Pretense
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Past Discussion Topics
Pretense | Loneliness | What is Will? | First Know Thyself | Where Will You Find the Truth? | The Dazzling Dark | What is Your Purpose? | The Desire for Something Unknown | Are We Poor Within? | Man's Position? | Radical Possibilities | Beyond Uncertainty | Spiritual Physics and Engineering | Knowledge and Action | Finding Balance | Why Don't You Know Yourself? | Pursuing the Impossible Dream | Looking for Success? | Is Sacrifice Necessary for Inner Development? | Finding the Inner Self | Free from Desire... | The Fountain of All Good | Psychological Fear | Living in Reaction Mode? | Felt Dimly in the Soul | Believe in... Doubt? | Confronting Basic Issues? | What is Thought? | Self-Examination | What is Meaningful in Life? |
The cause of our distress is never in the outside world, according to Benoit. As our projections, or pretenses, are dashed against the wall of reality, we experience humiliation. This comes in the form of loss of pride, dignity or self-respect. How can this occur? Only because our self-image is faulty.
The pretense of The Saint (the abstract self) goes something like this: he projects an idealized image of himself onto the imaginary screen we view in our mind (the only place we actually "see"), and he falls in love with this image, the Ego, as Narcissus fell in love with his image reflected in the pool of water. This projected Angel pretends ignorance of its animal self and escapes into dreams.
The Sinner (the emotional self), on the other hand, projects a divine image onto some aspect of the outer world -- another person, a just cause, a personalized god, an ideal -- identifying with and falling in love with that projected image. Unfortunately the projected image often doesn't go along with this pretense, and rejection occurs.
Benoit offers the hope that when we no longer pretend, nothing will ever injure us again
~Excerpt from a Recap of Hubert Benoit’s Main Ideas. The complete summary can be found at http://www.selfdiscoveryportal.com/bzrecap.htm.
I wish we were kinder to the animals. I wish we were kinder to one another. There is nobody on earth ... who will not feel one day his or her utter loneliness, utter insulation from any other human being. To avoid knowing this we engage in commerce (must work to eat you say? YES, but I have known millionaires go on working!) & fill our time with distractions. The "work" I do helps toward breaking down this separation we human-beings feel. It is not necessary, it is only the impulse to defend ourselves, -- we are terribly afraid of "coming out" just as ourselves & being stepped on! This is a false fear.... This "I" of ours has a better side of course. Its basis -- apart from memories -- is the strange "self" conception. This is a direct reflection of the One Self & it is this we can see in one another.
~Excerpt from a letter written by Zen Master Alfred Pulyan to a student. To learn more about Pulyan visit http://www.selfdiscoveryportal.com/Pulyan.htm.
What is will? I’ve watched myself engage in potentially harmful behavior at various times in my life, and sometimes I’ve been able to observe that there’s a decision-point after the inspiration for the behavior forms in my mind and before the action occurs. At that decision-point there has been an agreement to proceed -- not so much an active agreement, really, as an unwillingness of the inner executive to use its veto power to cancel the pending action.
An article appeared in the 3/5/89 Miami Herald which provides the best physiological explanation of this resistance-point that I’ve come across. It was written by Tom Siegfried of the Dallas Morning News and was titled "How free is free will? Science decides to see." Siegfried cited a paper by neuroscientist Benjamin Libet, in the March-April issue of The Sciences, describing what goes on in the brain as people decide to act. The key items were as follows:
Brain signals jumped in voltage eight-tenths of a second before the action (hand movement) began. Why? It doesn’t take anywhere near that long for a message to get from the brain to the muscles.
Brain signals began three-tenths of a second before the subjects even became aware of their intention to act. It appeared as if the brain had begun preparation for the movement before the individuals perceived themselves as deciding to do anything.
Some subjects reported that they could change their minds after deciding to act. The neurons began to fire, the person prepared to move, and then -- fifteen-hundredths of a second before the motion should have occurred -- the person decided to stay motionless.
"Apparently the conscious mind could intervene, in the final stages of the heightened neurological activity, either to block the already initiated movement or to let it pass," Libet had concluded.
Libet’s conclusion jibes with my introspective observations, which point to two categories of the go-with-it response. In the first, I recognize that the action is potentially harmful, but it’s a new "opportunity," and some combination of factors wins the argument over the self-protective fears and desires. The heftiest of the winning factors seem to be curiosity and a cavalier attitude toward self-preservation that looks, afterward, like a desire for self-destruction. In the second category, I’ve engaged in the activity before and consider its effects harmful, or at least feel that becoming enslaved to habitual repetition is undesirable. When the ensuing action hasn’t been vetoed at that hinge or swing-point, I’ve observed a feeling of powerlessness to resist.
When we recognize potential harm, what determines whether we will veto the action -- or at least attempt to resist? Richard Rose, in his "Temptation" essay [see the May TAT Forum], said that he learned he could veto a questionable action by asking the question "Why?" This approach may buy us some space-time, breaking the force that’s compelling us into a potentially harmful action until we can consider it in a somewhat dispassionate frame of mind. What has been most effective for me, once through the storm, is to arrive at a calm determination to resist the compelling force if and when it returns. With me, this occurs not so much from an ability to talk myself into taking such a stand as from scanning the inner horizon until I find such a determination there.
~Art Ticknor
“Most people, and this includes philosophers as well as humble lay-seekers, put the cart before the horse and proceed to try to understand the universe, or life after death, before understanding first their own nature and how they come to be here."
~The Albigen Papers, "On Gurus and Unique Systems”
Where Will You Find the Truth?
Speak to me, O Guru, of that which is True and that which is certain.
And thus it came about that the Guru spake to his chela. Wherein will you find the Truth? Shall the guru who trades thee Truth for rice extend to thee a commodity worth more than the rice?
Shall the guru who asks you to rely on faith support thy quaking soul at death?
For is not faith an instrument and not an end in itself. The faith of the Mohammedan is fatal to the Christian, and separate creeds call upon us to extend faith to them while they stand apart and even opposite to one another. So that the sacred implementation of faith is used as a weapon rather than a celestial lever.
Though I possessed the Truth, particular and absolute, still I could not give it to thee, for how could I converse except by words, which are relative.
I say that the Truth is in thee, but that with the help of the guru thou mayest find thyself. And to know thyself, thou must first know that which thou art not, lest thou mistake thy alter-ego for the real.
And you wouldst ask me for that which is certain, and I say that all that thou wouldst know in honesty is that thou knowest nothing for certain. And if thou knowest this, thou hast made a worthy beginning. Let thy beginning be from zero. Fill not thy mind with false assumptions, and let the doubt live until it is drowned in evidence.
Look at thyself to see if thou thinkest from fear or desire. Among thy fellows, thou will see great numbers who have followed a vain religion out of fear. Others have changed their religion out of a desire for the seemingly better things the other religion offers. Others will change religion because of benefit to their economy. And thou will look with scorn upon all of these but forget to ask thyself, "What do I really know for certain? What has brought me to the door of this temple -- has it been true intuition or masked desire?"
This I would tell thee as a certainty. Man cannot learn by starting with presumption. Man cannot start with the Truth because he knows not where it is or what it is, and since he cannot have anything proven to him when he is not acquainted with it, he must become acquainted before the proving.
Man must make a start. He must seek. Not knowing what the True is, he must in every situation take that which is evidently more true than the other. Thus will he approach the altar. Seek thou for books and people. These are thy guru until thou findest the Guru who knows all. Look not with scorn on the great soul of Buddha, who gives advice to the ages to seek the path and the sangha. In the darkness, even the sage goes hand in hand with a sage to take surer steps and avoid the abysses. And this is brotherhood.
Seek not ye out men who profess to know all, for these men are liars. If they knew all, the world would join to build temples to them. But seek ye humble men who will with thee build, stone upon stone, a wall to keep out the forces of ignorance and adversity and to retain that which thou mightest forget if thou hast no wall to remind thee. Gather ye from the far corners of darkness, and joined in groups work ye and comfort one the other. And let all exult with the progress of one.
Turn thy back to the light lest it blind thee, but advance toward it in this manner. Always thy face shall be toward the darkness of ignorance, for thou need not be wary of the Light.
Make one step in seeking, and make another. And these things shall be made known to thee, and with each step it will be easier to follow the next.
Help another to thy level, and the seeds of brotherhood are planted, and then shalt thou rise.
Thus spake the Guru.
~Excerpt from "The Books of the Relative" by Richard Rose. The full article can be found in the October 2002 issue of the TAT Forum at www.tatfoundation.org/forum_index.htm.
. . . it is all still here, both the shining dark void and the experience of myself coming into being out of, yet somehow in response to, that radiant darkness. My whole consciousness of myself and everything else has changed. I feel as if the back of my head has been sawn off so that it is no longer the 60-year-old John who looks out at the world, but the shining dark infinite void that in some extraordinary way is also "I." And what I perceive with my eyes and other senses is a whole world that seems to be coming fresh-minted into existence moment by moment, each instant evoking the utter delight of "Behold, it is very good." Here yet again I am constantly up against paradox when I try to describe the experience. Thus, in one sense, I feel as if I am infinitely far back in sensing the world, yet at the same time I feel the very opposite, as if my consciousness is no longer inside my head at all, but out there in the things I am experiencing . . . .
~ John Wren-Lewis
Question: What in the world is this guy talking about?
The total number of people who ever lived is 33.8 billion. Of those, 6 billion are alive today.
Where are the 27.8 billion who died? What did they want during their life? Who do you know that is now among the 27.8 billion who passed away? Are they immortal, or do they only remain in frozen memory which melts away like day?
Of the 6 billion alive today, how many hunger for meaning and purpose? What is your purpose among this 6 billion?
~Excerpt from "Scale" by Shawn Nevins. The complete article can be found in the June 2004 TAT Forum at www.tatfoundation.org/forum_index.htm.
The Desire for Something Unknown
I went on to discover that in its deepest sense, the will is not primarily the faculty of desire for anything known, but rather, the desire for something unknown, an innate desire for something that lies beyond ourselves, a longing for something we know is missing in us. This longing is always uplifting, never focused on anything in the world we know of, and no matter how intense this longing, it is never a downer or sad, never focused on what is low or ugly. It's a need to have something, know something, possess something in order to fulfill ourselves, to be complete or whole. We may think at times it is a longing for beauty, truth, goodness and much more, but nothing short of God will ever satisfy.
~Bernadette Roberts, Contemplative: Autobiography of the Early Years
There is no more pathetic spectacle than that of an age that is bored with life. Materially our modern world is richer than perhaps any preceding age; spiritually we are paupers. Not all our truly wonderful physical accomplishments, not all our abundance of amusements and sensations can hide the fact that we are poor within. In fact, the task of the latter is to hide the poverty within; when our inner life is arid we must needs create artificial stimuli from without to provide a substitute, or at least cause such an unbroken succession of ever varying sensations that we have no time to notice the absence of life from within.
~J.J. van der Leeuw, Conquest of Illusion
There is an Eastern tale which speaks about a very rich magician who had a great many sheep. But at the same time this magician was very mean. He did not want to hire shepherds, nor did he want to erect a fence about the pasture where his sheep were grazing. The sheep consequently often wandered into the forest, fell into ravines, and so on, and above all they ran away, for they knew that the magician wanted their flesh and skins and this they did not like.
At last the magician found a remedy. He hypnotized his sheep and suggested to them first of all that they were immortal and that no harm was being done to them when they were skinned, that, on the contrary, it would be very good for them and even pleasant; secondly he suggested that the magician was a good master who loved his flock so much that he was ready to do anything in the world for them; and in the third place he suggested to them that if anything at all were going to happen to them it was not going to happen just then, at any rate not that day, and therefore they had no need to think about it. Further the magician suggested to his sheep that they were not sheep at all; to some of them he suggested that they were lions to others that they were eagles, to others that they were men, and to others that they were magicians.
And after this all his cares and worries about the sheep came to an end. They never ran away again but quietly awaited the time when the magician would require their flesh and skins.
This tale is a very good illustration of man's position.
~P.D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous
Is it possible to satisfy your deepest questions about yourself and the cosmos?
Is there a nondogmatic, free-for-the-taking system for doing so that has proven results?
The present sad estate of much philosophy is largely the result of a critical acumen that has run far ahead of the unfoldment of balancing insight. Far be it from me to question the valid functions of the critical spirit, for I would be among the last who would care to abide in a fool's castle of illusion; but criticism by itself leads only to the dead end of universal skepticism. To be sure, this skepticism may be variously disguised, as revealed in statements such as "all knowledge is only probable knowledge," or "knowledge is only warranted assertibility which is tested by how far it serves adaptation of an organism to its environment," or it may lead to the outright denial that there is any such thing as Reality or Truth. But in any case, certainty is lost with even the hope that certainty may ever be found. There are men of strange taste who seem to like the resultant gambler's world of complete uncertainty wherein nothing may be trusted and only illusions are left to feed the yearning for belief. But for all those of deeper religious need, the death of hope for certainty is the ultimate tragedy of absolute pessimism -- not the relative pessimism of a Buddha, a Christ, or a Schopenhauer, who each saw the hopeless darkness of this dark world as well as a Door leading to the undying Light, but rather a pessimism so deep that there is no hope for Light anywhere. Somewhere there must be certainty if the end of life is to be more than eternal despair. And to find this certainty something other than criticism is required.
~ From Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object by Franklin Merrell-Wolff
Spiritual Physics and Engineering
"In spiritual matters, man must become identified as a vector, or force, if he wishes for results. If this vector is aimed in the wrong direction, his life is wasted. Most people do not even bother to make of themselves a vector, even in uncertain spiritual drives. They announce their objectives before they begin to study, and then later announce that they have reached it.
"The Law of the Reversed Vector states that you cannot approach the Truth. You must become (a vector), but you cannot learn the absolute Truth. Not knowing the Truth in the beginning, nor even the true path, we still wish to move toward the Truth....
"We must back into the Truth by backing away from untruth. We still may gamble a bit, because we will not know those things which are untrue in every case. We must develop a faculty, consequently, for being aware of the difference between things true and things untrue. And it will not come suddenly. But we must begin with a simple start, and with faith in progression."
~Richard Rose, The Albigen Papers
"He moves, and He moves not. He is far, and He is near. He is within all, and He is outside all.
"When a sage sees this great Unity and his Self has become all beings, what delusion and what sorrow can ever be near him?
"Into deep darkness fall those who follow action. Into deeper darkness fall those who follow knowledge.
"One is the outcome of knowledge, and another is the outcome of action. Thus have we heard from the ancient sages who explained this truth to us.
"He who knows both knowledge and action, with action overcomes death and with knowledge reaches immortality.
"Into deep darkness fall those who follow the immanent. Into deeper darkness fall those who follow the transcendent."
~From the Isa Upanishad
Note: Who follow the immanent means those who retreat into the luxury of imagination, believing they can create objects of desire -- by physical means. Who follow the transcendent means those who try to objectify transcendent possibilities or possible attainments, rather than wait to realize transcendent powers or truths.
People talk in reverential tones of finding balance on the spiritual path. It sounds so reasonable and wise to proclaim, "I am a spirit and a body." That thought is often followed by this type, "Pleasure exists, so I must partake in it. Please pass the beer." Not that there is anything detrimental to drinking alcohol. What is detrimental is that such proclamations prevent us from discovering what we really are.
Only a fool proclaims he is a spirit and a body. What you are is a body attempting to discover if it has a spirit. Our body, as it currently exists, focuses on the outward world and survival in the jungle of life. We must change our focus to the inner world and to ultimate survival. Those who protest about finding balance are letting the body hide the potential spirit.
In your current state, you cannot presume to know what a balanced life is. Society enables you to sit at a desk all day, sit in front of a tv all night, and still meet your basic physical needs. Such a lifestyle is not healthy for the body, much less conducive to undertaking a spiritual quest. Any balanced or middle way should not be modeled on the average lifestyle. Merely adding meditation (a contemporary alternative to Sunday church attendance) to mundane life will give you a meditative mundane life.
You must be willing to change to become a truth-seeker. You must discover the lies you live, and that will require much purposeful unbalancing. Such disciplines as fasting, dietary modifications, meditation, celibacy, and challenging fears may elicit howls of protest from the body and mind. For example, a beer-drinker might abstain from drinking for a year (perhaps seriously distorting his lifestyle), and discover he doesn't need or want it. Thus, he refines his self-definition and discovers a new position of balance, grace, and strength. Such seeming distortions of normal life may lead to further interesting experiments that challenge your deepest assumptions about your needs, likes, and identity.
Do not worry about finding balance. Rather, identify what prevents you from focusing and thinking about a single goal -- the discovery and answering of your deepest life question. You must discover through experimentation the lifestyle your particular body and mind combination needs in order to unravel the mystery of its existence. Balance will naturally flow from meeting this need. As truths about your self are discovered, balance will be discovered. This is a unique and dynamic process, changing as we change and clarify our question. A question we live, breathe, and become.
~ Shawn Nevins, from the November 2001 TAT Forum
WHAT IS WRONG: For your part, obviously something is wrong with you -- that's why you go to others for certainty. If you were all right, why would you ask others?
KNOW YOURSELF: I tell people to get to know themselves. Some people think this means what beginners observe and consider it easy to understand. Reflect more carefully, in a leisurely manner, what do you call your self?
MIND'S EYE: It is as though you have an eye that sees all forms but does not see itself -- this is how your mind is. Its light penetrates everywhere and engulfs everything so why does it not know itself?
~ Zen Master Foyan (1067 - 1120)
"Every night, half of the people in the first row are crying when the star is singing To Dream the Impossible Dream. It's sad to see successful, middle-aged men with tears streaming down their faces, regretting that they didn't pursue their 'impossible' dreams."
~ An oboe player in the orchestra for The Man from La Mancha
"Success develops arrogance, and one's spiritual progress is arrested. Failure, on the other hand, is beneficial, inasmuch as it opens one's eyes to one's limitations and prepares one to surrender oneself. Self-surrender is synonymous with happiness."
-Ramana Maharshi
"Unsuccess is the guide to Paradise."
-Rumi
Is Sacrifice Necessary for Inner Development?
"Fusion, inner unity, is obtained by means of 'friction,' by the struggle between 'yes' and 'no' in man. If a man lives without inner struggle, if everything happens to him without opposition, if he goes wherever he is drawn or wherever the wind blows, he will remain such as he is. But if a struggle begins in him, and particularly if there is a definite line in this struggle, then, gradually, permanent traits begin to form themselves, he begins to 'crystallize.' But crystallization is possible on a right foundation and it is possible on a wrong foundation. 'Friction,' the struggle between 'yes' and 'no,' can easily take place on the wrong foundation. For instance, a fanatical belief in some or other idea, or the 'fear of sin,' can evoke a terribly intense struggle between 'yes' and 'no,' and a man may crystallize on these foundations. But this would be a wrong, incomplete development. In order to make further development possible he must be melted down again, and this can be accomplished only through terrible suffering...."
"In what way can one evoke the struggle between 'yes' and 'no' in oneself?" someone asked.
"Sacrifice is necessary," said Gurdjieff. "If nothing is sacrificed nothing is obtained. And it is necessary to sacrifice something precious at the moment, to sacrifice for a long time and to sacrifice a great deal. But still, not forever. This must be understood because often it is not understood. Sacrifice is necessary only while the process of crystallization is going on. When crystallization is achieved, renunciations, privations, and sacrifices are no longer necessary. Then a man may have everything he wants. There are no longer any laws for him, he is a law unto himself."
~ P.D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous
"Before we can develop a connection with our inner self, or true intelligence, we must be shown the stark fact that such a connection does not yet exist. In other words, we must see ourselves as we truly are, a SMAARP: a self-maintaining accidental associative reaction pattern, a robot. This robot may have the programming to make its way through life in a reasonable fashion, but it is sorely lacking in answering the fundamental questions about reality, Truth and our origin and destiny. Nature will assist the majority of mechanical men on their journey through life. It will not help with matters outside its domain. For this, a form of intelligence on a higher order than associative reaction is needed."
-Bob Fergeson
... Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations....
The Master leads
by emptying people's minds
and filling their cores,
by weakening their ambition
and toughening their resolve.
He helps people lose everything
they know, everything they desire,
and creates confusion
in those who think that they know....
In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don't try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present....
Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner....
~ Lao-tse (Tao te Ching)
"Look within; within is the fountain of all good. Such a fountain where springing waters can never fail...."
-Marcus Aurelius
Is there such a fountain? Where is "within," and how does one get there?
"The psychological condition of fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate danger. It comes in many forms: unease, worry, anxiety, nervousness, tension, dread, phobia, and so on. This kind of psychological fear is always of something that might happen, not of something that is happening now. You are in the here and now, while your mind is in the future. This creates an anxiety gap. And if you are identified with your mind and have lost touch with the power and simplicity of the Now, that anxiety gap will be your constant companion. You can always cope with the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that is only a mind projection -- you cannot cope with the future.
"Moreover, as long as you are identified with your mind, the ego runs your life.... Because of its phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This, by the way, is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident. Now remember that an emotion is the body's reaction to your mind. What message is the body receiving continuously from the ego, the false, mind-made self? Danger, I am under threat. And what is the emotion generated by this continuous message? Fear, of course.
"Fear seems to have many causes. Fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of being hurt, and so on, but ultimately all fear is the ego's fear of death, of annihilation. To the ego, death is always just around the corner. In this mind-identified state, fear of death affects every aspect of your life. For example, even such a seemingly trivial and "normal" thing as the compulsive need to be right in an argument and make the other person wrong -- defending the mental position with which you have identified -- is due to the fear of death. If you identify with a mental position, then if you are wrong, your mind-based sense of self is seriously threatened with annihilation. So you as the ego cannot afford to be wrong. To be wrong is to die. Wars have been fought over this, and countless relationships have broken down."
-Eckhart Tolle, The Power of NOW
"To tell the truth, I feel like I lost myself somewhere along the way. My life is all reaction. I don't know why I do the things I do other than it seems like a good idea at the time. Life plan? How the hell do I know what to do or where to look when I don't know what I want, what will lead to some satisfaction." - K.T. (CMU student)
|
Sangsara
Thou monster, spawned of Ignorance impregnated by human ideation; |
Nirvana
FELT DIMLY in the soul, by world-man unconceived; |
Believe in... Doubt?
Struggling blindly in the fog of beliefs, you grasp first one then another in the quest for security.
What you seek lies between and behind these beliefs. I am the respectful doubt, the solvent that detaches beliefs.
Believe in Me.
> Does doubt always lead to nihilism? Is it also a path to Certainty?
Confronting basic issues
· What am I doing here? Does my individual existence have meaning?
· What should I do with my life? Is purpose something I have to invent or something to be discovered?
· Is there a way to think clearly, uncontaminated by the many forms of conditioning to which we've been subjected by parents, teachers, peers, canons of culture, religious authorities, possibly even genetic memories, and so on?
· Is there a way to think coolly, uninfluenced by our often-conflicting fears and desires?
· Who am I? What is the essential nature of my being?
· Where did I come from? Did my awareness arise out of nothing, coincident with my becoming self-conscious in this body?
· Where am I going? Will my awareness evaporate at or soon after death?
· What is my relationship to the cosmos? To my fellow creatures?
· Is truth relative to the observer? Is an observer only able to perceive a corner of the truth? Is it possible for the finite mind to become less finite?
Question: What's the basic issue in your life?
What is thought?
· It is really extraordinarily interesting to watch the operation of one's own thinking, just to observe how one thinks, where that reaction we call thinking springs from
· Thought in human relationships is always demanding pleasure which it covers by different words like loyalty, helping, giving, sustaining, serving
· Thought is so cunning, so clever that it distorts everything for its own convenience
· Thought in its demand for pleasure brings its own bondage
· Those who think a great deal are very materialistic because thought is matter. Thought is matter as much as the floor, the wall, the telephone are matter.
· A new fact cannot be seen by thought. It can be understood only later by thought, verbally, but the understanding of a new thought is not reality to thought.
· Thought can never solve any psychological problem
· Thought is crooked because it can invent anything and sees things that are not there. It can perform the most extraordinary tricks and therefore cannot be depended upon.
· But if you understand the whole structure of how you think, why you think, the words you use, the way you behave in your daily life, the way you talk to people, the way you eat -- if you are aware of all of these things then your mind will not deceive you, then there is nothing to be deceived. The mind then is not something that demands, that subjugates; it becomes extraordinarily quiet, pliable, sensitive, alone, and in that state there is no deception whatsoever.
~Excerpts on though from J. Krishnamurti's Freedom from the Known
Question: What do you trust in yourself?
Self-Examination
"The unexamined life is not worth living." - Plato
- What's an examined life?
- How do you do it?
"To understand everything except yourself is comical." - Kierkegaard
- Who's laughing?
"To understand others is to have knowledge; to understand oneself is to be liberated." - Lao-tzu
- Liberated from what?
Question: What don't you understand about yourself?
What is meaningful in life?
As critical as technology is to our economy, we must never mistake it for culture. The business of education is more than mere information. The business of education is to transfer knowledge of what's meaningful in life. Unlike information, knowledge cannot be poured into the minds of students like water into a glass.
~ Zell Miller, A National Party No More
Question: What is meaningful in your life?