Greetings Ham,
On Oct 2, 2010, at 2:05 AM, Ham Priday wrote: > >> Marsha: >> How I understand conscious awareness is as pure process, >> 100% immediate experience, and the moment one tries to >> analyze it, it is gone. All other entities - I, knower, self, >> individual, me, etc. - are _conceptually constructed_ and >> have no independent existence. They are a conglomerate >> ever-changing, impermanent, interdependent, inorganic, >> biological, social and intellectual static patterns of value. > > Ham: > Marsha, you are attempting to describe the subjective self as if it were an > objective entity, which of course is impossible. Yes, "raw" experience is > "immediate", but it hardly represents 100% of conscious awareness. There is > also the memory function which links self-awareness to the past and makes > experience a continuum; the emotive response which is the psycho-biological > reaction to what is experienced; and intellection which interprets the data > as a rational construct. 'I', 'Knower', 'Individual', and 'Me' are not > different entities but simply the labels we use to identify the Self. > > That standard definition, which even you must be tired of by now, paints a > fuzzy picture of self-awareness as if to demean its credibility--which of > course is your intent. I still feel this is somewhat disingenuous on your > part. Certainly we cannot objectivize, quantify, measure, or localize > conscious awareness as we can, say, a rock or a tree. Conversely, however, > what would the rock or tree be if there was no awareness of it? As Pirsig > insisted, experience is primary; and since experience is known only to > awareness, all we really know about objective existence is that it is > patterned from sensible value. Marsha: I am putting aside the experience of raw data (unpatterned experience) and talking about conscious awareness as in mindfulness. Mindfulness is a technique easily learned and strengthened through practice. It's the experience of being here-now without constructing an associated past or future. In the mindfulness experience there is no building a subjective self for it is all _process_, all immediate experience. Pattern recognition seems limited to the function of the sense organ. It is _habit_ that associates these immediate experiences with an individual, independent self, or its various labels, rather than understanding that it is a flow of experiences. _Habit_ that when conscious awareness (mindfulness) stops then the making of meaning begins (internal story-telling). It is the conceptual constructing, making of meaning, that creates the independent self. It is an after-experience add-on. I am suggesting that in mindfulness it is obvious that experiences comes firs t, and that associating now-experiences to a 'self' is a secondary habit. Experience is primary! Self-building is secondary. Thanks Ham, Marsha ___ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
