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Sunday, July 22

VALERIE

hello this is valerie and this is a test...
:-)

BRUCE:
Val's an old friend from the
Krishnamurti list and lives
in sunny (at least 2-3 days
per year) Alaska, USA.
Welcome, Val!

VALERIE:
Thankye Bruce!
Okay - here goes:
lessee -
my name is valerie and i am a spiritual aspirant, a writer of
tales, a photographer, a flaky artist by nature, and
musically gifted. And a good actor. And humble; in fact low
self-esteem. So please nobody be mean to me - send me
compliments and flowers and I will write poetry about the
wonders that are *you* (whoever you are...) oh - i don't
care, be mean if you wanna - what's it to me? Water off a
duck's back; hee haw!

LIKES: I like chocolate, the smell of
turpentine, flowers and children before they can walk and
talk, gray drizzly wet long days in the rainforest, and boat
rides off to deserted old growth islands. Beachcombing is
cool. I wanna live on a boat someday, if I don't buy the VW
camper mobile and be a gypsy when I grow up and have my long
awaited happy childhood. Like I was tellin Bruce I wanna dye
my white hair purple and wear bells on my neck, wrists and
ankles and smell of patchouli oil. Long tie-dye gowns and
Indian print things, big hoops in my ears and live on alfalfa
sprouts and prana. People will pay me to read their fortunes
in the tea leaves and interpret their dreams. Oh and I love
people with big disgusting vocabularies... :-)

PET PEEVES:
Loud noises, crowds, going outside, bad psychotropic drugs,
big barrelling lumber trucks, people who tailgate, big
cities, being trapped on an island for 5 years straight (true
story), dishonesty in all forms, abhor violence, black
licorice, the smell of aftershave and chemical perfumes, big
unfamiliar Rottweilers, art that looks like one or two lines
from a child in kindergarten in big chrome frames selling for
thousands of dollars in galleries, rap music, whiney country
western songs, cheap wine, shitkickers attitudes, green eggs
and ham, and pawn brokers who sell my fiddle (grrrr...).

you can see where I work at:
http://www.ktnmirrorimages.com
and click on the Weekly Images link

that's enough outta me -
thankyou for your time, I will now resume my "preferred lurkers" status
and return you to your regularly scheduled programming...
*buzz click!*
over and out!
best regards,
valerie

_______________________________________________________________________

GENE POOLE AND GARY MERRILL

GENE: Humans information-process their way around, in this
ocean of information, like a fish swims in the sea. And like
the fish, who is probably unaware of water, we humans are
generally unaware of the environment of information in which
we move, as we navigate from meaning to meaning.

Grammars are the primary means of conditioning; indeed,
grammar is itself a language which precedes the symbols which
it serves to regulate. The genetic memory of survival, forms
the grammars which naturally rank and file all symbols used
in communication; the primary grammar is (for us) thus, one
which continually purifies itself in order to favor survival
of the human species.

GARY: Korzybski called this the 'semantic environment', the
world of meaning in which 'we' swim.

As dogmatic fish 'we' know what's going on and have reached
conclusions by which to live by. These conclusions fit in the
world view which is taken as real. So the reality for and
Arab is different than a Jew. The grammar of language and
knowledge supports this identity. Little words like 'is'
bring stasis to the picture. 'to be' and 'I am' being
derivations thereof. This happens largely unconsciously as
'new' information is processed according to the existing
picture.

GENE: Space, as the ultimate emptiness, is actually the
ultimate fullness; and objects are products of space, literal
standing-wave forms which decay as the energy of their
information is absorbed back into the vast plenum of space.

GARY: The question would be whether this process is
inevitable. Fullness and emptiness are still theoretical.
What we really want to know is the fullness or emptiness of
ourselves :-) Is there still room for emptiness in the
fullness of the known? 'I am' just the limitation of the
known or is there a partaking of the unknown? Identification
is the limitation of the known. 'Seeing' this limitation is
the opening of it. That there is no seer separate from this
seeing may then start to emerge, which is to understand the
extent of the conditioned view.

_________________________________________________________________________

JERRY

Author Carlos Fuentes is being interviewed on CBC television.
The interviewer asked him about his typical day. Fuentes said
that when he goes to sleep he can't wait for the night to be
over so that he can begin to write again. He gets up at 6AM
and writes from 7 until noon. Then he walks for an hour. His
habit is to walk through the British Cemetery. He spoke about
how wonderful the gravestone inscriptions were, and he
described his favorite as follows: "Here lies Lady
(so-and-so). She went from illusion to reality."

The interview ends with that statement. Such is life.

JAN

If that would be accepted, gravestone inscriptions could be more
lighthearted:

1. don't lead the earthworms into temptation
2. skinman bones always drives faster than you
3. if only you had been so quiet more often
4. here lies the truth: dead meat can't cheat!

________________________________________________________________________

SHANKAR (from the I Am list)

Explanatory Note on the twofold impact of all works:

We do all our works with our conscious surface minds. As we
do the work, it ends in the middle of our doing, into a seed.
This seed gets formed in our conscious mind. And, it goes
down and gets lodged into the basement of our subconscious
mind.

We are the Supreme Self, having assumed an individual body.
But, the Supreme Self with the entire universe as Its body,
is the Personal God, or ISvarA.

This ISvarA determines in which birth this seed has to
materialise into our outer circumstances. This
materialisation occurs only in a subsequent birth by the Will
of ISvarA. In very special cases, laid down in the vEdAs, the
same materialises in the current birth itself. This He does
in such a way that will enable us to turn inward, enquire
into the Self, resolve the seeds into the Light of the Self,
and attain Self-Realisation.

1 This seed becomes active 'only when it materialises' into
our outer circumstances, in some subsequent birth, 'in the
form of the fruit of the action' from which this seed was
formed. 2 Until then, the seed keeps 'acting indirectly' on
the conscious surface mind, by constantly propelling the same
from below, into same or similar type of actions. Thus, in
the current birth it is in 'sleep' because it is yet to
manifest its fruit in some future birth. Also because, it
'acts unawares' by propelling the conscious surface mind from
below it. Thus, our conscious surface mind can be said to be
constantly in a state of 'sleep-walking' (somnambulism).

We can resolve the the seed into the Light of the Self in any
particular birth by performing Self-Enquiry. Suppose we do
not so resolve the seed. Then it will be carried forward to
the next birth. It will then exist in that subsequent birth,
as part of our subconscious mind.

Suppose we do not so resolve the seed in that subsequent
birth also. Suppose further that the seed is not ordained by
ISvarA to materialise into the outer circumstances in that
birth. Then it will be carried forward to the next birth. It
will then exist in that subsequent birth, as part of our
subconscious mind.

And so on, until it is either resolved by us, or it
materialises by the Will of ISvarA into the fruit of our
action.

__________________________________________________________________________

DAN BERKOW AND ED ARRONS

E: But in confronting one's own conditioning, which is not
separate from one's self, there needs to be an understanding
that conditioning in the self does exist, and how to
recognize it. Are you saying this is not possible? How can
*anyone* comment intelligently, or at all, on conditioning
without this understanding!

D: Back to the "commentator" again? The commentator is the
conditioning! Freedom from conditioning doesn't come by
having the correct commentary about conditioning, but from
being able to observe the conditioning without being defined
by the conditioning. Not saying something correct about it
(which statement would involve thought and words, which are
conditioning), but observing how the activity of conditioning
works, without being "caught" in it, and by it, in terms of
claiming an identity within the process of conditioning and
conditions.

Is it not possible to notice times when the signs of
conditioning disappear and a great sense of freedom arises,
and to notice certain conditions that correspond with such
occasions?

Conditioning doesn't disappear as long as the body-mind is
communicating, working, interacting. And why should it
disappear? Is conditioning bad, wrong, out of place? No -- in
fact, such thoughts about conditioning -- that it can, must
disappear -- are themselves conditioned thinking. Conditions
that affect a being are conditioning -- so if you think your
noticing certain conditions that correspond with certain
occasions of feeling free - that very thought is itself
conditioned. Freedom from conditioning is *being* the
unconditioned -- not an experience of freedom that occurs in
certain conditions!

E: Yes, the understanding can grow and remedial intervention
is possible.

D: Intervention is itself a conditioned response.

E: There seems to be much concern with the issue of a limited
entity *trying*, as if to try is to presage automatic
failure.

D: No - it's understanding the entity and the trying are the
activity of conditioning.

E: But any practicing artist will explain that real
spontaneity occurs after many sessions of trying. The truth
of this may occur more than once in life.

D: That's a conditional and limited spontaneity. The
spontaneity of "all that is" is not spontaneity that depends
on conditions, nor is it spontaneity aimed at an outcome.
Another way to say this: its being, the outcome, the "income"
-- are the exact same thing.

E: To make any comment at all as to whether conditioning can
be studied and understood -or not, and under what
circumstances, cannot come from an entity that claims that
"trying to understand conditioning presumes an entity that
arises separately from conditioning, which can study it, and
learn things about it (while continuing to really exist over
time, irrespective of conditions or conditioning) ..."

Such an entity would be better off having said nothing. :-)

D: No such entity has said anything ;-) There is only "the
unconditioned" ... *No* entities have ever said anything. The
appearance of an entity with an agenda to say something about
something is only conditioning. Conditioning doesn't make
anything real -- it tends, however, to become its own reality
to itself. For this reason, there is talk about
"conditioning" ... to facilitate a shift in view, so to speak
;-)

_________________________________________________________________________

SU GANDOLF AND MICHAEL READ

Michael said:
> Soon, I think, you will have the experience of awakening that will
end
> the feeling of separateness. You are quite more open than you may
> think you are. Yup! Oh you are gonna have a good laugh!
>

Not waiting on this one! Have bought Crow to keep in freezer, just in
case, will happily pop in oven, season and enjoy with baked potato
when time comes! Good laugh always welcome.

> Live, laugh, love and be happy - Michael

Yeah. Thanks. Don't want to be happy all the time, though. Seeing a
white horse with a feather on it's head harnessed to a carriage and
waiting for a bride and groom, seeing a dog glance up at his "master"
with fear, seeing myself pass people on the street who have no
source of income other than what is put in the cup in front of them
while I buy expensive prepared food I could do without, today, doesn't
make me feel "happy", and that's OK with me.

Thank you for sharing a lovely exchange.

Peace,
Su

p.s. Su will be gone for two weeks starting Wed. eve. Going to
Montana.

I was raised there. Glendive, Missoula and Butte. Left at age eighteen
in 1967 and have only been back to visit and on vacation.

Hmm...better take some freeze dried Crow along. Montana is such a
beautiful place that your heart may just be tugged open.

Nah, no one is happy all the time. :-(
But, one can be at peace in the damndest of circumstances. :-)

Thanks for your ligh-hearted exchanges.

Loveya - Michael

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