Hi Anita

I’ll try to answer the question simply. (you should see my initial response as I tried to sort though my thoughts which I may share after) 🙂

Imagine you’re a child playing with building blocks. At first, there’s just the blocks and the joy of playing. But then, you start sorting them: red blocks here, blue blocks there. You say, “This one is mine,” and “That one is not.”, “This one I like”, This one I don’t” That’s the moment the mind begins to divide into “me” and “not me,” “good” and “bad,” “us” and “them.”

Or imagine you’re a child standing in front of a mirror. At first you don’t know the difference between you and your reflection. You just see movement, light, presence. But as you grow, you learn to say “me” and “not me.” That’s the beginning of separation, of seeing yourself as one thing, and everything else as something else.

Hyenas, like you said, act from instinct. They haven’t “fallen” into consciousness. They flow with life as it is, responding from instinct protecting their space and chase away others. That’s nature doing its job. Life being Life. But humans have something extra: we can watch our thoughts. We can notice when we’re sorting the blocks too tightly, or when we’re afraid of a block just because it’s different.

Humans have a special kind of awareness. We think we name, we measure. We say “this is right,” “that is wrong,” “you are different from me.” This kind of thinking, what some call ego-consciousness is duality which helps us build language, culture, and meaning. But it also creates division and suffering. It can make us feel separate, alone, or afraid.

Non-duality doesn’t mean pretending everything is the same. It means remembering that before we started dividing the world into pieces, we were part of something whole. It’s like looking at a forest and seeing not just trees, but the life that connects them all and we are part of that All.

Mystics and contemplatives say that silence helps us remember this wholeness. Not because our thoughts our words are bad, but because silence touches what came before words, the deep unity beneath all our naming. In that light compassion naturally arisen.

So what do we do with this? We don’t need to undo nature or stop thinking. But we can soften our judgments. We can live with more presence. We can see others not as “not me,” but as part of the same light, the same life.

At the deepest level, there’s no “me” and “you,” no “inside” and “outside.” Just the dance of being.

Hi Tee,
I sense we’re landing in the same space, even if we’re using different language to get there. That said, when I read your statement -“Getting rid of all thought is not the goal. Getting rid of wrong thought…” the word “wrong” stood out. For me, it introduces a kind of tension, a grasping that clings, rather than the spaciousness that invites a more fluid relationship with thought.

As you noted, in Zen the goal isn’t to eliminate thought, though it also warns against categorizing thought as “right” or “wrong” in a moralistic or dualistic way. It’s the very act of labeling, of dividing, that often deepens suffering. Not because the thought itself is inherently problematic, but because of how we hold or reject it.

I’m reminded of the Genesis story where the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is often interpreted as granting divine clarity about what is good or evil. But “knowledge of” is not the same as “knowing what is.” That subtle difference matters (or should more then it tends to). In reaching for that knowledge, we stepped into separation, mistaking the capacity to judge for the wisdom to know. One is a burden; the other, a mystery that unfolds in relationship, in presence, in humility.

For me, and as you suggest, the invitation isn’t to get rid of thought, especially as a act of will, but to hold thoughts lightly creating flow and space for the ‘unknown’ to arise…

Beautifully said Thomas and as always Tee a great break down though I might gently push back on the idea that “the answer should always be hope, love, focusing on the positive.” In my experience, such an approach often turns back on itself, creating the very suffering we seek to release or allow to die.

The act of dying James speaks of I think points to something different: allowing space in our narratives to remain empty. Not rushing to fill the gap with positivity or certainty, but letting go of the compulsion to replace one story with another. Sometimes, the most compassionate move for ourselves is to leave room for silence, for unknowing because that space can become the doorway to freedom from the known, and to the joy of simply being.

In that light I agree with James though I might soften the intensity.

My observation and experience is that the “death” James speaks of isn’t a one-time event or a distant threshold, it’s a reality available in each breath. To die inwardly is to release the illusion of permanence and step into the eternal present, where life is not something to possess or defend but something to participate in. In that sense, death becomes renewal, a doorway to freedom from the known, as Krishnamurti says, and to the joy of simply being. And in that timeless stillness is where Campbell’s words echo: “That which you are was never born and will never die.”

At first, Krishnamurti’s call to “die now” and Campbell’s assurance that “you were never born and will never die” might sound like opposites. But they speak to different layers of reality. Krishnamurti addresses the psychological self, the bundle of desires, fears, hopes and stories we cling to. That must die for freedom to emerge. Campbell points to the essential being beneath those layers, the ground of existence that is timeless. That never dies because it was never born. So, the paradox resolves: what dies is the illusion, not the essence. And in letting go of the illusion, we awaken to the eternal present Campbell describes.

Perhaps the truth lives in the tension between these voices. To die psychologically is not to annihilate life but to awaken to its depth. And when we see that eternity is woven into the present, death becomes less a demand and more a rhythm, a letting go that happens moment by moment, breath by breath. In that rhythm, even the scent of roses changes, because there is no “you” smelling them, only life itself, playing, breathing, being.

Hi Everyone

“When you realize that eternity is right here now, that it is within your possibility to experience the eternity of your own truth and being, then you grasp the following: That which you are was never born and will never die.” – Campbell

“If you think you’ve nailed down the self, you’ve missed the joke. The self is the dance, not the dancer.” – Watts

Both Campbell and Watts point to the same insight through different lenses. Campbell reminds us that eternity is not a distant realm or something that begins after death, it is a dimension of the present moment, a quality of being that reveals our essence as timeless: never truly born, never truly dying.

Watts, with his playful metaphysics, frames life as a cosmic game of hide-and-seek, where the universe forgets this truth in order to rediscover it through us. Forgetting means identifying with the separate self, bound by time and mortality; remembering is awakening to the dance, the realization that the self is not the dancer but the dance itself. In this way, both voices invite us to see that eternity, which is timeless and not a measurement, is here and now, and the game is not about escape but rediscovery.

For fun I thought I’d have Campbell and Watts join the dialog

Setting: A dimly lit circular room with mirrored walls. Four chairs face each other. A candle flickers at the center. The air hums with quiet tension and curiosity.

CHARACTERS:
Ariadne – poetic, intuitive, speaks in metaphors and fluid language
Theo – analytical, precise, favors definitions and logical clarity
Campbell – mythic, calm, speaks in archetypes and timeless truths
Watts – playful, irreverent, dances with paradox and cosmic humor

Ariadne: The self is a shimmer, a ripple in the stream. Try to grasp it, and it slips through your fingers. We are illusions dreaming of permanence.
Theo: Illusion implies something false. If we are to speak meaningfully, we must define what we mean by “self.” Is it consciousness? Memory? Identity?
Watts: Oh, definitions! Lovely toys. But don’t mistake the menu for the meal. The self is a role in the cosmic play. You’re not a noun, you’re a verb. You are the universe experiencing itself.
Theo: That’s poetic, but dangerously vague. If everything is everything, then nothing is anything. We need boundaries to think, to speak, to be.
Campbell: Boundaries are the bones of myth. But the truth lies beyond them. That which you are was never born and will never die. The hero’s journey begins with identity and ends in transcendence.
Ariadne: So, the game is to forget and then remember. To lose the self in the labyrinth and find it again in the center.
Watts: Exactly! And the punchline is there was never a labyrinth. Just the dance. Just the music. You took the game seriously, and that’s the joke.
Theo: So, all this… these realizations, these awakenings… they’re just… games?
Campbell: Yes. But sacred games. The myths we live by are not lies; they are metaphors pointing to truths too vast for logic.
Watts: And the best part? You don’t have to win. You just have to play.

Together, Campbell and Watts whisper: “Eternity is not later. It’s now.” – “You are the universe pretending to be a person.” – let us hold these words lightly.

Living isn’t about slaying dragons or finding treasure. It’s about waking up to the fact that you were never separate from the treasure to begin with. That the game was always rigged in favor of joy, if only we stop trying to win and start playing.

Today, I wonder what if. What if I try to live as if I were never born and will never die. What if… I dance. I play. I remember.

Jut to add – If someone told me a 10+ years ago that my hope was unskillful and passive as Fromm suggests I would have rejected the notion. Back then, hope felt active to me. Over time, I’ve learned what T.S. Eliot meant by “wait without hope, for hope would be hope of the wrong thing.”

That’s still waiting, but a least not one that pretends. Today I think I’m ready to reclaim hope, disentangling it from passive faith and restore its active essences… hope as a verb, not a feeling.

Hi Tee

Yes, it’s an area that occupies me, though still a work in progress. Wisdom traditions have long warned about mistaking activity for passivity and vice versa, but we seem deeply resistant to this insight. That resistance, I suspect, is a source of much of our suffering.

Society holds a paradoxical view of change. We readily agree that change from the inside out is more lasting than change imposed from the outside in. Yet we undervalue the very process that makes that inner change possible. Why? My thought is because we mistake inner work (subjectivity) for passivity and external enforcement (objectivity) for action.

We live in a culture that celebrates transformation, makeovers, breakthroughs, revolutions… a world that privileges what can be seen, counted, and proven. Action, in this frame, means movement.

Inner work, by contrast, is subjective. It happens in silence, in solitude, in the messy terrain of thought and feeling. It lacks the markers of “doing something” that our culture recognizes: speed, noise, output. So we label it passive. We call reflection “navel-gazing,” restraint “weakness,” and emotional labor “soft.”

As a result, we rush to fix, to act, to judge, to enforce, believing that movement equals progress and defense of our boundaries. But this bias blinds us to a deeper truth that inner work is often the most courageous, demanding, and transformative form of action.

Tor Nørretranders, in The User Illusion, tells a story of physicists debating why the good guy in Westerns always wins the shootout. The answer? Because the bad guy acts while the good guy is present. Conscious, ego-driven action is about half a second slower than presence. The bad guy loses because he decides to act and moves first, while the good guy, fully present, was already active.

Here, stillness is not inaction. t’s presence. It’s the fruit of inner work: knowing oneself, mastering fear, refusing to be baited by chaos. The gunslinger’s stillness looks passive but its not, it’s the most active force in the scene, shaping the outcome.

My thought is that to truly understand action and passivity, we must integrate both objective and subjective perspectives. We must learn to see the invisible, to recognize that stillness can be strength and motion can be avoidance. In doing so, we confront our biases about what counts as passive and what counts as active. And perhaps then, we begin to discern how those biases have shaped the way we hope, what we expect from change, and where we place our trust.

Hi Anita,

I’d like to gently offer a “yes, and” on this statement: “For trauma survivors, the loss of self isn’t liberation—it’s fragmentation. Healing often requires reclaiming the self, not dissolving it.”

Yes: this is deeply true and must be honored – And – Wholeness may eventually include a loosening of the rigid self, not as erasure but as expansion. The journey of reclaiming the self can coexist with the possibility of transcending it.

Just as we must be careful not to use spiritual teachings to invalidate trauma or silence pain, we also need to be mindful not to silence the transformative insights that those traditions offer about the nature of self, liberation and wholeness.

The Dharma does not rush this process. It does not say, You are not real. It says, You are not only this. It says, When you are ready, there is more. Wholeness as presence of everything connected, seen clearly, held wisely, loved deeply.

Hi Tee

“I’ve got to say, Peter, that I notice a little sensitivity on your part when you talk about passivity”

Not quite in the way you speculate: My comment on expanding on Bruce Lee quote was me talking to myself wondering how better to communicate what I see as a major stumbling block for integrating the teaching of the various wisdom traditions. Mistaking for action what is really passivity and vice versa.

I’ve often wondered why wisdom traditions, for all their depth and beauty, don’t seem to catalyze the kind of societal transformation they point toward. I’ve witnessed individual awakening, but once form becomes institution, something seems to stall. The flow slows. The tenderness hardens. My thought is that mistake the notion of activity and passivity. Especially when it comes to Hope – we hope badly and my thought is because our Hope tends to be passive but we assume its active.

Erick Fromm suggested that unskillful hope is a attempt to flee from choice, from responsibility, from the anxiety of being, and in our flight, we embrace submission, conformity, and destructiveness. In Escape from Freedom, he named such hope as fear masquerading as safety, the seduction of authoritarianism…

Anyway something I’ve been working on.