Fringe Subjects - Revisited
Posted on September 27, 2007
Filed Under Journal, Society, Spirituality, Consciousness |
Attila raised some good questions in the comments to my previous post - “Becoming Open to Fringe Subjects”, giving me the opportunity to expand upon some of the areas I touched there.
“Waking-up”
In order to get a better understanding of what I mean by sleep-living it seems a good idea to begin with what I consider to be “waking-up”. This is very difficult to address without being too pedantic; after all how would I answer the question, “What is love?”, or “What is life?”.
Waking-up, like many other subjects is difficult to define in any singular way - because it covers pretty much every corner of our reality.
Waking-up begins with questions. Many people live their entire life without ever asking questions; they simply go through the motions of a day-to-day life on autopilot. Living on an endless repetitive treadmill, their minds are switched off to what they are doing and what is going on around them. We may watch the news, or pay attention to what our friends or family are doing, but how deep does this attention or awareness actually go?
Have you ever woke up in the morning and thought; “Why the hell am I getting up to go to work today, what is the point to all this?” or “Why am I even bothering with school, what are they really teaching me?” This is the questioning mind set that I am talking about - and it is the beginning of the process of waking up. Most of the time - in answer to these questions we simply decide; “Because that’s the way it is.” or “Because that is how it has always been done.” or even, “Because it is necessary.” A lot of people are never really happy with those answers, but they accept them and carry on along the treadmill regardless.
But if a time comes when those answers are no longer good enough - and if the urge behind the questions is strong enough - then an entirely new process begins. This is Step One in waking up: Questioning what you have been brought-up to do and believe. Questioning the things you have been conditioned to do, questioning the things that you have always done without question.
Step Two, is becoming aware of the conditioning process; or to put it another way - opening your eyes to the mechanical plodding nature of how we live. Why do people watch 3 or 4 hours of TV in the evening? Why do people believe what the TV says? In fact how often do you hear someone refer to the TV as the ultimate authority; “I heard this on TV!” (so it must be true). Why do people work 40 hours a week? Because they need the money - certainly. But it doesn’t just end there, people follow a routine every day; wake-up, get dressed, eat breakfast, drive to work and so on. It all happens in a robotic manner. How many people do you know that have retired and then feel at a loose end - because they don’t know what to do with their time? Their minds are still in the sleep-work-eat-sleep routine. Step Two of waking up then is becoming aware or our conditioned robotic nature - and realizing that we really aren’t robots. Which leads to Step Three…
Step Three is Conscious Thinking, or to put it very simply - being aware of what you do and who you are. At this point a person slowly (or very rapidly) learns to break all their conditioning or robotic habits, (why do you have two sugars in your coffee rather than one? (Watch for your instant auto-response answer!!), Why do you buy a particular brand of food? Why do you get annoyed by that thing your friend / brother / mum does? Why do these questions bug you?) The great thing about the conditioned mind is that it has an automatic answer for all these things. When waking up those automatic answers are no longer good enough - after all, why do you choose those particular automatic answers?
Why do so many people automatically dismiss certain phenomena as impossible or just an illusion? Why do people believe science holds the only explanation for anything (science once proved the world was flat)? Why do people believe there are only five elements and five senses? Why are so many issues put into two categories…true or false. Black or White. Up or Down. Do we look up at the stars - or out at them?
Step Four is questioning our conditioned reality.
Step Five is questioning reality. Step Six is learning how to experience reality, rather than relying on what we think it is.
Step Seven is understanding our inner reality.
Of course there aren’t really any steps. And waking up never happens in a linear progression over a set time frame, such an idea comes from a conditioned mind trapped in semantic and linear reasoning, (ask yourself where that comes from). Then again - it isn’t always questions that cause people to wake up. Sometimes it is the shock of having your conditioned reality smashed.
If you were so inclined you could put waking-up into categories instead of steps. Awakening to Conditioned Reality, Awakening to Physical Reality, Awakening to Spiritual Reality, and all the levels therein. There are so many ways to look at this, that to give a real solid definition doesn’t do it justice.
So is waking-up “relative”? Of course because there are so many ways and areas to wake-up too. And we are all asleep to a greater or lesser extent.
Sleep-Living
Spend any amount of time among children - and you will quickly realize that they are far less asleep than an adult is. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” the child is asked. How many concepts does that single question pre-suppose? Growing up and getting old. An understanding of linear time. The belief that we are what we do. The notion of wanting. The notion of controlling your future. The idea of not being in-the-moment. And so on…
But the adult doesn’t consider all that. They just want an instant response from the child. Who is more asleep then, the adult or the child?
The child lacks awareness of the physical world and the adults interpretation of it. The adult lacks the in-the-moment awareness, and fresh eyed absence of assumptions which the child possesses. Children have a lot to teach - too bad the teaching process is always one-way.
I have great recollection of when I was young. My youngest memories are from two years of age. I can remember at the age four thinking how bizarre the adult-world was. It was decades later before I realized that adults do the things they do because they don’t question. That people simply follow a routine each and every day. That knowledge of the world is valued higher than awareness and experience of the world.
Children have no pre-packaged knowledge of the physical world. They learn from experience, in order to enhance their awareness. Yet when they get to school, they are taught in the form of knowledge instead of being taught through experience. Sit a kid on a piano and they will learn it fairly quickly - because they have no assumptions and they don’t try and relate to the piano. They simply play it. Meanwhile the adult tries to understand it, they want knowledge about it - they need to relate to it so that it makes sense to them. Who is more awake?
Sleep-living is believing in the knowledge of reality - over and above your experience of reality. Knowledge can come in any form and it can also be wrong. Society conditions into us the belief that knowledge is the sacred alter and once learnt needn’t be questioned. On the other hand, experience can be mis-interpreted, but all the time you remain questioning your mind will remain open. Those who sleep-live, choose one of these over the other - rather than developing an integration of both.
Becoming open to Fringe Subjects
Fringe subjects are the forte of those who are - to one degree or another - awake. This is because fringe subjects require a questioning and open mind. A conditioned mind is an unquestioning mind. An unquestioning mind is a closed mind, and closed minds have no interest in the strange or unusual.
Waking-up happens in a thousand-thousand different ways. You cannot wake a person up who doesn’t want to be woken-up. And you will not wake up if a large percentage of your world-view is based on unquestioned knowledge. I can’t tell you how or why a person wakes up - in fact this would be a fantastic subject of discussion! I can only tell you about my own experience. To some degree I was always awake, because I never viewed the world through a semantic lens of unquestioned knowledge. Although I did develop a strong repartee of assumptions. Over the years I took on layer upon layer of conditioning, first from my parents, then from school, and then from the work-place and society.
Waking-up never really took me any great effort. What does continue to take effort, is breaking my own seemingly unending layers of conditioning and social-programming.
I asked previously what gives us such an innate pre-disposition to receive this conditioning (what I call “brain-washing). Children don’t appear to be born conditioned, firstly this is clear to anyone with a little direct observation - and secondly children from different cultures develop in a different manner. So where do you think this pre-disposition comes from?
I also feel that the issue of waking up is directly tied into the above question. Why do some people wake-up easier than others? Seeing as everyone seems to wake-up in a different manner, perhaps we could get closer to understanding this from hearing different experiences. So, does the idea of “waking-up” resonate with you? And if so when and how did you wake up?
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Unless you are thought and learn how to appreciate a certain kind of music, you can not. It depends very much on the milieu how you perceive the world and yourself. The conditioning part is obvious since you are unable to enjoy something unless you are used to it, unless you’ve learnt how to do it. You appreciate jazz if you have learnt how to do that. Even asking questions I tend to believe it is due to a similar mechanism. This is also learnt, it is due to some influence. Let’s say a philosopher’s or maybe guru’s influence, whoever. But one actually doesn’t really understand what a probably awakened one is talking about, although one can try very hard. No way. It is paradoxical, even absurd. The paradox of moving the focal point from comparative reality into existential reality. You might believe the awakened one, or not. Act in accordance to the teachings, to the recipes for awakening. But that is still mechanic, nothing more. Let’s say that the awakened one decides he will do whatever in his power to awaken you. Still, there is no guarantee he will succeed. Because it does not depend on him. So, our lives are so much more mechanic, ‘robotic’, more then we are able to realize. We are amazing creatures, most amazing computers. And there is a need for such an extraordinary effort towards awakening, still no guarantees that one will succeed. Awakening at different levels is essentially a theory we can discuss about. A theory we have learnt. But in reality we can actually go up until our own level inside the perfect computer and its existence, and do not know how it is like outside the computer. It is unnatural. We have learnt about it from statements of those claiming to reached that level. And even if we reach that level, whatever we say about it will be treated as information to chew upon. There is an essential barrier. Even this is to be treated like information, going through your own mechanisms of processing information, drawing conclusions, accepting, rejecting, liking, disliking etc.
[ Quote ]It strikes me now Attila, that rather than my long reply (which is now below this comment)…a single question would have been better served.
Why have you chosen to view yourself as a computer? I am not talking about how you view other people, theories, science, life or the world. I am talking about you personally. What makes you feel that your very own, personal and individual self - is a computer? (And I am not arguing for or against the idea of us being computers, I just want to know what part of self-observation led you to this belief).
[ Quote ]Attila, I totally agree with what you are saying. But to be clear, you are talking about this from a “third person” perspective. The idea of trying to understand the words of a guru, or another person. Of comparative reality. I am not talking about that, I am talking about personal experience
Give a baby a toy for the first time, and they will enjoy it. They aren’t used to it because they have never experienced it before. The joy comes from the experience not the understanding. You mentioned enjoying Jazz, but are you talking about the enjoyment of a connoisseur or critic? That is “intellectual” enjoyment. What about the pure joy in en-joy-ment?
An analogy for what you are saying would be; a blind-man trying to understand the notion of the colour green – by listening to the words of a guru. It simply cannot happen. The blind-man may learn to understand “green” on an intellectual level, but he wouldn’t have experience of it.
So you are quite right. The personal experience of having awakened is very different to listening to or relating to another persons view or words on the matter.
What you are talking about is trying to understand awakening on an intellectual level. And I agree that cannot be done.
What I am talking about is personally experiencing the awakening process. As you say people can be guided towards that experience, but they cannot be shown it directly. It requires understanding from a common point of reference, it isn’t something that is learnt - it is something that is experienced. You can be shown the door, but you have to walk through it yourself.
It’s very hard to grasp unless you have personally gone through a similar experience.
I used to believe I understood what Zen and the Tao are. I could write down or talk about it, and tell people exactly what it is. But I only had an intellectual grasp on it. I would attempt to relate to Zen monks, and tell them what they are experiencing. I was a fool, because I was processing the data as information, whilst they were experiencing the data directly. Two very different things! Eventually I got knocked down on my ass. The ground fell away from me, and I realized I knew nothing. You can piece together my experiences of this from my various postings.
But it isn’t an experience I can directly communicate - I can only point to it…because it is beyond words, and before thought.
As you say - there are barriers; mechanisms of processing information. This is the intellectual mind, but it isn’t the true mind. Processing information is what we do it isn’t what we are. You can use the analogy of being a ‘perfect-computer’, but that is just a belief system like all other beliefs. Belief systems create barriers. But eventually – for some people, something occurs which causes those barriers to break; that is what happened to me. When this happens, it is like being in free fall. And that’s when you begin to awaken…
[ Quote ]I understand that you wish to talk from the focal point of personal experience. At this one, we differ. But I am not talking usually of things which weren’t part of my experience or the space /frame in which I consider self development either. Or at least of some good reasoning
The example with the baby is a good one. They enjoy the new toy. At first. But then they just throw it away like the toy was never there. Slowly they learn to get attached… but it is always a wonderful experience to watch them being so detached, still very much present.
Regarding the music part, not necessarily a connoisseur, but think of someone from a totally different culture. Will listen to it, will give some pleasure, but will never enjoy it so much like the kind of music he got used to in his own milieu. Anyway, the example might be questionable, but I was trying to refer to the mechanism that processes even this kind of experiences and makes it relative and subjective (not in an ontological sense).
The mechanistic theory, the “wonderful computer” & co. is just for a sort of easier referencing. I prefer this one nowadays, but I agree with other working frames for understanding the human being. The analogy is essentially pointing to the idea that we are not constantly aware of ourselves, not aware of existing, of being (in the present moment). Aka: Self-remembering. Most of the time we are subjects of perceiving and reacting, why not: conditioned in so many ways. The mind is preoccupied mostly with the dimensions of past and future, rarely the present. It is almost never bifocal, both realizing the remembrance of existence and also acting in the world. Which I think is the way towards awakening, towards existential reality.
I am not considering just the intellectual part, although it might have sounded like. My English fails me sometimes… This can include instinctual impulses, emotional waves, all missing the presence of the self. Not true emotions, only reactions. So many thoughts, feelings, impulses etc. taking over the “wonderful computer”, like a house where nobody is home. The owner/resident/inhabitant went to dreamland
[ Quote ]“The example with the baby is a good one. They enjoy the new toy. At first. But then they just throw it away like the toy was never there. Slowly they learn to get attached… but it is always a wonderful experience to watch them being so detached, still very much present.
Yes. This is the point of both of my “Fringe Subject” posts. The baby is detached. Then becomes attached. Though, it is certainly possible to learn to become detached again.
“The mind is preoccupied mostly with the dimensions of past and future, rarely the present. It is almost never bifocal, both realizing the remembrance of existence and also acting in the world. Which I think is the way towards awakening, towards existential reality.”
This is essentially what I have hinted at in both of these Fringe Subject posts. It is also the central theme to most of my site.
Sometimes it sounds like your comments are debating or disagreeing with what I am posting. Which is totally fine - after all, no one is saying I am “correct”. But then you and I appear to be saying the same thing as each other. Maybe as you say, the confusion is down to the language barrier.
We have gone in circles like this before. And I really cannot understand or see why you are perceiving a difference between what I am saying and what you are saying. We are just saying the same thing in different ways aren’t we?
You say ‘computer’, I say ‘asleep’. You say ‘bi-focal awareness’, I say ‘conscious awareness’. Is it the differing terms that we are debating, (in which case we are discussing semantics – which is pointless)? Or are we discussing methodology?
“I understand that you wish to talk from the focal point of personal experience. At this one, we differ. But I am not talking usually of things which weren’t part of my experience or the space /frame in which I consider self development either.”
Or is the only difference that I am talking in first person, and you are talking in third person?
[ Quote ]I did not mean to bother. I just thought that making conversation on the topics suggested here can have some clarifying effect. For me at least
Also, I am trying to get comfortable with the terminology that you use here. Regarding the topics, I enjoy a lot reading your thoughts. That’s the main message and if the “debate” (intended as conversation) doesn’t make it obvious I apologize. And that is a good point that we might be involuntarily discussing methodology. Maybe that is for the future to bring to the surface.
[ Quote ]You are never a bother Attila. I always enjoy reading your comments - and they have inspired a fair amount of the content I have posted on this site over the last few months! So keep them coming!!
The point I was trying to make with my last comment is this: Sometimes in discussions one of the people, (or both), get the wrong impression. The discussion then ends up like two magnets each with reversed polarity. They kinda repel off each other. The Internet confounds this problem because we only have text to rely upon. No body language, no vocal tone etc. So it is easy to mis-interpret - and we all end up talking about different things - thinking we are discussing the same thing. I was just trying to work out if that is what was going on here…and I think it probably was (largely due to me making incorrect assumptions). But it’s always good to make clarifications, because now we both know - and all is good.
Keep the conversations going; as that is what this site is all about! And thanks for your comments!
[ Quote ]