Hi Murtaza

But you don’t doubt this. You “know” with certainty that certainty is not possible,

I was wrong to question your experience of doubt. My thought was that you had built up a catch 22 self validating loop that your well-developed mode of ‘knowing’, the mind, can’t break you out of.

I honestly have no idea how to make it happen in real life, at one point i think you said, its not something you choose, from the story it seems that luck/randomness made the sparrow realize, what if he wasn’t lucky enough? What if there is another sparrow that didn’t had this realization?

When we use a world like ‘choose’ we tend to imagine a clear intention attached to a specific outcome, initiated by a force of will to ‘made it so’ always open to disappointed when it doesn’t turn out exactly as we expect.  Such an experience of choice is a product of mind and for many of life’s choices works just fine.  However it doesn’t work so well when we find ourselves stuck, especially when it was the reasoning mind that got us stuck.

So difficult to explain… The sparrow after all its striving lays disappointed and depressed on the ground.  In this state of mind/being, it is not capable of noticing the breeze that points to a way out.
Noticing the breeze is NOT a random act of luck as it requires work. (It will take work to release the mind and allow ‘flow’ – other ways of ‘knowing’ – to ‘speak’, which was always present, just not noticed. – Thus it is said we return home and ‘know’ it for the first time. Such is the realization of all illumination.)

The unconscious has noticed the breeze long ago but the Minds attachment and self validation to what it ‘knows’ keeps it from “hearing” other experiences of ‘knowing’. Sure From the point of view of mind/ego ‘letting go’ of what it knows can be experienced as giving in to random chance and losing control, its not even sure it has, and so it resists.

The sparrow could give up, as the number of bones laying around suggest those the came before have done. Instead, the sparrow’s act of well, its choice, is to be still and be quite.

The self-validating mind has not found the way out and so the sparrow asks it to be still and to wait.
To do this sparrow notes it feelings of disappointments and depression and detaches. The Sparrow has emotions and experiences but is NOT its emotions and experiences.
The Sparrow notices the past and how it got to where it is and detaches from that as well (It does not disavow the experiences  but refuses to judge or measure. By not judging a labeling the experiences are noticed and allowed/free to flow).
As for the imagined future the sparrow has no time for it, yet doing so this is not a detachment from hope or intention. The intention of allowing the future and not grasping is a difficult tension hold.  The art of allowing is not a surrender to random chance or control/intention as ones eyes and ears* are always open. Allowing involves a surrender to attaching and labeling which blocks flow, not a surrender to apathy or indifference.

Allowing does not ignore the past or feelings but a loosening of their grip so that the Sparrow might empty itself. Its in that space that the ‘heart’ and ‘gut’ can be heard. New information.

The work of ’emptying’ and ‘allowing’ is far from leaving things to chance and randomness. It involves a full participation.

*Another riddle. ‘I’ do not see, eyes see. ‘I’ do no hear ears hear

• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by Peter.

Hi Murtaza

For me its like giving up my mind, the most thing i value, the control i think i have.

Totally get that.

Like you I desire to have all the info before making a choice

I have this doubt that makes it impossible to know something for sure, even if i got all the possible info, there would be still some missing info, some gusses, and depending on luck and randomness, i can’t have that, i don’t trust that, i started to feel that whatever choice im gonna make, its gonna be just as disappointing as picking it randomly.

Lots to unpack here. You have this doubt that it makes it impossible to know with certainty.  But you don’t doubt this. You “know” with certainty that certainty is not possible, some unknows will always be involved in any choice.  You can’t or do not want to accept what you ‘know’  which is getting in the way of you finding a ‘skillful’ way of living with what you know.  One of the things  noted in your comments is that they show no indication of being in doubt. You have no doubt about the present which you tend to project into the future which is going to be “just as disappointing” as if picked randomly = no control = despair.

The one certainty I have is that ‘We very easily create what we Fear’ more so then what we hope for. I know this because I do it (and observe it) all the time.

I guess I still have a kind of hope. Hope that the “third force”

Did it happen yet? Did the third force got any closer? For me i can’t do that, i can relay on hope, it feels like im lying to myself, something i despise.

That the conciseness of which you experience your problems can’t be the same conciseness that solves it

But this is the only conciseness i have, “all i know, is what i know”

I did a horrible job trying to articulate that. Perhaps because its not only ‘mind’ thing, not a thinking thing… I’ll try a story

A sparrow is trapped in a empty old grain silo. During the day the sun shines through the cracks in the wall and in panic the bird flutters around checking out each ray of light hoping for a why out but the cracks are never big enough. Every night the bird lies exhausted, disappointed, in the dark, depressed. This cycle continues until the bird no longer checks out the rays of light for escape. To depressed to be depressed at rock bottom the sparrow finds itself ’empty’ – stops thinking, dreaming, worrying, even hoping… this emptying is a happening not a something willed for if the sparrow thinks this is not what it wants. In this emptiness , this space, this quietness, the sparrow notices a breeze coming from a small hole in the ground that it had never noticed before. Entering into a dark hole in the ground is the last thing the sparrow would ever had imagined itself doing, one of the reasons perhaps it was not conscious of it before. Terrified the sparrow enters the dark tunnel that goes deep into the ground until it eventually leads upward and into the world.

The third force and ‘new’ consciousness is the breeze from the dark hole in the ground the sparrow felt and did not come from  the mind in which it was stuck. While the sparrow was franticly fluttering around seeking out ever crack of light for a answer or laying defeated on the ground stuck in its mind/fear it was blind to the experience of the breeze. It is only when the sparrow  detaches from mind, fear, depression, hope even love… that the third happens and the way out becomes conscious.   Not known as the sparrow cannot know what lies within the dark hole. Only that the breeze was fresh air (new level of knowing). The way out is not up but down. The sparrow lived happy ever after… when one day it found it self in a house with no obvious way out…

The way out (any new level of knowing/consciousness) is not up but down.  Letting go (emptying) of the thinking (mind) that keeps you stuck which I know is terrifying.

I just saw your question to TeaK

I think what TeaK was suggesting is similar to what I am getting at in the above.  That the conciseness of which you experience your problems can’t be the same conciseness that solves it.  You have been so consistent in your thinking and responses that its its become part of the issue that needs to be addressed. In one this ability to be so consistent is a strength and at the same time a weakness that gets in the way.

As you ask the question and frustration becomes How?

Everything I have read in the last few years points to the answer involving the Zen concept of doing by not doing, the act of will which evolves the letting go of ‘will’, synchronicity (participating in ‘creation’ by entering into the flow vice going against it)… we work for that which no work is required….
This is not Passive but a Active engagement that does not ‘hold on’, that lets go of “itself”, its outcomes….creating space…

Every wisdom tradition suggesting that a ‘new level of conciseness’ is possible (may even be Life’s goal) and that the way involves a ability’s  of allowing the happening. (getting out of our own way).  Thus the ego work – ego conciseness is limited, liner and tends to be binary and not able to solve the issues it creates. It takes a healthy ego to let go of ego and engage (another paradox)… And in the end we return to where we started and ‘know’ it for the first time.

Hi Murtaza

Good to hear from you. I never hardboard hard feelings so a apology wasn’t required yet is appreciated. The communication was, as TeaK mentioned, often challenging but I always felt it was coming from a place of someone trying to understand their own thinking and feelings. I often user this form of communication in that way, and our dialog often had me asking if I really believed, felt  and or understood the things I was trying to convey.

Similar to apathy I struggle with a desire for a healthy detachment and engagement with life against a indifference and  disengagement from life. There are days when I think similar things you expressed in your post and fall into indifference. I tell myself that their is a time for everything and work on not being to hard on myself when I fall into one of those days.

Not giving advice, just that I’ve been thinking about this problem a lot lately. In trying to deal with my tendency to indifference I’ve been looking into the history of the Enneagram and its connection to the Law of three and Law of Seven, a process of ‘motion’ and creation/re-creation.   Along with that is what I view as a novel take on the problem of duality, ‘problem of opposites’, and ‘oneness’. (Language and ego consciousness tends depend on duality so its difficult to communicate but easy to get stuck in)

In some teachings there is a idea that dually collapses into oneness where the opposites ‘disappear’ and all is ‘good’.  But I have always found that such a ‘oneness’ has little energy for movement leading easily into indifference and non-engagement.  “Everything this is as it is, as it must be, as it will be”… what’s the point…. might as well disengage, move to a cave and sit quietly avoiding unpleasantries and avoid suffering… except the suffering of aloneness.  Can’t seem to get away from that one, no matter that everything is connected and ‘One’…

Anyway the take on the problem of duality involves the adding of a third (no duality  but trinary) which then creates a new forth/one/happening. By adding a third to the two a new a  ‘something’ Fourth happens.  The process is not a circle that devours itself but a spiral that projects itself outward into time and space.  When  stuck in the duality of either or the task is to add a third, which working with the two creates the ‘energy’ that allows the ‘forth’ to happen.  A act of will which starts with surrendering ones will (how’s that for a paradox the act of will is letting it go) The fourth is not controlled but a happening.  Their is intention but detached from outcome… The problem is that we tend to be blind to the third ‘force’

That was a mess… Anyway  – ‘The Complete Enneagram: 27 Paths to Greater Self-Knowledge’ might be a interesting read.  It might not change anything but will keep one distracted… Still if their is a third that can break us out of our either or duality thinking/doings stuckness…. that would be a grail worth finding?

G.I. Gurdjieff. The “Law of Three” refers to an assertion that every phenomenon is a new arising that comes into being through three distinct lines of action. The first force is affirming, the second force denying, and third force reconciling.

“Just as it takes three independent strands of hair to make a braid, so it takes three individual lines of force to make a new arising. Until this third force enters, the other two forces remain at impasse. These three lines of action are free of moral judgment and they are neither “good” or “bad”.

Hi DC
I have to say you have a gift for expressing your self in words.

I’d like to share a story that I often think about

Let me tell you one story here, of a samurai warrior, a Japanese warrior, who had the duty to avenge the murder of his overlord. And he actually, after some time, found and cornered the man who had murdered his overlord. And he was about to deal with him with his samurai sword, when this man in the corner, in the passion of terror, spat in his face. And the samurai sheathed the sword and walked away.

Why did he do that?  Had  the Samurai acted from a place of anger at being spat it would not have been the same as in acting from his sense of ‘duty’ –  his authentic self. For most of us, I think, its easier to take action clinking to the energy generated from ‘being angry’ or better yet ‘being righteous’ in our anger… only such anger tends to burn everyone involved and usually involves ego and a desire for control.   Had the Samurai acted from anger attached to ego the end result for the murder would have been the same but He would have been changed.

Acting from the core of ones authentic self, the still point, The samurai acts as he must. The samurai leaves the SC not out of anger or disappointment but because it is the correct action for the samurai to take.  That is the impression I get when reading your posts. That you are leaving not out of ego or anger but that in this moment of time that is what the situation calls for.  No other reasons required

Sorry DC I didn’t mean to imply I was suggesting you continue as a member of the SC. I agreed with Anita on that. Sometimes

I was talking about the idea of detachment and letting go in general.

From what I read your authentic self requires you to speak up when you notice wrong doing, while your anxiety and sleepless nights appear to be attached to the outcome of speaking out.  Begs the question is it possible to be act as our authentic self requires us to act and be detached? The middle way would be to detach oneself from the outcomes (good or bad) as you engage (engagement can involve stepping away). Being still within ones actions…

Not easy… We all have a desire to be ‘seen’ and heard’, which is where healthy boundaries come in and that in this case may require you to step away from the SC and create some space to breath. (Sometimes Love requires a relationship to end)

In this space you may decide to meditate on why and how you take on the police role? I’m not suggesting that your actions are in anyway ‘in the wrong’ only that its a good way to learn things about oneself. Try to do so with out attaching labels to your thoughts or self on the matter.

Each role we play has a time and place as well as various methods. Another question you might ask is if their are ways to engage in the these ‘roles’ that are more successful then others? For example when I attempt the police role in the past I became a ‘hammer that saw every situation as a nail’. Worked great on the situation that really were nails not so much on the ones that weren’t.

“I think by the time you’re grown you’re as happy as you’re goin to be. You’ll have good times and bad times, but in the end you’ll be about as happy as you was before. Or as unhappy. I’ve knowed people that just never did get the hang of it.” – No Country for Old Men

Saw this quote today and thought of this thread. Funny how life works… enough to make you cry

I hate that movie – No Country for Old Men – It was so depressing and I didn’t want to think their was any truth in it, while a part of me new their was. I didn’t like the truth shoved in my face that way.

A world which most people dislike me, create words and logic to shame me, to guilt me, a world where its so expensive to get any basic needs, a world where all of your actions has severe consequences, a world with no help, a world where nothing is free, a world with no one to trust, even your parents, a world where your whole personality and feelings and thoughts is determined by your parents and environment, a world set only for the majority of people.

Justified if the ‘world’ spends that much time focused on a single person.

I was just reading this days home blog – Free Yourself by Realizing How Unimportant You Are.  A person could read something like that and become angry, disappointed or free… probably dependent on the mood their in.

A world set only for the majority of the people? I wonder how many people feel like that and suspect they are not in the  majority? My guess is the majority of people do. Such a world view is very self centered, or you centered. Maybe all world views are…

Interesting how you define a lie. If someone tells you about something that works for them but you discover doesn’t for you… its a lie? A Lie that justifies anger where others might just be disappointed.

I’ve never liked that word ‘Justification’ to be justified… its almost always followed by someone doing something horrible. It feels good for a time though… similar to righteousness.. nothing like the power in the feeling of being justifiably righteous… until one ends up alone. (not saying you are doing that)

Perhaps you notice how the denial is so often the preface to the justification.” ― Christopher Hitchens

“The talent for self-justification is surely the finest flower of human evolution, the greatest achievement of the human brain. When it comes to justifying actions, every human being acquires the intelligence of an Einstein, the imagination of a Shakespeare, and the subtlety of a Jesuit.” (sarcasm) ― Michael Foley, The Age Of Absurdity: Why Modern Life Makes It Hard To Be Happy

The unteachable man is sentenced to being thought only by experience. The tragedy is he reaches nothing further than his own pain. – Criss Jami, Killosophy

Haven’t read those books but like the titles – Killosophy – kinds of says it all in one word in the ‘Age of Absurdity‘

Sorry still board