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Post by Deleted on Jul 31, 2020 22:45:31 GMT -5
I thought recently: I miss the feeling of being a kid, and looking forward to life with a feeling of hope and excitement. I often hated going to school (I think so much misery and "delayed gratification" probably screwed me up) but I still had that attitude about life that felt better than I do now.
In some spiritual teachings you see the idea that "future" is just a drug and a delusion. I've also heard that "hope" is part of ego and "dies last".
I remember the line from Shawshank Redemption. "Hope is a dangerous thing".
I think now that the answer is: try to find that feeling again, but without the attachment to "future" and fantasies of worldly success and pleasure.
"Hope without a future" ? Mmm.
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Post by inavalan on Aug 1, 2020 1:01:06 GMT -5
Thought provoking subject and question ...
Words and concepts like hope, try, ... have a built-in expectation of possible failure. That's why they say that "affirmations" shouldn't use such words as they diminish the effect of the affirmation on your subconscious.
So, I'd say that feeling "hopeful" isn't productive or positive, but surely it isn't as counterproductive or negative as felling "hopeless".
I think in similar terms about compassion, empathy, ... They make you feel good about yourself (even if unconsciously), and cut your commitment and impetus to actually do something helpful for the subject of your compassion.
I'm not arguing for lack of compassion, empathy, ... here. Just to realize, to be conscious of the full effect that some apparently positive words and emotions have on us, on our individual reality.
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Post by zendancer on Aug 1, 2020 10:08:26 GMT -5
I thought recently: I miss the feeling of being a kid, and looking forward to life with a feeling of hope and excitement. I often hated going to school (I think so much misery and "delayed gratification" probably screwed me up) but I still had that attitude about life that felt better than I do now. In some spiritual teachings you see the idea that "future" is just a drug and a delusion. I've also heard that "hope" is part of ego and "dies last". I remember the line from Shawshank Redemption. "Hope is a dangerous thing". I think now that the answer is: try to find that feeling again, but without the attachment to "future" and fantasies of worldly success and pleasure. "Hope without a future" ? Mmm. Nisargadatta once told a seeker, "You didn't get into this mess (of thinking you're a separate volitional person) overnight." That's true. It happened so gradually and so unconsciously that what was happening wasn't seen or understood. If you miss the feeling of being a kid, simply reverse the process that ended the feeling you had as a kid. Do what little children do; look, listen, feel, taste, smell, and interact with the world directly rather than thinking all the time. Most adults live in a meta-reality created by imagination, but the world that little children live in is still here, and any adult can find it if they are sufficiently motivated. Sages don't live in their heads; they live in the same world that little children live in and they feel the same way that little children feel. Their world is fresh, alive, and mysterious. Go for a walk in a park and look at what can be seen rather than what can be imagined. Hope? Future? Success? Pleasure? Forget all such ideas. |
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Post by laughter on Aug 1, 2020 12:01:14 GMT -5
I thought recently: I miss the feeling of being a kid, and looking forward to life with a feeling of hope and excitement. I often hated going to school (I think so much misery and "delayed gratification" probably screwed me up) but I still had that attitude about life that felt better than I do now. In some spiritual teachings you see the idea that "future" is just a drug and a delusion. I've also heard that "hope" is part of ego and "dies last". I remember the line from Shawshank Redemption. "Hope is a dangerous thing". I think now that the answer is: try to find that feeling again, but without the attachment to "future" and fantasies of worldly success and pleasure. "Hope without a future" ? Mmm. Reorienting toward time is a means to an end. The end is the answer to the question "what is the source of hope?". At that end, preferences continue. What is hope, other than welcoming and accepting the possibility of a particular future outcome? It's actually not a bad idea to practice non-attachment to outcome before self-inquiry is finished. It's not really faking it until you make it, it's rather just a less insane way of dealing with the world. It's not like any and all outcomes are welcomed in the absence of the false source of hope, and, as preferences continue, the phrase "well, I hope I don't fail at paying my taxes next year" still applies, just like one answers to their name: chop wood and carry water, right? But in that absence, it all happens .. very .. differently.  Seeing the past and the future for what they are might lead naturally to the feeling that there is no hope, but this is a trick of the existential light. Understand that insight into time is a waypoint, a method. Niz once told a guy who asked about "the witness" that "you don't build a house on a bridge". Settling on seeing the past and future for what they are before you've found the source of hope is like pitching a tent inside a train station. |
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Post by zazeniac on Aug 3, 2020 6:47:09 GMT -5
I really like this thread. Thought provoking. Been chewing on it for days. I posted something earlier, but it didn't do justice. Just deleted it.
This thread speaks to the contradiction in all this. Seeking, hoping for an answer, when the answer's already there. Can you see it if you're "hoping?"
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Post by zendancer on Aug 3, 2020 13:08:15 GMT -5
From my POV hope has no benefit at all. If anything, the idea of hope just reinforces the idea that there is a someone to whom something good might happen in some imaginary future. It's much more beneficial to stay focused on whatever is happening in the present moment and forget about the future.
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Post by zazeniac on Aug 3, 2020 13:14:45 GMT -5
From my POV hope has no benefit at all. If anything, the idea of hope just reinforces the idea that there is a someone to whom something good might happen in some imaginary future. It's much more beneficial to stay focused on whatever is happening in the present moment and forget about the future. I'd agree given a. certain level of practice and maturity, but in offering a seeker ATA, aren't you fostering the hope of relief, hence the contradiction. |
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Post by laughter on Aug 3, 2020 14:59:43 GMT -5
From my POV hope has no benefit at all. If anything, the idea of hope just reinforces the idea that there is a someone to whom something good might happen in some imaginary future. It's much more beneficial to stay focused on whatever is happening in the present moment and forget about the future. In terms of a single-pointed focus on self-inquiry, this is the way to go, no doubt. But time marches on whether we want it to or not and whether or not Aunt Gracie ever deigns to visit.  And, there are these hypothetical's out at the extreme, where someone asks something like ... "do you prefer that your house doesn't burn down next week?" ... heh heh, only Doooooooofus guy would ask that question.  |
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Post by inavalan on Aug 3, 2020 15:09:06 GMT -5
From my POV hope has no benefit at all. If anything, the idea of hope just reinforces the idea that there is a someone to whom something good might happen in some imaginary future. It's much more beneficial to stay focused on whatever is happening in the present moment and forget about the future. In terms of a single-pointed focus on self-inquiry, this is the way to go, no doubt. But time marches on whether we want it to or not and whether or not Aunt Gracie ever deigns to visit. And, there are these hypothetical's out at the extreme, where someone asks something like ... "do you prefer that your house doesn't burn down next week?" ... heh heh, only Doooooooofus guy would ask that question. I guess that if you can't choose the question you're asked, you still should choose your best answer. E.g. "better next week than now" ... No matter the question or the answer, the attitude should be "I expect my house is safe", and not "I hope my house won't burn". Still, be reasonably prepaired. |
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Post by zendancer on Aug 3, 2020 15:48:51 GMT -5
From my POV hope has no benefit at all. If anything, the idea of hope just reinforces the idea that there is a someone to whom something good might happen in some imaginary future. It's much more beneficial to stay focused on whatever is happening in the present moment and forget about the future. I'd agree given a. certain level of practice and maturity, but in offering a seeker ATA, aren't you fostering the hope of relief, hence the contradiction. Well, until people can let go of their thoughts about "progress" or attaining something, they''ll continue to have hopes and expectations of a conventional nature based upon the sense of being a SVP. All that one can do is keep pointing to what is here and now and the importance of shifting one's attention away from ideas until realizations occur that inform the intellect about what's going on (and about the relationship of thoughts to beingness). After gaining understanding, the rest sort of takes care of itself. The seeker discovers the seeker behind the imaginary seeker, so to speak, and then THIS continues as before but without the idea that there is anything separate from THIS. |
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Aug 3, 2020 16:56:43 GMT -5
I thought recently: I miss the feeling of being a kid, and looking forward to life with a feeling of hope and excitement. I often hated going to school (I think so much misery and "delayed gratification" probably screwed me up) but I still had that attitude about life that felt better than I do now.
In some spiritual teachings you see the idea that "future" is just a drug and a delusion. I've also heard that "hope" is part of ego and "dies last". I remember the line from Shawshank Redemption. "Hope is a dangerous thing". I think now that the answer is: try to find that feeling again, but without the attachment to "future" and fantasies of worldly success and pleasure. "Hope without a future" ? Mmm. Gurdjieff called tomorrow a disease. If you consider the matter, the present moment is always only the point of action, the point of doing. And if you consider the matter the abstracting mind exists only in the past as memory or the future as imagination. The word is always something learned, as memory, so is always of the past. But learning is necessary to get by in the world. Chuang Tzu's story of the wheelwright shows in what sense words are useless for learning, but learning is ATST necessary. Chuang Tzu's story of the cook also shows learning is necessary. The cook has cut up hundreds of oxen without sharpening his knife, because he has learned to cut in the empty places between the joints and sinews and muscle. The woodwright laments that he cannot teach his sons his craft of making wheels. The cook and the woodwright have put their learning into their body, into their muscle memory, and can't get it out in words and through words to teach what they know to others. Any skill is similarly "remembered" by the body, pouring concrete or hanging sheet rock. But so then time is required to put the learning into the body, just trying and doing it over and over and over, time and attention in a feedback loop. If there is no attention there is no learning. So what is hope? Chuang Tzu didn't tell the whole story. What he said was accurate, but it wasn't the whole story. The woodwright learned somehow how to make wheels. He must have learned as an apprentice from a master wheelwright. I taught my new electrician helpers for years. If we needed help, the boss and company owner would hire anyone off the street. I learned to teach a new guy one thing at a time. When they had learned that I would teach the next thing. Different people learned at different rates. But basically electrical work, in the beginning, is all about learning a skill. After learning the skill part, the how, then you learn the why part. Eventually the skill and the why develop into understanding. Understanding cannot be taught directly. Hope needs an example, seeing what-can-be. So the son of wheelwright can see what-can-be, what his father is. But hope is an intangible. Maybe the son doesn't have any desire to learn to be a wheelwright. So then there is no hope. The person is at the mercy of its upbringing. A baby newborn, isn't a self. A newborn is attention and awareness. So the baby is exposed to adult behavior, collects "data" through attention, and over a few years this learned information forms the self/ego/personality. Thus forms a filter which subsequent information enters, through. By this time the self/person/personality/ego is formed through conditioning, so in a very real sense cannot choose. The person chooses on the basis of its conditioning, which it had no control over. This is why so much in life is an intangible, because it comes from unconscious forming through conditioning. So our choice-making has been unconsciously formed, so we aren't really free. Most people are stuck in an artificial feedback loop of the self/ego/personality taking in info from the world according to its conditioning, which merely reinforces the conditioning. It's not easy to break this self-reinforcing feedback loop. So all of this has to be overcome to see behind the veil, to see reality, to see What Is. It comes by the reverse process whereby the small s self was formed. Living through bare attention, bare awareness. Some one called it getting in front of oneself. You live from what-you-were before the self was formed. You live in such a manner so that the incoming info (impressions) are ~caught~ before they activate the conditioning that-is-self. And this necessarily means living in the present moment, AKA the power of now. AKA ATA-T. (Now, hopefully, this is a little peek behind the veil, but only if experimented with, not just abstracted, but that would probably be better, if left unsaid). |
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Aug 3, 2020 17:09:56 GMT -5
I'd agree given a. certain level of practice and maturity, but in offering a seeker ATA, aren't you fostering the hope of relief, hence the contradiction. Well, until people can let go of their thoughts about "progress" or attaining something, they''ll continue to have hopes and expectations of a conventional nature based upon the sense of being a SVP. All that one can do is keep pointing to what is here and now and the importance of shifting one's attention away from ideas until realizations occur that inform the intellect about what's going on (and about the relationship of thoughts to beingness). After gaining understanding, the rest sort of takes care of itself. The seeker discovers the seeker behind the imaginary seeker, so to speak, and then THIS continues as before but without the idea that there is anything separate from THIS. . |
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