In response to a YouTube comment:
Thinking itself is not the clouding, rather, the act of believing in and valuing the content that thinking imagines and tries to solidify is clouding love, peace, joy.
Imagination
Psychological Problems
When we are caught in psychological problems, such as self-concern, the time factor plays a crucial part in it. ‘Tomorrow’ is obviously imagined. Then, we imagine ourselves (as mind-body appearance) in this fictitious tomorrow. This personal movie about tomorrow (and also yesterday), in most cases, fascinates us. Admittedly, we are the only audience in this personal movie theatre. When we get tired of the drama in it, with us alternating as the hero and the loser, we may yearn to get back to ‘real’ life, devoid of this type of fictitious drama.
The way back is to realise that it is an internal movie only. When this is seen, then the attention will turn again – via the senses – to what’s happening right now and a natural, wordless appreciation for being alive (right now) will take over again. This seems to be easy to understand but most people cling to their dreamlike identification with the hero and occasional loser. The absence of imagined importance that comes with letting go of the hero/loser deters most people from having a less stressful and more fulfilling life experience.
No-one and someone
A question of morality
In response to a YouTube video by Rupert Spira:
What we have available to verify any statement is consciousness. If we, as consciousness, identify with the belief to be a separate self, then trouble is generated as outlined in the video. If we, as consciousness, do not identify with such a hoax belief, then consciousness is aware of its formless nature, even while engaging in the dreamworlds of form and time. That’s why I can’t verify the statement that ‘infinite consciousness knows (=is aware of) only itself’ – meaning without perceptions. It continues perceiving via the senses and it perceives the flow of thoughts without sacrificing universality. In this case, the hoax of being a separate entity is absent. The dreaming is exposed to be a dreaming only, and its fleeting happenings are perceived with ‘benevolent indifference’ (Francis Lucile). Some call it universal love. Universal love is active in the middle of dreaming. The questioner’s aversion against violence is understandable but it undermines the questioner’s capacity for universal love in the name of morality. Consciousness, identified as the action figure, say the child offender, is driven by a conditioning that would have caused anyone with the same conditioning to be violent as well. Benevolent indifference is much more potent than a judgemental attitude that implies that ‘we are better than others’.
Sense perceptions can delete the imagined borderline between ‘me’ and ‘not-me’
Where is the borderline between ‘me’ and ‘not-me’? It’s usually pictured to be the circumference of a body.
On the other hand, we claim that we ‘have’ a body – similar to having a car, a house, etc. We also maintain that we ‘have’ a personality. Furthermore, we say that we have an ego, big or small, or that we have lost our ego. The challenging question is: who or what makes all these claims to have something or to have lost something? At closer investigation, there are merely attempts trying to encourage beliefs in borderlines, including the concept of a separate ‘me’ that has something or that doesn’t have something.
Where is the boundary between ‘me’ and ‘not-me’? Both me and not-me turn out to be just two labels, attached to appearances.
Because of constant repetition, these labels have produced feelings of and beliefs in independence and separation. Listening to music or engaging in any other sense perception – without diversions into fake worlds of believed in assumptions – can deliver a taste of the freedom that is inherent in living without the belief in boundaries.
(Further investigation shows that the belief in separation is the cause of all apparent troubles in ‘us’ and the ‘world.’)
Virtual Reality
In response to comments on a video by Tony Parsons:
The misunderstanding in these discussions arises because the terms are not very well defined. For example ‘God’ is a word that can mean a lot of different things. I am not against the idea that there is a hierarchy in the world of appearances. The ‘top’ leader in such a hierarchy could be called ‘a Personal God.’
However, anything ‘personal’ is part of the ‘virtual’ world that is derived from memory. All these discussions are memory-based, including the citing of so-called holy scriptures. To see these virtual constructs as such is a somewhat courageous step as it dismantles any support from memory. You are truly naked, even naked of your self-concept.
Realising this is freedom from the hypnotic influences of the virtual world. It is not rejecting the virtual world. It’s only seen to be ‘virtual’, ‘made-up,’ another word for ‘created.’ It is not ‘believed’ to be virtual – it is SEEN to be so. The seeing is real. Saint Francis of Assisi: What’s looking is what we are looking for. We can’t ‘believe’ in seeing. Seeing is happening anyway.
No Lack
..in response to a comment about J Krishnamurti and Schopenhauer:
Interestingly, the sense of ‘no lack’ does not cause inertia or phlematism. It’s more a truly ‘self’-less situation in which the already present ‘no-lackness’ expresses itself joyfully. Children play in a sand castle without a felt need to entertain any meaning.
JK would agree with St Francis of Assisi who said: “What we are looking for is what is looking.’
We can verify this by sensing that the ‘looking itself’ has no lack. It is the mental identification with a ‘me’ that
1. believes that it causes the seeing (how ridiculous to think this) and
2. interprets/defines/relates to the apparent objects (what is ‘seen’)
Those two mental activities result in a sense of lack and cause the striving toward no lack. Hence the yearning for meaning – in the hope that meaning will fill the sense of lack. It won’t. To realise the ever-fresh, timeless ‘looking’ (fundamental awareness) is what Krishnamurti is pointing to – and many others. Schopenhauer’s interpretations can lure the mind into dwelling on theory. Once done with it, the actual realisation of what JK is pointing to is more rewarding.
Meaning
When you feel lack, your meaning is to feel no lack. When there is no sense of lack, there is no need to add meaning to life. That is only seen when the imagined ‘I’ is not imagined any longer. The absense of this imagination reveals fullness.
Substance
In response to a question
I can’t confirm that the non-dual has created a substance. I agree that it appears so. The mind tends to believe it. (I don’t.) Everything is really empty but appears to be not empty, particularly if the mind continuously refers to the believed-in past to confirm that there is substance in the presence. These assumptions are projected into a non-existing present as if that present was a section out of time. In reality, the present is timeless, non-dual awareness. If anything could be termed ‘substance’ I’d say it is the timeless that is ’empty substance’. The mind will think that this statement is based on fantasy whereas nondual seeing ‘says’ that believing in matter is based on fantasy.
Whatever happens is done by no-one, including the thinking. Even the imagination that someone is doing the thinking is done by no-one. All beliefs are done by no-one. To see this is self-evident and needs no belief. Not to see this needs beliefs to sustain the not-seeing, the main belief being that no-one is someone.