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!

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?

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

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…

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).