Ego is the subject, and ego is in a way all subjects and all subjectivity. We are drilled pretty heavily in the ideas and activities of ego, and in a lot of things we are supposed to do about selves. What would we do without all this self thinking? Without all this self thinking we could have self experience, but that is not allowed in our teaching/training/conditioning is it?

No, and I think we’re conditioned into self thinking to actually avoid the experience. Yes, because experience would guide our actions, and if self experience guided our actions they would have to deal with actual individuals, and individual on individual relating. It might be that relationships couldn’t be influenced negatively by outsider factors at the will of the same outsiders, and it could be that groups would pursue agendas they are actually invested in rather than bending knee to necessity.

No controlling the masses you mean? Exactly. They say self experience/self interest would lead to selfishness and a refusal to consider the greater good. Who is considering the greater good now? Is our leadership considering the greater good?

Define greater good? Hmm, the greater good is feeding the “source”, the common support, but the common support has been masked, distorted. By institution? Yes. Institution = group ego.

Now there is a movement, and I’m wondering if anyone else notices this. That any “self” is bad. Supposedly, if you fully develop awareness, and if you are supposedly as advanced as you should be, you should see a list of truths that your sole purpose is to know. Or so they say. Supposedly, reflexively observing this enlightenment beyond any self will reflexively make everyone behave as enlightened Buddha’s. Anyone met an enlightened Buddha recently? Supposedly, we can all move into this no-self state and we can all be very enlightened, but as a whole we are just being negligent.

Eckhart Tolle said that when one is enlightened the self thinking stops, but it also stops when one watches TV. Is this why TV is so popular? Oh, I would say so, and I agree with him that self thinking isn’t a positive activity, but he seems to stop short. I don’t know if it’s commercial editing of his work, or if he really doesn’t see more than that. Has someone read an explanation of his deeper thought on that? We have a “self.” There is a self that can be observed even if it isn’t served by “thinking” about it.

I received a quote from my KrishnaMurti group. “I was thinking how important it is to be innocent, to have an innocent mind. Experiences are inevitable, perhaps necessary; life is a series of experiences, but the mind need not be burdened with its own accumulative demands. It can wipe off each experience and keep itself innocent – unburdened. This is important, otherwise the mind can never be fresh, alert and pliable. The ‘how’ to keep the mind pliable is not the problem; the ‘how’ is the search for a method, and method can never make the mind innocent; it can make it methodical, but never innocent, creative.” Jiddu Krishnamurti

Ah, well put and relevant. With experience of self, the existent/present self, your understanding of any experience changes. You see the experience not as the absolute way of the world, which is a mistaken notion, but as the way of your relating at that moment. And the term innocence is heavily used, but for english speaking purposes it still contains the proper meaning. Innocence/guilt. We judge “ourselves”, our “selves”, and we don’t know ourselves, so we judge incorrectly.

Any event can arise from self, even the ones you blame on other people and the world. They do. So rather than looking at the world as a passive judge of your actions, and as being the keeper of evidence of either your success or your failure however you judge it, with real experience of self you realize you are innocent. The world is keeping no record of your rights or wrongs. The world is no respecter of persons, neither of your triumphs or your sufferings, and any creative event can arise from nothing more than your vision.

The idea of stopping self thought is stopping short because it doesn’t go to the next step of self experience? Yes. Nor illustrate the connection between self and “not-self.” Nor empower/inform your choices in the world. Are we really just all supposed to be ascetic Buddha’s? Forgetting self is easy, and dwelling on the past is mistaken for love, and the Buddha tried it and gave it up as pointless.

Dwelling on the past is like keeping a beloved pet in its special place long after it died, because you “loved” it. Dwelling is not love. It is not even close. Love is engagement. Motion. Love is spiritual dance which includes honouring endings. Now some people think they honour endings by allowing everything to “end”. Saying all good things must end. Cycles in nature are perpetual, but human “cleverness” focuses on one phase and declares it knows the deepest truth.

When you think of broken marriages does it feel right? For me it doesn’t, and people point fingers and come up with arguments for how marriage is an outdated institution and that people aren’t meant to be exclusive or have a life long mate. Does this feel true? I think they are guessing at something that is right. Endings weren’t honoured. Life is a series of little deaths, and creativity in life a series of little births, and self thinking ignores awareness of this cycle. I know people who if they were my partner would have dumped me when I changed from Merlin in Second Life to Seth. Is that at all sane?

People ignore or don’t allow the little cycles of birth/death inside the relationship, so the relationship doesn’t endure. As naturally it cannot, and they don’t because of self thinking. My change in identity in Second Life in the context of self thinking constitutes untrustworthiness. I would have to have been guilty of a lie, rather than pursuing a deeper truth. That can’t be kept in the paradigm of self thinking, so they would decide that I had alienated them.

Yes, their thought ‘fixates’ their idea of self. Yes.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~