The Dualistic Process

Apart from obvious duality as man and woman, black and white, there is an inward psychological duality as the observer and the observed, the one who experiences and the thing experienced. In this division, in which time and space are involved, is the whole process of conflict; you can observe it in yourself. You are violent, that is a fact and you also have the ideological concept of non-violence, so there is duality. Now the observer says “I must become non-violent” and the attempt to become non-violent is conflict, which is a waste of energy; whereas if the observer is totally aware of that violence—without the ideological concept of non-violence—then he is able to deal with it immediately. One must observe this dualistic process at work within oneself—this division of the “I” and the “not-I”, the observer and the observed. Talks with American Students, p 111

The Thinker and the Thought

When you observe yourself very clearly, when you are aware choicelessly of every thought, of every feeling, then you will come upon something—which is that there is a thinker and there is the thought; that there is an experiencer, an observer, and there is the experience, the observed. This is a fact, is it not?—there is a censor, an entity which judges, evaluates, which thinks, which observes; and there is the thing which is observed...So there is a thinker, there is the thought. There is a division between the thinker and the thought—the thinker trying to dominate the thought, trying to change the thought, trying to modify the thought, trying to control it, trying to force it, trying to imitate and so on. This division between the thinker and the thought creates conflict because the thinker is always the censor, the entity that judges, that evaluates. That entity is a conditioned entity because it has arisen as a reaction to thought, which is itself merely the reaction of conditioning, of memory. You understand, sirs? This is a very simple thing to find out for yourself. The Collected Works vol XIII, p 90

Seeing + Feeling + Doing = Intuition = Self-Integration

Jungian astrological terms for the four angles of the cross of matter, in the natural horoscope, are Intuition for the Ascendant, Feeling for the Nadir, Sensation for the Descendant and Thinking for the Mid-Heaven. On this note, I seek to understand where I am aligned naturally in myself, at the very beginning, at the Ascendant or Rising Sun, the horizon of conscious being where my only true reference point of existence is.

Sensations and thoughts, emotional thinking, and all the content of the mind is ultimately secondary, they are effects not causes. Intuition, the true center of all "positive thinking" and visualization as we understand these, is the deepest experience of SEEING (The Sun) FEELING (The Earth/Moon) and DOING (Earth/Ascendant), where the doing arises out of deep feeling and clear seeing, the source (sun) and ground (earth) spring (moon) of being.

In speaking of action, the fundamental intuitive aligning factor is already in place... and from here the next important is to LIVE IT which means "just do it!" and not to think about it more, over calculate, keep score, worry how I am doing, and all that psychological nonsense... the nonsense and useless thinking which gets stored at the dark or shadow side (and south node) of the Moon and personal planets like Mercury and Venus.

The goal is cut clear to INTUITION, the central aligning, seeing/feeling factor, where visualizing is acting and ideals made manifest through the Individual, the ONE channel through which the universal and personal are integrative and co-creative.

JDZ

Thought versus Wisdom (continued)

"Knowledge is necessary to function, and its functioning becomes neurotic when status becomes all important, which is the entering of thought as the “me”, as status. So knowledge is necessary and yet meditation is to discover, or come upon, or to observe, an area in which there is no movement of thought. Can the two live together, harmoniously, daily?"
Talks in Saanen 1974, p 69

Wisdom versus Knowledge

There is a distinction between intellect and intelligence. Intellect is thought functioning independently of emotion, whereas intelligence is the capacity to feel as well as to reason; and until we approach life with intelligence, instead of intellect alone, or with emotion alone, no political or educational system in the world can save us from the toils of chaos and destruction.Knowledge is not comparable with intelligence, knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not marketable, it is not a merchandise that can be bought with the price of learning or discipline. Wisdom cannot be found in books; it cannot be accumulated, memorized or stored up. Wisdom comes with the abnegation of the self. To have an open mind is more important than learning; and we can have an open mind, not by cramming it full of information but by being aware of our own thoughts and feelings, by carefully observing ourselves and the influences about us, by listening to others, by watching the rich and the poor, the powerful and the lowly. Wisdom does not come through fear and oppression, but through the observation and understanding of everyday incidents in human relationship.
Education and the Significance of Life, pp 65-66

In our search for knowledge, in our acquisitive desires, we are losing love, we are blunting the feeling for beauty, the sensitivity to cruelty; we are becoming more and more specialized and less and less integrated. Wisdom cannot be replaced by knowledge, and no amount of explanation, no accumulation of facts will free man from suffering. Knowledge is necessary, science has its place; but if the mind and heart are suffocated by knowledge, and if the cause of suffering is explained away, life becomes vain and meaningless. And is this not what is happening to most of us? Our education is making us more and more shallow; it is not helping us to uncover the deeper layers of our being, and our lives are increasingly disharmonious and empty.Information, the knowledge of facts, though ever increasing, is by its very nature limited. Wisdom is infinite, it includes knowledge and the way of action; but we take hold of a branch and think it is the whole tree. Through the knowledge of the part, we can never realize the joy of the whole. Intellect can never lead to the whole, for it is only a segment, a part.
Education and the Significance of Life, p 66
J.Krishnamurti

The Love That Will Not Die

*I find this warrior approach to be the counterbalance to our western ways which can be one-sided in the self-empowering extroverted attitude toward life and spirituality. On the other hand, to quote Wayne Dyer "we cannot shame or impoverish ourselves enough to rescue others from their lot", and one must be in a strong position and condition to be most of service... to oneself, intimate others and society at large.
Jdz

"Spiritual awakening is frequently described as a journey to the top of a mountain. We leave our attachments and our worldliness behind an slowly make our way to the top. At the peak we have transcended all pain. The only problem with this metaphor is that we leave all others behind. Their suffering continues, unrelieved by our personal escape.

On the journey of the warrior-bodhisattva, the path goes down, not up, as if the mountain pointed toward the earth instead of the sky. Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward turbulence and doubt however we can. We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain , and we try not to push it away. If it takes years, it takes lifetimes, we let it be as it is. At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, our companions in awakening from fear. At the bottom we discover water, the healing water of bodhicitta. Bodhichitta is our heart -- our wounded, softened heart. Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die. This love is bodhichitta. It is gentle and warm; it is clear and sharp; it is open and spacious. The awakened heart of bodhichitta is the basic goodness of all beings".

Pema Chodron ~ "Comfortable with Uncertainty" (chapter 1, pages 1-2)

Thinking About Self Doesn't Serve

THINKING ABOUT YOURSELF DOESN’T SERVE

Have you ever noticed how useless your thoughts about yourself are? Many of them are an attempt to define you as this or that: I like this, not that; I want this, not that; I feel this, not that; I believe this, not that. Thoughts about yourself define yourself—at least for the moment, since they are often changing: Sometimes you like or want or feel or believe something, and sometimes you like or want or feel or believe something else. Your sense of self changes with thoughts about yourself. You create your sense of self through thoughts about yourself, but this sense of self is always changing. It isn’t stable or consistent. Moreover, it’s made up: One day, you define and imagine yourself one way, and another day, you define and imagine yourself another way.

Do you need thoughts about yourself to exist or to function? You obviously don’t need them to exist because you still exist even when you are not thinking about yourself and when you are asleep. Do you need thoughts about yourself to function? It’s a little trickier to see that you don’t need these thoughts to function either, but if you look closely at this, you discover that many of your actions are spontaneous and do not stem from a thought first. In fact, a lot of thoughts are thoughts about action that has already taken place (the past) and thoughts about actions that have yet to take place or may never (the future), none of which are relevant to now. The rest are primarily thoughts that accompany your actions, that evaluate what you’re doing, remind you of what to do next, complain about it, argue about how to do it, and any number of other thoughts.

Do you need these thoughts to accomplish what needs to be done? They often make you less efficient because you are less present to what you are doing, or hinder or complicate rather than facilitate what you’re doing. They may cause you to doubt yourself as you’re doing something or question why you are doing it or give you pros and cons to doing it that can confuse you. When you really begin to notice what’s going on, you see that thoughts about yourself, including what you should or should not do and when and how, are not necessary and are, in fact, often problematic.

Thoughts about yourself create the false self, and you don’t need the false self to function, although you are programmed to believe you are the false self and that these thoughts are necessary to function. You are programmed to believe a lie! What an amazing thing this is! That is why this world is called an “Illusion” by those who see through this Illusion. The illusion is that you are this self and your thoughts are true and helpful. The Illusion leads you to believe that the false self is what is living your life, when in fact, what is living your life is responsible for creating everything, including the illusion that you are who you think you are. The key to seeing through the Illusion is noticing your thoughts and how inconsistent, untrue, useless—and negative—they actually are. You use the capacity to be aware of your thoughts to free yourself from the illusion that they are true.

Seeing that thinking about yourself doesn’t serve is a crucial step in seeing through this Illusion because that is all the false self is—thoughts about itself. Once you start ignoring your thoughts about yourself, that is, once you stop thinking about yourself, you discover that you never needed these thoughts and that they only take you away from what is true and real—the experience of your real Self living in this moment and moving spontaneously and naturally through life. You never needed any of these thoughts about yourself. You have always been living this life in spite of these thoughts. This that you are has allowed you to believe the Illusion while it has continued to be alive through you and move you in its own way through life. There comes a point in everyone’s evolution when it is time to wake up from this Illusion and experience the truth of who you are. This must be the time for you.

Gina Lake
www.radicalhappiness.com