Bed and Breakfast in Harlem, New York

We Americans love to say,"It's a free country."As if somehow our freedom is dependant on someone else.On a superficial level,certainly if you can't be sure that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are being respected by our government, it is diminished.But true freedom is something else and if we can find this freedom the other will come automatically.

True freedom surely comes from the truth and what could be more simple than the truth?There is only one other choice and that of course is a lie.Where do we find this truth?The truth is inside all of us.It is not buried deep if we can just allow ourselves to look we will find it.Therefore we must know ourselves.This means that we should know what our relationship with the world is,the world of ideas and people and personal relationships with your neighbors,with nature and with the things we possess.

How are we to be aware of anything?We see the birds and the trees and there is a response to a stimulus,we observe this ordinary process,and we don't need to study any books to see what takes place.Through identification you can have pleasure and pain.Our "capacity" is this concern with pleasure and pain,so long as we are looking to this "capacity" we will fail,because the understanding of ourselves does not depend on capacity.This is not a technique that you develop,but it can be tested by the way you talk and the way you behave.Watch yourself without any identification or comparison or condemnation.Most of our activities are unconscious and now you will be aware of these actions but without guilt or blame.

When I condemn something I do not understand it,so be aware with no sense of justification. We begin to understand ourselves,not just the superficial layers of our consciousness,but the motives,our hidden,confused demands,anxieties and fears.

However it is important not to accumulate the experience which awareness brings.It is important to be aware from moment to moment.We cannot approach a problem of relationship which is always new with an old pattern.

This passive awareness does not come from any form of discipline or any practice.It is just to be aware from moment to moment of our thinking and feeling and not only when we are awake but in our dreams.Thus we open the door into the hidden which becomes the known,and we must go beyond the door into the unknown.Reality is not a thing which is knowable by the mind because the mind is the result of the known,of the past and therefore the mind must understand itself and its functioning,its truth,and only then is it possible for the unknown to be.

Many thanks Krishnamurti for your words of wisdom.

Labels: Observations