for insisting upon that point - it is important. See how I have seemlessly blended in a philosophy of Idealism to make the story more compelling (for us folks who like a bit of philosophical explanation)
But as you see with my leading question in the PS. Iâm still trying to describe some implications of awareness - where it âshouldâ lead.
I think you may be referring to Donald Hoffman here? He has some interesting things to say, but he is too much of an extremist for me in his disparagement of the senses (for Hoffman our senses have been conditioned to create merely self-serving illusions).
There are all different kinds of idealisms out there, but if I had a preference (out of the many contemporary varieties) it would probably be for Bernardo Kastrupâs approach, if youâre familiar with that.
One shouldnât take any of these philosophers literally though (if one is interested in philosophy): they merely provide us with interesting metaphors that can be useful as an aid to reflection (imo), thatâs all.
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Iâm surprised that one is able to find Bernardo less extremist than Donald. However the only book of Bernardoâs Iâm familiar with, is the one I am currently reading : a really hard going slog of his published papers on Idealism vs Physicalism.
The books by Joseph Henrich (WEIRD or the secret of our succes) are also excellent - regarding the cultural basis for human intelligence/knowledge.
All philosophical/metaphysical perspectives have at least one impossible assumption that one has to swallow, so it is a matter of aesthetic preference which impossibility one is willing to entertain.
For myself, Hoffmanâs list of assumptions is too chaotic: conscious monads all the way down; and completely untrustworthy sense-perceptions that have somehow been born out of, and contributed to, a holistic evolutionary development⌠(to name two).
While Kastrupâs list is very simple: the one universal mind has dissociated itself, and this dissociation is responsible for all the seemingly separate identities that exist in the world - from quarks to algae to human brains.
I guess I appreciate the simplicity of Kastrupâs impossible assumption.
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Arenât âideasâ an expression of psychological thought coming from knowledge? Do they have any place in a dialogue? Yes, Quietism is a method. So is Kism. Much of what I read on Kinfonet is Kism. (an aside - I once read that an acronym that âismâ could stand for is âI Subordinate Myselfâ. It sounds appropriate.).
Once again you turn âstaying withâ into an idea, which then creates the observer and the observed and you quite correctly identify the problem that you just created.
As DanMcD said, staying with has some uncomfortable results (and using the word ânegativeâ to describe âuncomfortableâ may not help). If one only wants to be comfortable then transformation is not for you. Endless psychological thought to solve the problems of psychological thought is the way to go. You may get some modifications that give you more pleasure and less pain, but transformation - not a chance. âThinkingâ is not âDoingâ.
Good to keep in mind?..but will psychological thought pay it any mind?
The end of suffering is not the greatest comfort?
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Seeing as the concept of psychological thought has come up again (usually opposed to practical thought) - would it be correct to define it as : the effort to become a better me?
So we all seem to be agreeing with the claim that IU is insufficient - though, if Iâm not mistaken we seem to have failed to explain why this is so. (apart from perhaps personal experience and the authority of K) - maybe we can give some idea of what this transformation is (what its like, what its about)? Maybe this might help?
Like what? What exactly is âstaying withâ what is, and what are the uncomfortable results?
If I had to come up with an example of the discomfort of meditation, I would say : boredom - but Iâm not trying to âstay withâ anything during meditation, so that canât be right.
Are you deliberately obtuse?