On 3/14/2011 8:44 PM, Mark Ty-Wharton wrote:
I am writing a book about consciousness.
While I thought I knew everything I needed to know about this subject
to complete the book I find I am caught in the throws of a show
stopper so huge I cannot see a resolution to it.
My manuscript contained some 30,000 words of complex arguments for and
against various concepts which have been put forward over the years.
I have no doubt to someone it will be a good read.
What I notice is there is a block.
And again in my experience a block usually means a "not being truthful
about something".
I have writers block and I am not being truthful about it.
Obviously I am writing this, though in writing this my hope is I am
writing a key to unlock a door.
The door I need to unlock is a door which is hidden behind an intense
set of feelings I am not always honest about.
I am deeply frustrated and perplexed by the nature of my own
consciousness.
While I believe I have had direct experiences of what constitutes my
true nature, the seeking of it seems to create a wall which in itself
becomes impossible to break down.
Yes.
Akin, you cannot lift yourself by your shoelaces, no matter the quality
and quantum of the efforts.
And direct experiences is just that .......akin breathlessness resulting
from all the efforts
to raise yourself by your shoelaces.
I have a clear logical understanding of the nature of self, yet self
always needs to be there.
Indeed.
The sense of the logical understanding is very sense of the self
And thus hardly of any import.
It would seem that self is the context in which I hold awareness and
experience itself.
And even this over complicates it.
The sense of the self is the sense of holding.
What is the holding of ........is of little significance.
I am annoyed that I can't get AT it. I am annoyed that I can
contemplate in the bath for hours and conceptualise over IT.
It is and always was the case and the seeking of it makes me blind and
angry to it.
Good.
What's the big deal with the anger, anyway?
Rantings of a dreamt-up character of the last night sleep dream drama......
....today morning sipping from a hot cup of tea.....of what significance
is that ranting?
Here is what I notice.
I pretend I am not angry about the amount of time I have taken to get
to grips with IT.
The pretence gives me no access to the anger.
The pretense is the anger.
And vice versa.
There is no self oscillating between the two.
Without access to the anger I have no experience of the one
experiencing the anger.
You have no experience.
You have had no experience.
You will not have any experience.
It's just like a frustrating never ending quest for something that I
almost never get.
Yes.
Round and round the mulberry bush.
Till one falls down.
Till that time, a wound up clock keeps ticking.
And when I find 'the zone' I dare not go to sleep for fear that it
will be gone when I wake up (and often it appears to have).
Zones which goes......has to have the property of coming.
And thus going.
Thus,stuff within time.
Just like passing fluffy clouds.
The blue sky or yonder is neither asleep or awakened to passing fluffs.
I cannot write a book from my experience unless my experience
constitutes and expert opinion.
Thought preening that it has something to say about what it has itself
created (as itself)
I would not expect to read a book about riding bicycles by someone who
has no idea how to stay on one and occasionally does by sheer luck.
Yes, practice may be the key.
But the key rarely fits the door directly.
Where I got to today.
When I stand in front of a mirror, there are two of me in my visual field.
I only identify with the one that appears on the three dimensional
side of the mirror.
The flat one in the glass is not "me" but it is "my" reflection.
The three dimensional one typing this message is not "me" but it is
"my" body typing.
Clear as anything logically.
When I move my hand I feel movement in my hand.
There is no feeling at the "me" end of the nervous system.
When I look at the chest of drawers in the bedroom there is no feeling
there either.
The chest of drawers and the "me" doing feeling of hands feels the same.
The illusion might be I am the chest of drawers.
Is advaita and zen a concept?
Yep.
No different to the sense of the questioner posing the sense of that
very question.
An illusion.
It appears I am one because I am not.
Drop these bromides.
It just strengthens the feeling that one knows something and thus has
something to say.
Neither an is, nor a is-not.
Neither the one nor the not-one.
Answers on a postcard please.
Frustration spoken about from my place of truth.
What's missing?
Nothing whatsoever.
Just the usual un-crossable shore that thought arrives at .......time
after time, time immemorial.
And retreats to once again gather momentum like a tsunami to hit the
same shore.
Again and again.
Till a dissipation.
Which it cannot bring about by itself, as the dissipation is not within
time.
Thanks
Mark
