Friday, August 24, 2012

Who Da' Thunk 2 Who needs to know, really?


Who is it really that needs to know — the personality that has been conjured out of environmental and biological stimuli?

Who is that really knows?
Are we really just the culmination of our stories and myths that we have created to explain, promote and propagate our ephemeral existence?
Are we really just our triumphs and tragedies; our abuses, abusers, and abuse; our hell and heaven; good and evil…?
Are we our experiences, our experience …or our experiencing?
Are we just the sum total of the bullshit that runs through our heads that we accumulate over time?
Life is not just a string of experiences, but that which knows that a string of experiences unfolds before us – sometimes like cinematic events. 
Our life is not what we think it to be. Life is whether we think or not – perhaps more interesting not – (who knows?).
We experience life largely though the filters that we have superimposed on life.
We are the result of the conditioning that has conditioned us to perceive our experience.
However, my inclination is that we are not our egos, personalities, identities, jobs, roles, genders, and all the other machinations that we use to create ourselves.
We are not our bullshit, but generally are mired in it and have taken on its odor out of ignorance.
Rather, we are that which notices the bullshit and uses the bullshit to fertilize our garden that we that we call our life. Life as it is.
Life as it is, is wondrous when we are not enmeshed or identified with or in the events to which we are paying attention.
Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.
That which Knows is not the thing or things that it knows. Knowledge then is not what you know or who you know but the faculty of Knowing – that which knows — which is not a this or a that. Knowledge in this context is not data or the accumulation of data. No bits, or bytes, to bite you in the ass.
No subject or object.
Knowing has nothing to relate to or with. Mind is not relative to anything. (…Maybe only relative to Mind?) Mind is all and no-thing simultaneously.
Perhaps getting out of our minds and returning to Mind, is what Mind has in mind for us all, if we mind, if we don’t mind.
We can be out of our minds, but we can never be out of Mind, or out of sight….
But, since we do see the movie in the theater of life before us, we might as well get the popcorn and pay attention and enjoy the show, if you don’t mind minding Mind.

Yikes!

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Who'da thunk? Part 1 Knowing and Thinking


This muttering is a first in a series reflecting on thoughts and thinking.
Knowing and Thinking
Knowing is knowing. Thinking is thinking.
Knowing with attachment to what is known is thinking.
Knowing that you know without attachment to what you think is knowing.

Thinking that you know is thinking. Knowing that you think is knowing.

Thinking is not knowing, and cannot know.
Knowing does not need to think.

Knowing is thought. Thinking is thoughts.

We are essentially thought, not our thinking. However we have become our thoughts, at least in our thinking.
Thinking is a biological function of the brain in response to its environment — a necessary contrivance for a physical existence that has arisen largely out of thinking. Hormones, neural synaptic responses, biochemical, sociobiological, cultural conditioning and programming all affect our thinking — how, what, where, why, and who we think about.

Internal and external stimuli all comprise our thinking and thoughts. Our thinking is by and large a response to our environment that we have isolated between our ears. As long as we have a brain we will think. When we no longer have use for our brain we will return to Thought. Thought has never left us. We have strayed from Thought in our thinking.

Knowing sees your thoughts. Thinking is blind and needs to be guided to be useful.

Know what you know and think what you think. Know that you think; but thinking that you know interferes with your connection with Thought.

Who is it that thinks — really?