Alert to your thoughts

Know the whole content of one thought  Not being anything is the beginning of freedom. So if you are capable of feeling, of going into this you will find, as you become aware, that you are not free, that you are bound to very many different things, and that at the same time the mind hopes to be free. And you can see that the two are contradictory. So the mind has to investigate why it clings to anything. All this implies hard work. It is much more arduous than going to an office, than any physical labor, than all the sciences put together. Because the humble, intelligent mind is concerned with itself without being self-centered; therefore it has to be extraordinarily alert, aware, and that means real hard work every day, every hour, every minute. ... This demands insistent work because freedom does not come easily. Everything impedes—your wife, your husband, your son, your neighbor, your Gods, your religions, your tradition. All these impede you, but you have created them because you want security. And the mind that is seeking security can never find it. If you have watched a little in the world, you know there is no such thing as security. The wife dies, the husband dies, the son runs away—something happens. Life is not static, though we would like to make it so. No relationship is static because all life is movement. That is a thing to be grasped, the truth to be seen, felt, not something to be argued about. Then you will see, as you begin to investigate, that it is really a process of meditation. But do not be mesmerized by that word. To be aware of every thought, to know from what source it springs and what is its intention — that is meditation. And to know the whole content of one thought reveals the whole process of the mind. The Book of Life, December 24, HarperSanFrancisco, 1995

https://www.jkrishnamurti.org/content/know-whole-content-one-thought

Belief(s) as Escape from Actuality ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

So, your religion, your belief in God, is an escape from actuality, and therefore it is no religion at all. The rich man who accumulates money through cruelty, through dishonesty, through cunning exploitation believes in God; and you also believe in God, you also are cunning, cruel, suspicious, envious. Is God to be found through dishonesty, through deceit, through cunning tricks of the mind? Because you collect all the sacred books and the various symbols of God, does that indicate that you are a religious person? So, religion is not escape from the fact; religion is the understanding of the fact of what you are in your everyday relationships; religion is the manner of your speech, the way you talk, the way you address your servants, the way you treat your wife, your children, and neighbors. As long as you do not understand your relationship with your neighbor, with society, with your wife and children, there must be confusion; and whatever it does, the mind that is confused will only create more confusion, more problems and conflict. A mind that escapes from the actual, from the facts of relationship, shall never find God; a mind that is agitated by belief shall not know truth. But the mind that understands its relationship with property, with people, with ideas, the mind which no longer struggles with the problems which relationship creates, and for which the solution is not withdrawal but the understanding of love—such a mind alone can understand reality. https://www.jkrishnamurti.org/content/agitated-belief

Barry Long | Start Meditating NOW

COMMENTARY Forthcoming as this listener/narrator receives Barry Long's clear and practical meditation guide, and applies these teachings to daily practice.

JDZ

Amnesia, Mass Brainwashing & Fallacy of “Living for the Future”

https://youtu.be/UUIzS3HjPwg

Eastern philosophy writer and scholar Alan Watts gives a wonderfully clear, to the point and real no-nonsense talk about how educational institutions have been subject to centuries of cultural brainwashing, thus subjecting the vast majority of westerners to mass conformity, industrial-consumer slavery and identity crisis resulting out of the loss of core spiritual-human values. Obedience as we know it is to the will of a misguided dysfunctional intellectual/cultural power elite and clever deceit tactics of power-crazed leaders.

 The sad part of the rat race is in the tragic forgetting of who you are (or I am...) as an intelligent Being and Soul, hidden deep underneath many thick layers of ego and artificially conditioned behaviors. With this inner dissociation comes the forgetting also that life is now or never, not to be found in an imagined tomorrow that never comes, and tragically for so many this vision for tomorrow remains stuck in a futile stagnant state of “perpetual preparation”, forever planning, wishing, dreaming and hoping.

 A sense of self-actualized existence and a life lived to full creative expression is always an acting or a doing, or conversely found in stillness and non-doing, just being. There is often planning and forward movement, but nothing remains of fear and doubts nor of other useless and undermining preoccupations about all that is merely imagined and not happening now.

JDZ

(Edited 11/22/2018 @ 5:00 p.m.)

"Soon We all will die, Our hopes and fears will be irrelevant...

   Anything that has a shape will crumble away. Anything in a flock will disband. We are all like bees, alone in this world, buzzing and searching with no place to rest. So we offer this prayer: Delusions are as various as the reflections of the moon on a rippling sea. Beings so easily become conned in a net of confused pain. May I develop compassion boundless as the sky, so that all may rest in the clear light of their own awareness."

Vastness

"ACTION, not feelings, please... ACTION, not emotions, thanks"...

Confronting Reality: facing your most dangerous enemy within

A most poignant look at the exiled, willful and angry self within, often called 'Ego'; and a blessed Divine Self that some refer to simply as 'Being'. 
Expression of deepest heartfelt gratitude is key to knowing true goodness, the Grace of God. To appreciate with awe and feel the devoted reverence and exhilarating wonder at the vastness of an omnipresence manifesting as your life.

(Edited 3:45 p.m. August 28 & 8:20 a.m. September 01).

JDZ     

Self Inquiry

"I Am that I Am"

The Truth of Self

     Self (as ego, personality, individuality) according to Long is the "great spoiler" of the inherent joy of being. Also, every individual self is a co-creator (with other selves, individually and collectively) of this tragic condition inherent to human existence; contrived of the ignorance of narrow self-interest in the pursuit of personal desires or occupational ambitions, and the escape or flight from all that is feared or despised.

In quoting Long, "to expect anything at all from anyone is being selfish". This however is very different from the state of "self-centeredness", a healthy human response. To want what is outside of your own true Being and remain attached is a primal form of ignorance that breeds suffering. All of unhappiness the fruit of our ignorance, and "original misery" is the real "truth of  self" as an isolated individual person compulsively driven by his/her desires and fears. As my self dissolves and disappears, this being-ness returns back home to its source, and the soul essence of man resurrected (restored, renewed) in the glorious Light of God and Truth.

JDZ

(revised commentary above written/edited on 6/30, from the original rough draft of 5/3)

The Matrix

Mooji - Stop Wasting Time On Nonsense, Just Stay In Your Beingness

Alan Watts on the Zen of Letting Go

Egotism, Pride, Ambition -- Pitfalls of Achievement

Exceptionally clear and comprehensive reading of complex subject matters, from the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti...