I have some comments still open to reply to, so I will lay in this background material of how I am presently thinking.  Each number is a separate idea and can be contemplated and commented on.  Please don’t wrap it in a ball and talk about something else here.  (Please do talk about something else, but put it on another post in this forum). 1,750 words

1.  Mind is THE human tool, and it can be used in various ways.  Mind is not just utilized through thinking, which is only one part of this tool.  Mind is the whole / body / feeling / sensing / perceiving / aware / self-reflective / remembering / ‘knowing’ / learning /doing / maintaining the body, entity.  The self-reflective part of these tools apparently creates an identity, and it is to that identity that we confer the tasks of preserving all the rest.  We feed the body of course, and we protect it, and create a security for it.  The main task for this created identity it to prolong its own, and its body’s existence.  Yes, prolong the body, but also prolong that same sense of identity ‘within’ (attached to), that body.

2.  Memory is the amazing facility which makes possible so many detailed excursions.  One of the main ones is to create a symbolic model of the world around us, using linguistic, mathematical, pictorial, musical, and ritualistic symbols, and including a symbolic image of our relations to all other humans.  We could term this model as a virtual reality, and it is what science, collective life and civilization are made out of.

The concepts of change, evolution and of growth lie in this virtual reality.  Regardless if reality is in constant change; without memory we couldn’t perceive any change.  There would be no ‘known’ growth nor evolution, nor scientific progress.  (The physical might be still evolving, but without any awareness of it.)  The virtual reality is built out of a continuing system of thoughts and ideas.  It is our view of continuity, and this continuity is vital to feed and protect billions of people.  It also throws them into risks.  Perhaps ‘reality’ changes in a discontinuous way?  I don’t know, nor how you would ever find out, but is it worth considering?

3. As I said, this virtual reality and the thoughts that construct it have a long history and a seeming continuity. Each new level of thought does not invalidate the previous trail of thought, and for the most part it confirms it.  So, our model is on a definite trajectory, and cannot arbitrarily break-off of that track.  So-called ‘learning’ can go only in this one direction. That is good and that is bad, in that what works is continued, and we know who we are; but behaviors that don’t work, (fear, hostility, struggle, conflict, cruelty, aggression, and domination), are also preserved, and have proven impossible to overcome.

4.  Also, how we run our personal life with our believed-in definitions is on a track that has limited horizons.  Once our images become consolidated, yes, we continually add to them, but we don’t veer off of that track.  There is no ‘delete-button’ on memory. Even in our personal life, what doesn’t work is preserved and augmented.  We are stuck in (the tar-baby of) these semi-fixed images.  (I am not so sure they can be reversed, but only dropped or deemphasized as uninteresting.)  One might ask; what would life be like with no stored images?  It’s always new.

5.  Images change slowly, as they get radically out of touch with reality, we are forced to re-look at them.  But in the meantime, viewing the world through images creates this sense of the continuous.  Now our life is in an unfolding flow. Maybe we can keep “our career” going until retirement?  It is the security task that we mentioned up above.  If the images got thinner, life would move faster.  Would we be swept away?  Some people would feel that way.  (And maybe there is a limit to the acceptable rate of change.)  “Grounding” is a term meaning holding on to past memories, and believing there is some “truth” (longevity) in them.  I am describing what I see, not prescribing anything.

6.  The mechanism of thought is considering these images, (all of which are semi-fixed virtual models).  Stored feelings are in the image also.  “Considering” means (comparing, categorizing and organizing) multiple past and present images.  This is the definition of what thinking is.  I said present images, but the present doesn’t contain virtual images, it only contains “what-is”.  So then perception (for the most part), is a sensation (what-is); overlaid with a recognizing and judgmental thought and feeling pulled out of memory.  (There can also be “fresh feelings”.)  Most of the present is immediately transformed with a coloration, into an image at the moment of perception.  That is the duty of the system, as directed by the identity, which we can call the thinker.

REMEMBER: THE THINKER HAS CREATED SOCIETY, AND ALL THE COMPLEXITY OF URBANIZED LIFE ON EARTH.  So don’t throw away the thinker, or billions of people will be left in a lurch.

7.  Then the basic premise of mankind is that “My Life Does Not Work.”  First of all, that is a judgment that we can make, or, we can refrain from making it, no matter what the outward circumstances are.  The second premise is that life can always be improved by applying my thoughts.  The belief is that “what-is” comprise the raw materials, basically inert, and only my thought is the motive power to make something.  I will make a plan, and implement it in the tomorrows.  In both cases, (disapproval or improvement), my attention (my focus) is transported into a future, and away from the life that I have judged deficient.  I end up always working for a future benefit, and always denying my present good fortune. A yearning is born, a desire to complete some thought loop in the future, and move into a greater, (or the greatest), security of being.  Security is the primordial drive of all life on earth, so it is an age-old story.  There is a knack to life in the material world that most people have not mastered, or if mastering it is a continuous movement, they have gone static.

8.  Some people might maintain that all individual and social activities prove the existence of a separate I.  Of course, that is true, because both my life, and my society have been created, developed and sustained in the virtual realm of the symbolic model of the world.  That is not its essence though.

So far, we are talking about only one spectrum of the tool of Mind.  Mind is the virtual pilot, through the guidance of the thinker.  But the mastery of mind is both knowing how to concentrate and focus the virtual, and also knowing when the virtual mind is not needed.  It can go back into its box (of the memory), and come out when I summon it.  This is called a still-mind.  The still mind is a swift miracle, since the thinker and all thinking, including all content of memory, all conditioning, reside in the vehicle of thought, with the still mind, the virtual model and the thinker disappear in one fell swoop.  What’s left then?

AWARENESS OF WHAT-IS, AND WHAT I REALLY AM!  This is the only access to TRUTH.

9.  Without the anchor of an awareness of truth, the virtual can, (and does) go off into any extremity. All of the millions of problems and atrocities are created in the virtual model of the world.  They are all thoughts. (The California fire tragedy is ‘A THOUGHT’, to build houses in the fire zone.)  To have a minimal chance to resolve any of it, a vision of truth must be the primary grounding ingredient.

10.  Both teacher/master and pupil/disciple grapple with useless questions.  They engage each other on a verbal level, and then some swami says “there is no separate individual”.  So they both agree that there must be oneness. NO, THERE IS NO ONENESS. Oneness is just another concept of the separate individual.  When the thinker goes back into the box, (when there is no separate individual), all of his concepts go back there with him.  They no longer appear.

When asked if the individual is eternal, the Buddha remained silent.

When asked if the individual is NOT eternal, the Buddha remained silent.

When asked if the individual is both eternal and not eternal, the Buddha remained silent.

When asked if the individual is neither eternal nor not-eternal, the Buddha remained silent.

The Buddha’s thinker is in the box.

11.  So we are saying that the reason life doesn’t seem to work, is that our attention has been hijacked from watching what we are in the moment.  You arrive at no answer, there is no concept because the thinker is parked.  There is eternal movement, different for every observer and in every moment.

(I don’t claim seeing in this moment is as easy as writing about it with these words, but maybe it’s not that difficult either.  It is not the thinker that can see it.  It is awareness that can observe it. If you insist that the thinker must see this moment to prove its validity, it is more than difficult, it is impossible.)

12.  With ignorance of who and what we are, our yearning goes farther and farther afield, and creates all the invisible suppositions in the world, identifying the unseen mysteries, and the celestial beings that must be capriciously controlling our lives.

I have no need to deny your unseen world, my answer is the same as the Buddha’s, (and there surely are mysteries).  But I do not adopt them into my definitions, or make any meaning out of mystery.  I do deny the definition that earthly life is de facto deficient.  Isn’t that deficient definition inherent in every last spiritual system?  The yearning is that if I am offered an explanation into these mysteries, I will be more on top of it, it is a shortcut.  I suggest you will be more confused and conflicted.

WHAT IF YOUR LIFE ON EARTH DID WORK?  In the way that your own process teaches you something new every day.  (This is also a definition you can choose.) There would be no need to seek anything esoteric.  All that teaching would collapse for you. The basic premise with (no rejection) would be “This is It”. All of it.  And my life is not the other person’s life.

Life moves and is never static.  It equates to building my own organic process, with no comparison, no desire for shortcuts.  Others might make suggestions of where to look in my own life.  I may find them useful, or may not.  So far, I need not invent any invisible suppositions.

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