KFA - Krishnamurti Foundation of America

Tom wrote:

I think we can get tied up in knots trying to sort out what it means to be nothing. It seems far simpler to look at what it means to be something, the falseness of it.

If I do see the falseness of being something, the identification is gone - at least the psychological identification.  But most of the time my past remains the prison in which I live.

It may be only a kind of hangover, a dullness of mind.  But can one just shake it off?

hermann wrote:

It may be only a kind of hangover, a dullness of mind.  But can one just shake it off?

No, because that may be the most dangerous action. It may be like trying to swat away a horde of wasps: what you shake off will only turn back on you in attack. So first we have to understand what we are dealing with.

Tom wrote:

hermann wrote:

It may be only a kind of hangover, a dullness of mind.  But can one just shake it off?

No, because that may be the most dangerous action. It may be like trying to swat away a horde of wasps: what you shake off will only turn back on you in attack. So first we have to understand what we are dealing with.

What we're dealing with is ultimately an invention of the human mind.  Like God, like tradition.  But its roots in our history may be too deep for us to reach.  Yet, there is a contradiction in that tradition that we should be able to unravel.

Isn't the contradiction just this (our) compulsion for meaningless repetition?

is that a meaningless repition?

then the answer is with it

Yes, it seems to be a setting in the mind that responds to the present.  Above you asked: 'But what is the past? Is there actually a past at all?'

Tom wrote:

hermann wrote:

Yes, it seems to be a setting in the mind that responds to the present.  Above you asked: 'But what is the past? Is there actually a past at all?'

Yes. It may be a convenient way of ignoring a present crisis by making reference to it as though it is the result of something past and gone whereas it is actually about something very much here and now.

I don't see the here and now.  It is covered in insoluble problems.  Things I can do nothing about.  Or so it seems.

What would it take to be able to look at the here and now directly, without flinching?  Most people here assume that they have passed this test already.  But the postings evince the opposite.  If we're afraid to look, no movement can occur.  Freedom can only come to the person who's dropped all reservations.  What are my reservations?  Childish mental habits that I refuse - or am too afraid - to bring out in the open.  The light of day will cure all the problems that we may bring to its altar.  But we dare not step over that threshold of our idiocy.  The origin of that word refers to that which we hold private.  In the hidden recesses of our privacy our idiocy blooms.

Would you be able to receive help?

hermann wrote:

Would you be able to receive help?

with relish

tree wrote:

(do you have some?)

I do. Along with a side of lunacy if you like.