Subtle trap of the mind
From ‘Presence-~Awareness: Just This and Nothing Else’, Sailor Bob Adamson.
Q: Bob, one of the questions that I have, and I know it is a concept, is that one can grasp the discussion intellectually, but it is almost like it has to translate into a livingness or something. Do you know what I mean? I know it is quite dividing.
Bob: It is! Because, where do you get the idea “intellectually” from? Why put on that label? Grasp it. Full stop.
Q: I’m assuming life should turn upside down or something or shift dramatically or maybe it does. I don’t know.
Bob: It may or it may not, but it doesn’t need to, does it? You see that there is no ‘me’. Why hasn’t life turned upside down before?
Q: It is just a concept.
Bob: Yes. You put the label on it: ‘I understand intellectually’. Then we think there is some other way that it needs to be understood. Then we are subtly back in the trap of the mind. Seeing it is seeing it. Two and two is four. Is that intellectual? Or is there a knowing of it? In the seeing of it, nobody can convince you otherwise. The same with this. It needs to be looked at to really see that there is nothing there with any substance or any independent nature that I can call ‘me’, nothing whatsoever. But thinking is still happening. Hearing is still happening. Feeling etc. Everything is still happening the way it always has. Choices are made. Preferences are held. Arguments, fights...livingness goes on.
Q: But it is different from a state of awareness...?
Bob: It is not different. It is all awareness, but the only thing that happens is that psychological suffering drops off, including the resentments, fears, self-pity, depressions and all that sort of thing. The emotions come up, but they don’t hang around and fixate. The anxiety does not build up and build up. The knots in the guts, aches in the heart, lumps in the throat, and feelings that go on in the body because of that are not there.
Q: (Second questioner) What sometimes comes up is the idea that this is not right. You should be feeling guilty! It is funny how those thoughts continue!
Bob: Yes. That is the habit pattern, the idea that we have got to conform with what society dictates we should be like.
Q: It is not attaching to the thoughts.
Bob: Yes, not fixating on them. Taking what they call a ‘vested interest’ in it, it hangs around and hangs around. Thought comes up and there is awareness of it. It will play around for a while and move on. Have a look at your thoughts. Where are yesterday’s thoughts now? No thought hangs around forever. It is soon replaced by another thought. Then we say, ‘I had the same thought yesterday’. But did you? Is it the same thought? Or did it come up again fresh and new? It might be the same content and the same label on it and all the rest of it, but it is just what has come up right now.
Q: Bob, one of the questions that I have, and I know it is a concept, is that one can grasp the discussion intellectually, but it is almost like it has to translate into a livingness or something. Do you know what I mean? I know it is quite dividing.
Bob: It is! Because, where do you get the idea “intellectually” from? Why put on that label? Grasp it. Full stop.
Q: I’m assuming life should turn upside down or something or shift dramatically or maybe it does. I don’t know.
Bob: It may or it may not, but it doesn’t need to, does it? You see that there is no ‘me’. Why hasn’t life turned upside down before?
Q: It is just a concept.
Bob: Yes. You put the label on it: ‘I understand intellectually’. Then we think there is some other way that it needs to be understood. Then we are subtly back in the trap of the mind. Seeing it is seeing it. Two and two is four. Is that intellectual? Or is there a knowing of it? In the seeing of it, nobody can convince you otherwise. The same with this. It needs to be looked at to really see that there is nothing there with any substance or any independent nature that I can call ‘me’, nothing whatsoever. But thinking is still happening. Hearing is still happening. Feeling etc. Everything is still happening the way it always has. Choices are made. Preferences are held. Arguments, fights...livingness goes on.
Q: But it is different from a state of awareness...?
Bob: It is not different. It is all awareness, but the only thing that happens is that psychological suffering drops off, including the resentments, fears, self-pity, depressions and all that sort of thing. The emotions come up, but they don’t hang around and fixate. The anxiety does not build up and build up. The knots in the guts, aches in the heart, lumps in the throat, and feelings that go on in the body because of that are not there.
Q: (Second questioner) What sometimes comes up is the idea that this is not right. You should be feeling guilty! It is funny how those thoughts continue!
Bob: Yes. That is the habit pattern, the idea that we have got to conform with what society dictates we should be like.
Q: It is not attaching to the thoughts.
Bob: Yes, not fixating on them. Taking what they call a ‘vested interest’ in it, it hangs around and hangs around. Thought comes up and there is awareness of it. It will play around for a while and move on. Have a look at your thoughts. Where are yesterday’s thoughts now? No thought hangs around forever. It is soon replaced by another thought. Then we say, ‘I had the same thought yesterday’. But did you? Is it the same thought? Or did it come up again fresh and new? It might be the same content and the same label on it and all the rest of it, but it is just what has come up right now.
