Sorry, these are class materials.
Sorry, these are class materials.Previous post: Sorry, these are class materials.
Next post: LOK Chapter 19: feelings and emotions
Sorry, these are class materials.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Morning Michael
I was sloppy with my written word. What I meant to convey was the perception (or experience) of self and world are state specific.It is only through perception that we experience or know anything and this knowing is state specific.
In the example you give of the ticking clock during meditation, we might remember how annoying that sound might be during a sleepless night, or how slowly time seems to pass when we are in pain. It seems every state of body-mind carries its own sense of what is real about the self and what is real about its circumstance.
One of the traps in which we frequently find our self is our tendency to explain how we feel in terms of what we perceive external events to be. This tendency ignores that the perception of the event, the meaning we ascribe to it and our emotional reaction to the ascribed meaning are all a unit and all state dependent.
Thanks for the dialogue
Hi Hayward. In your post you make several references to self and world, suggesting that both are conditioned by the same influences. I’ have been wondering if they are different on some level (or not), in the course of doing the exercise for Chapter 23 (“Observing Without Owning”). The oscillations between events, which appear to be occuring outside me (the tick/tock of the clock, a car passing), feels different from the thoughts that arise (I have ten minutes before the timer goes off, how will I best use it?”) Perhaps those thoughts are driven by influences of which I know nothing and are therefore pretty much events external to the self, but Itheyfeel different. I guess I imagine I could steer my thoughts, but not the clock? –Michael