Is your 'reality' just thought?

by Markfromcali 23 Replies latest jw friends

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  Markfromcali

  Hi Frankie,

  I would not say reality is something to understand, but we can 'be real.' What I mean by this is when you are identified with your thought processes, you are in a sense being your thoughts - or you might say the way you are being is limited by that identification with thought. I would simply suggest dropping that, as an experiment if nothing else. It's not that you want to get rid of thought, but there is that question of whether you are using your thoughts or if your thoughts are using you. By going back to 0 in such a way you simply don't limit your potential. The well known zen teacher Suzuki Roshi said in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few.
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  Markfromcali

  More from Thought as a System:

  Q: Are you saying that we have a psychology in which our well-being is based on having affirming images, and that that psychology could never stand up as a real base for well-being because sooner or later we're going to get negative images?

  Bohm: Yes, so long as we take these images seriously. If we can be cheered up by positive images we can be depressed by negative ones. As long as we accept images as realities we are in that trap, because you can't control the images. You may be getting some nice positive images from the people around you and along comes somebody who gives you an extremely negative image. Then the very channels which made you feel good because of the positive image enable you to feel bad because of the negative image.

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  Bohm: It's all the same whether you say that you're wonderful or that you're guilty. It's just one image instead of the other. The fundamental process is not different whether you say 'I'm the greatest and the best', or you say 'I'm the worst, I'm guilty of everything'. It is the same process and the difference is rather secondary.

  (italics mine)

  However, in this recognition there is a kind of peace isn't there? Even if you are still caught up in positive and negative most of the time, that recognition implies there is a higher order of intelligence.
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  frankiespeakin

  Mark,

  However, in this recognition there is a kind of peace isn't there? Even if you are still caught up in positive and negative most of the time, t

  Yes, I agree, and I can see why a more correct view point can both be better yet in some ways terrifying unless one had enough of a truer understanding.
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  Markfromcali

  It may be terrifying in that one does not know what to make of things. But if you get to that point that's really a step beyond the typical mindset of this being positive and that being negative, you are no longer identifying with one or the other, taking a position and mistaking who you are with a position you take, or a temporary experience you have. Then you simply have to recognize that the experience of being terrified is just an experience like any other, but who you are is not such a temporary experience.

  Of course once you recognize that it doesn't mean you never have positive or negative feelings anymore, although you may not frame those experiences in that way. You just don't think you are the feelings, so there's more of a spacious feeling and not like its edgey or overwhelming - even though it may be very intense at times.