Thinking?

[crow]

People think. Although, often, you might think they don't.
Even in this, judgement is the first thought people have.
Is he thinking, or is he incapable of thinking?
What is thinking, anyway?

I find thinking to be a system of comparison.
Compare this, to that, and decide which serves best, for whatever I desire.
And so thinking becomes about desire.
What do I want? How best to achieve it?
Observe, compare, decide.

But what if desire is removed from the process?
What if everything is left as whatever it is, without choosing the one over the other?
Start doing this, and you discover the often overlooked ability to observe.
Observation requires no thought. Because nothing needs to be done. No choice has to be made.
Without any need to make decisions, what use is thinking?

"I think that is crap", perhaps. And judgement creeps back in.
"It is what it is", perhaps. And judgement does not arise.

This is the essence of taoism. Summed up, in as few words as possible, it distils down to: "It is what it is".
And this way of seeing things renders thought redundant.
This is not to say that thought becomes extinct, impossible, or even undesirable.
When the need arises for thought, then thought arises.
But any other time, it does not.

It seems very close to impossible to convey this to those who are unable to see it.
And so, over time, I learn to observe this impossibility, and leave it be.
When something seems to be non-existent, it seems very difficult, to some, to accept it may exist.
Lacking the ability to detect something, however, does not mean that something is not there.

Left-brained individuals, for example, are often unable to entertain the possibility of God.
Because God does not come with an instruction manual, or whatever constitutes proof, to such people.
This, however, does not mean that God does not exist.
It means that the one trying to see it, can not.

Learning to suspend judgement is a good way to start learning to suspend thought.
And when you can do that, the unseen becomes seen.
There may be something to be said for being blind, but being able to see is probably quite useful, too.

[§Transcix]

In my view, the value of thinking and the admitted extent to which it's often of a judgmental nature hinges largely upon the degree to which one thinks about 'things' as specifically-delineated conventional forms versus the extent to which one thinks about patterns and underlying forces. To wit, it's impossible to be judgmental about something that does not exist; mental deconstruction of things is a matter of understanding, not judgment.

For example you can have a chair, you can have a chair with a cushion, you can have a chair without a cushion, you can have a (broken) chair with only three legs, you can have an office in which there is a chair, you can have the atoms comprising a chair. If you define a chair atom by atom, at what point does a chair cease to become a chair if you ignore some of its atoms one by one? How many atoms can you ignore before you come to the last straw and remove the final atom causing the chair to become something else? Every 'thing' is fundamentally relative and absolutely physically bound to its context. A chair couldn't even exist without the empty space around it delineating its form--if the entire whole of reality were shaped like a chair, it could never be sat in, painted, moved, refurnished or labeled "chair" because nothing would exist beyond it.

Things are also physically bound in terms of action, as you can have a tree that a chair can be made out of and you can have soil made from the decomposed wood of a tree. Indeed a chair decomposes over great periods of time atom by atom, so at what point is an atom the final straw? What if a chair is launched as a projectile or used as a weapon? Many of these examples seem mundane, but some human cultures never used chairs and if they came upon one would have much different ideas about it than you or me. Presidents of paper manufacturing companies might see trees as money, heck many business executives may see people as money. Specifically-delineated conventional forms intrinsically consist of highly personalized perspective, and people's perspectives would only become so highly personalized due either to ignorance (infancy, misinformation, emotional blockage, etc), convenience or a combination thereof. Convenience pertains to personal needs and wants, personal desires, which involves the ego and judgment.

Thinking about things in a more holistic sense, however, precisely deconstructs the rigid definitions of things and thereby deconstructs the ego. Constantly keeping in mind slews of rigid definitions, constantly maintaining rigid labels on everything around you--even while you're reading this--also takes a lot of effort, whereas being open to possibilities allows for a more relaxed and mindful state of awareness. Eventually it becomes easier to recognize how 'things' affect other 'things' around them in periphery ways beyond their standard roles and uses, and with this additional information deeper correlations in reality's patterns can be observed and the underlying forces of trends are more readily discernible.

[crow]

From the outside, your mind seems deranged.
How does it seem to you?

[§Transcix]

Seems to me like a tool that changes depending how I use it.

[crow]

Is it ever calm? Does it ever not question?

[§Transcix]

I often use my mind to think softly and slowly, and I would be calm during the process. Other times I'm calm without using my mind at all. Sometimes I'm not calm, too.

[Cargést]

I don't read anything disfunctional into Transcix's post.  It seems quite sensible to me, as a general way of being here.  Certainly, I "deconceptualised" this mind a short while ago, and, while timid in its unanchored state, it has become receptive, free, open.

[Goatreich]

 

[Ratatosk]

@ crow

If thinking was not part and parcel of desire it seems unlikely that it would exist in a being. Highjacking and rewiring it past it's original purpose is fabulous, but only obscurant, much like those sci-fi moviemakers trying to make a new beast by piecing together parts into a new whole.

With a little introspection the weird beasts can all be traced back to the component animals, just so can all objects in mindspace be tracked back to desire.

I once thought that the state of pure being was the "jewel of the lotus" in a gnostic sense, being the only true non-desire based mode of existence, but then it seems our whole beings are geared towards maintaining being, its just that other things get in the way much like paint on a canvas.

@ Transcix

Totally agree. What we normally describe as objects are in fact parts of a continuous whole, and all "things" in an environment are co-determined, as are all "events". I believe it is practicality that makes us delineate as such, being itself the servant of survival.

[crow]

Like ego, thinking serves to get the teenager past its teenage years.
Look at it as maturation.
There are more efficient ways to survive.
And more rewarding ways, too.

Most people try to analyse the idea of not-thinking by thinking about it.
Not likely to bear fruit, is it?

I offer what I know. Now you know it. Forget about it. It will germinate, or it won't.
There is nothing to prove, disprove, agree-with, or understand.

[Perennial_Man]

Verily, men have given unto themselves all their good and bad. Verily, they took it not, they found it not, it came not unto them as a voice from heaven.

Values did man only assign to things in order to maintain himself- he created only the significance of things, a human significance! Therefore, calleth he himself "man," that is, the valuator.

Valuing is creating: hear it, ye creating ones! Valuation itself is the treasure and jewel of the valued things.

Through valuation only is there value; and without valuation the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear it, ye creating ones!

Change of values- that is, change of the creating ones. Always doth he destroy who hath to be a creator.

Creating ones were first of all peoples, and only in late times individuals; verily, the individual himself is still the latest creation.

Peoples once hung over them tables of the good. Love which would rule and love which would obey, created for themselves such tables.

Older is the pleasure in the herd than the pleasure in the ego: and as long as the good conscience is for the herd, the bad conscience only saith: ego.

Verily, the crafty ego, the loveless one, that seeketh its advantage in the advantage of many- it is not the origin of the herd, but its ruin.

Loving ones, was it always, and creating ones, that created good and bad. Fire of love gloweth in the names of all the virtues, and fire of wrath.

Many lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: no greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than the creations of the loving ones- "good" and "bad" are they called.

Verily, a prodigy is this power of praising and blaming. Tell me, ye brethren, who will master it for me? Who will put a fetter upon the thousand necks of this animal?

A thousand goals have there been hitherto, for a thousand peoples have there been. Only the fetter for the thousand necks is still lacking; there is lacking the one goal. As yet humanity hath not a goal.

But pray tell me, my brethren, if the goal of humanity be still lacking, is there not also still lacking- humanity itself?
Thus spake Zarathustra.

-From 15. The Thousand and One Goals - Thus Spake Zarathustra. Honestly, I was thinking of crow when I read this section. Classic oration!

[crow]

I hear Zarathustra knew what he was talking about, but personally, I can extract no meaning from his words.
I often experience this inability to fathom words.

[WAAAAAAGH!]

Yet trees are not 'trees', until so named and seen
and never were so named, tifi those had been
who speech's involuted breath unfurled,
faint echo and dim picture of the world,
but neither record nor a photograph,
being divination, judgement, and a laugh
response of those that felt astir within
by deep monition movements that were kin
to life and death of trees, of beasts, of stars:
free captives undermining shadowy bars,
digging the foreknown from experience
and panning the vein of spirit out of sense.
Great powers they slowly brought out of themselves
and looking backward they beheld the elves
that wrought on cunning forges in the mind,
and light and dark on secret looms entwined.
He sees no stars who does not see them first
of living silver made that sudden burst
to flame like flowers bencath an ancient song,
whose very echo after-music long
has since pursued. There is no firmament,
only a void, unless a jewelled tent
myth-woven and elf-pattemed; and no earth,
unless the mother's womb whence all have birth.

-Tolkien

[crow]

I am often reminded of Galileo and the Catholic Church.
It seems the way of men, to label anything hitherto unknown as wrong.
Or worse.

I wonder, too, how anyone ever learns anything new, if using only what they already know, to assign value, or worthlessness to whatever they stumble across.

Reality is the support-system of all men.
Yet so many of them are unable to even detect it.

[WAAAAAAGH!]

Why did the apple fall?

Was it because of gravity?

Or

Did the apple fall because it needed to reach the ground where it could be eaten or spawn a new tree?