• Registered: 2006-03-29

Re: Elimination of Fear is the Beginning of Attention

Oceanchild:  Ok, I'm going to go back and dig a little deeper in my mind to see if I can gain a better vantage point of the process I've been undertaking to clear the thought loops.

Awareness does in fact stop the thought loops.  I find there were many stages or shall I say added weight to the awareness end of the scale that slowly counter-balanced the automatic thought loops.  Think of a scale.  One side of the scale has all the accumalated thought loops we have added to ourselves in response to our environement.  The other side would be awareness.  Weight needed to be added to the awareness side by actively stopping thought loops.  This required effort.  The weight of the thought loops made them automatic.  In other words, no effort simply because they were formed over many years and worked well for interacting with the environment around me.

So it did take effort to stop these thought loops.  At the same time, there were many that would not cease.  I needed to examine these and find out why they still played out automatically during certain circumstances.  Then I needed to basically find the root and add new learnings to show my mind these thought loops were no longer necessary.  I was teaching my old self with new realizations.

This added weight to the awareness side of the scale.  In other words, the effort helped make the awareness slowly become the more natural state of mind.  A favorite song quote comes to mind.  "Another robot learns to be something more than a machine".

I also added mental alarms for thought loops that I was keeping an eye out for.  If I slacked in awareness, which early on was the majority of time, I would have an alarm go of for certain thought loops.  Then I could stop and examine the thoughts and the situations that were playing out during the thought loops.  Same as above, I would add new logic to show myself these thought loops were no longer necessary.

Slowly but surely the scales were tipped in favor of a non-effort awareness (instead of non-effort thought loops).  20 years worth of that robot mentality.  10 years worth of effort to tip the scales.  Honestly, I haven't completely finished in regard to the cultivation of non-effort awareness.  However, the scales have tipped and it gets easier everyday to stay in that awareness.

I don't necessarily think my personal experiences negate what Krishnamurti is stating.  I just didn't see the path from 'robot to awareness' in the quotes you gave.  I like the higher level teachings.  I like seeing the end result first and then forming the path to get there from my current position.  Some of the first teachings that started me on my path were just like the quotes you gave.  But being personally realistic, I was unable to hold the awareness straight out of the box.  So I just took the teachings to be the result of work.  That once you got there the non-effort awareness had the properties described.  Those higher level teachings were one part of the motivation that kept me going.  I wanted to experience the results that those teachings showed me.

  • Registered: 2005-10-16

Re: Elimination of Fear is the Beginning of Attention

Interesting and challenging quote from Krishnamurti's list today:

=== JKrishnamurti.org - Daily Quote ===

Perverted pleasure

There is such a thing as sadism. Do you know what that word means? An author called the Marquis de Sade once wrote a book about a
man who enjoyed hurting people and seeing them suffer. From that comes the word sadism, which means deriving pleasure from the
suffering of others. For certain people there is a peculiar satisfaction in seeing others suffer. Watch yourself and see if you have
this feeling. It may not be obvious, but if it is there you will find that it expresses itself in the impulse to laugh when somebody
falls. You want those who are high to be pulled down; you criticize, gossip thoughtlessly about others, all of which is an
expression of insensitivity, a form of wanting to hurt people. One may injure another deliberately, with vengeance, or one may do it
unconsciously with a word, with a gesture with a look; but in either case the urge is to hurt somebody, and there are very few who
radically set aside this perverted form of pleasure."

"The unknown does not incite fear, but dependence on the known does." - J. Krishnamurti

visavis's Website

  • Registered: 2005-04-10

Re: Elimination of Fear is the Beginning of Attention

another interesting and challenging quote:

"Look, Sirs, because the mind is quiet, the body becomes still, not the other way round. You force your body to sit still. You do all kinds of things to come upon this strange beauty of silence. Do not do it, just observe. Look, Sirs, you know in all this are various powers of clairvoyance, reading somebody’s thought. There are various powers, you know what I am talking about, don’t you? You call them siddhis, don’t you? Do you know all these things are like candles – candlelight in the sun? When there is no sun, there is darkness, and then the light of the candle is very important; but when there is the sun, the light, the beauty, the clarity, then all these powers, these siddhis, are like candlelight. They have no value at all. And when you have the light, there is nothing else – developing various centres, the charkas, kundalinis, you know all that business. You need a sane, logical, reasoning mind, not a stupid mind. A mind that is dull can sit for centuries breathing, concentrating on various charkas, and you know all that playing with kundalinis, - it can never come upon that which is timeless, that which is real beauty, truth and love.

So put aside the candlelight which all the gurus and the books offer you. And do not repeat a word that you yourself have not seen the truth of, which you yourself have not tested."

more here: http://www.katinkahesselink.net/kr/med_clai.html

and more still here: http://www.katinkahesselink.net/kr/

... checking out the mirror of relationship ...

oceanchild's Website