Attention To The Moment
Hello Robert, Do you think that to live with attention to the moment and without any expectation has to do with a kind of predisposition that comes with some particular human organisms and not with others?
Hi. Naturally, there are expected differences between one organism and another. Still, I think total attention to the moment happens for everyone at certain times (in an emergency, for example, when one acts without thinking). However, many humans live within a bubble of cognitive indoctrination beginning in infancy that makes them focus on the future, including fantasies of what they might attain materially or spiritually. That indoctrination also teaches that living must have meaning beyond simply living and breathing so that one is always searching for meaning, which distracts from seeing things as they are.
The awake among us often speak plainly about this but are misunderstood by seekers who imagine that awake is a struggle in which one constantly and willfully strives to become something different, something better than one currently feels oneself to be. That is backward. Awake means living as one is right now, not always daydreaming about something superior.
Q: But before that happens, isn’t there a need to investigate all that conditioning? That’s where I talk about a predisposition.
A: What do you mean by investigate?
Q: Like questioning beliefs, religious dogmas, the sense of doership, etc.
A: Awake, I say, is when you understand that those beliefs and dogmas are unimportant--not because you have investigated them all—there is no end to that process—but because you have understood that you have no way to know about the future, the meaning of life, “God,” the “soul,” freewill, enlightenment, destiny, choice or anything else of the kind, no matter what anyone says on the subject. You may believe what you hear or disbelieve, but you will never know.
Awakening may begin with questioning beliefs, but at some point, the “investigation” about which you speak can become a way to delay seeing one’s mind as it is right now. You can investigate beliefs until the cows come home, but your findings will never be “truth,” but more like a projection of your own needs, your own state of mind.
You may be told, for example, that human intelligence is only a pale reflection of the greater intelligence that organizes and manages the universe. You may believe that, but if you do, your belief does not make it true (nor does disbelief make it false). You have no way to judge whether that statement is true or false because your belief in it, or your disbelief, depends on what serves your needs, what helps you to cohere psychologically, and what helps you to go on living.
There is no way, I am saying, for a human primate animal to be objective—to find “truth.” The best we can do is to notice our own biases, our own conditioning, and our own preferences so that we do not confuse what we like and what serves our purposes with “truth.”
One can be aware of one’s own perceptions, feelings, and thoughts, and that’s all. Objectivity is a lie. Your only point of view is the one you have, and that is constantly changing.
In a brief moment of honesty, one’s ignorance about ultimate questions such as what the “Self” is or isn’t, what consciousness is or where it comes from, or what anything ultimately means, should be apparent. That moment is routinely avoided by people who harbor hope in place of seeing things as they are: a human child is born and quickly becomes a “me.” Me lives. Me sees what me sees. Me feels what me feels. Me thinks what me thinks. Me partakes of life and takes part in life. Me dies. If there is anything besides that, we do not know anything about it. Those who claim to know are lying to themselves and to those who listen to them.
That may seem dire or depressing, but in my experience, seeing one’s abject ignorance about ultimate matters provides the only true freedom a human will ever have—the freedom to be.
Video interviews with Robert Saltzman, author of
The Ten Thousand Things and Depending On No-Thing
I agree with everything you say, Robert, and love how you communicate. Nothing is ultimately known. We do have a knowledge of what we need to function in society. We have the conditional knowledge put into us by our culture. But beliefs and ideas based on abstractions, such as religious dogmas, are not lies (in my view) but stories or fables we are told and tell ourselves about whatever this is or seems to be. In a sense there is nothing we know at all. But we like to tell stories, make things up, talk incessantly about it all, and participate in our rituals and dances. Just stories all the way to the grave. I guess the stories become lies when they are the framework of an entire cultural identity that conflicts with other cultural identities. Then we can fight like baboons over our ideas, but with bombs instead of sticks.
Thank you, Robert. Just what I needed this morning. Also, thanks to you and Joan T. for mentioning Darryl Bailey. I've since been reading his stuff. Love it too!...