"Hi Nick,
The questions below refers to a writing you did in a note on facebook called "The Freedom of Awareness."
These questions are coming your way because of the resonance, and because you seem to answering them in some detail with an openness and freedom, even though words are limitations so to speak.
Your help is most appreciated. These questions are coming out of what has been witnessed as the HUMAN CONDITION.
In what is called virtual reality (VR) there is no separate person..simply thoughts, feelings, sensations and the like ever changing. Even if awareness is not consciously aware that it is aware of the senses and the changing scenery, it still is, or there would be no clue that these activities or PRESSURES are occurring. This is clear. It just so happened that there were shooting pains in the left foot when reading the article last night, and yes, as choice-less, passive awareness aware of, but not the pain...it was different than if there was total identification as a body that was experiencing pain. Thanks.
Here is where your assistance is needed. The mind (thought) is compulsive obsessive about control because its kingdom is control over the body mechanism. (This is how it appears ofcourse). This is how suicide gets committed in VR. Thought rationalizes suicide (like it rationalizes every directive) and the body follows. All the while awareness is passively, choicelessly watching that activity of rationalization in virtual reality, and all is well to awareness, but NOT SO WELL FOR THE VEHICLE. Another example. There is no gambler. There is compulsive thinking and desire to gambler. The vehicle APPEARS to follow time and time again the thinking/feeling directive even though the bank account suffers. Or the common situation of compulsive thinking and desire moving the body to over eat. Again, NOT SO WELL FOR THE VEHICLE. The vehicle, being under the control of the thinking mechanism, gets moved around like a chess piece on the chess board. All the while awareness is passively, choiclessly aware, consciously or not, that it is aware of the body being bossed around and moved around by thought. Awareness could care less, it has no capacity to care,and intervene.
Question 1
WHAT IS THERE TO CARE? WHAT IS THERE TO OVERRIDE THE THINKING MECHANISM MOVING THE BODY HERE AND THERE WITH THOUGHTS AND DESIRES? It is clear that awareness does not have such a capacity, it is passively, choiclessly aware...period (consciously aware of its awareness or not?) IS THERE SOMESORT OF 'DIVINE INTERVENTION' OR NOT?
Question 2
Does physical, mental, emotional childhood conditioning determine what the thinking mechanism will tell the body what to do in any given moment?
Question 3
Is this where giving up all hope, reasoning, and wishful thinking come into play? But who is to give up what? Hope, reasoning, and wishful thinking continue or they don't. Awareness is passively choice-lessly aware as they arise and pass away, while simultaneously aware of itself aware or not.
Question 4
Having gone down this slippery slop, of what appears to be the "Third Dimension Condition" is it being said????? as long as identification is with the unborn, passive awareness, and aware that it is aware, it doesn't matter if gambling takes all the money out of the bank account, or the alcohol destroys the liver, or if the body is thrown off a bridge, because there is NO ONE, AND NEVER HAS BEEN A "SOMEONE" TO STOP EITHER THE VEHICLE FOLLOWING THE COMMANDS OR THE THINKING/FEELING MECHAISUM WORKINGS ACCORDING TO ITS CONDITIONING. Is Intelligence some sort of ACCEPTANCE that because the activities are happening in VR to "no one" IT DOESN'T MATTER? It is what it is. This acceptance of the fate of the body/mind with all its limitations and insanity called "reasoning" more like "suggestion" is the ultimate in this condition?
Please provide your insight. Thanks."
Question 1: What is there to care?
Awareness has a caring that is beyond intellectual mind and understanding. It's a unconditional love, peace, and compassion that totally encompasses itself as perfection no matter what seems to happen. The intellectual mind cannot understand this and will judge awareness as being apathy or unconnected not caring. It doesn't care but not in an apathy sense, only in an unconditional loving sense. Love without conditions.Since there is nobody in that body/mind, only the awareness that is aware of the pains of that body/mind, nobody is in pain are they? Pain is just arising to awareness and awareness is so unconditional that it allows itself to be aware of that pain. In other words, it is not a body/mind that is suffering and an awareness is just passively witnessing that pain of a body/mind. Awareness is that pain and is that body/mind, without awareness none of this would be because awareness is it all.
Question 2: Does conditioning determine the thoughts that tell the body what to do?
Thinking doesn't determine anything. Thinking doesn't lead to action as much as people would like to think/belief. Life is always spontaneous. There is no way to know what choice is ever going to be made because there is no chooser and therefore no cause and effect caused by a chooser. In fact life is so spontaneous that is 100% unpredictable and uncontrollable. I just use "conditioning" as a way of pointing beyond a nonexistence chooser. The mind likes a logic and rational way of understanding life and conditioning is as close to words of what is really happening but it doesn't explain anything, it just points.
For example, a seed of a flower needs certain conditions in order to grow but what cause those certain conditions to have to have those conditions? What conditions it to grow or bloom or follow the Sun? It is only the mystery beyond the intellectual mind that is being pointed to. Which is difficult to see when there is a belief that there is something there that chooses.
So as a way of pointing, there is no choice, only conditions that are conditioned to respond in a conditional way.
Question 3: Are you talking about giving up all hope, reasoning, and wishful thinking?
Since there is nobody there, what does it matter if there is hope or not? Reasoning or not? Wishful thinking or not? And who is there to choose these things? There is no goal, point, purpose, or end result to where this is all going. Words just seem to come out and point out of love for it to do so but there is no knowing if pointing will happen or not because there is nobody in there that is choosing what to happen or choosing what words to say or even if anything will be said at all. Hope and reasoning seem to apply body/minds that think/believe they choose and therefore hope and reasoning seem to fit into that style of belief.
Question 4: Does the fate of the body/mind really not matter?
What is difficult to see is that what is being pointed to is no different than what anybody is ever really experiencing anyhow. There was nobody ever there, just a belief that there was. So that belief drops away, other than that nothing really changes. The story of that body/mind character still plays out much the same except all the things that arise based on believing there is a someone there drops away. If a body/mind is gambling out of pain of believing they are a person, then that will likely drop away. If thoughts of dieing by jumping off a bridge were arising, it might still arise but there is no belief that there is a you thinking those thoughts, so the thoughts don't hold much reality to act upon (not many thoughts were ever being acted on anyhow, that is just another belief, things are much more spontaneous than that).
Seeing yourself everywhere, you can't escape from anything because you are seen to be everywhere and therefore nowhere particular, there is no escape anywhere. Living out a life or not living out a life are both the same, you never go anywhere because you are never really anywhere in the first place. Both are seen to be the same exact thing. A life is seemed to be lived or not and you always remain forever unmoved. There really isn't any space that you are moving around in because everything is you, where are you going?
Death is just seeing that you are unmoved rather something seems to happen or not. Rather death to the mental notion of self or death in the physical sense, the result in the same. Neither one adds up to anything. You remain forever here. You are nothing seeing nothing and therefore nothing goes anywhere since there is only nothing and never something. There is only nothing here. Nothing is the only something. No space, no dimensions, no container, no places, no levels, no up or down, no right or left, you are it all equally and therefore there is no all. Just one without a second, just you undivided, just this with or without the appearances that seem to be here. You and that is it, nowhere to go, nothing to learn, no growth, no development, no schooling, no importance, none, zip, zero, nil, void.
As paradoxical as it seems, it is not apathy. It is freedom. It's only apathy to the nonexistence person who needs a purpose to pretend to exist, it doesn't want to 'die'. It will fight these words with all it has because to see where these words point will be a mental death to that nonexistence person. It's just thoughts/emotions there (contained within nothing, nothing there), nothing else, no person. Nothing witnessing nothing, A witness without the witnesser. An awareness without someone being aware, just awareness, presence, this, that's it.
You're already dead since there is nothing there living. A life can only be lived based on the assumption/belief that there is somebody there living a life and that somebody will "someday" die. Face death now (see how this eternal now moment never goes anywhere) and you will never worry about death again. There is no "somebody" there to be lost, so what dies?
