Becoming aware of something horrible makes one feel quite differently than becoming aware of something wonderful. — creativesoul

I have become aware that some of my behavior has been hurtful and self-serving to people I like. That made me feel bad, but it was important that I know it. I have become aware that someone I have known for years is a true friend. I don't have that many friends. It made me feel really good. Most of the things I am aware of are not emotionally charged. Whichever, the emotions may be different, but in my experience, the process and experience of the awareness itself is similar.

I think you may be skirting around self-awareness. — creativesoul

I'm not sure which of my comments this is responding to. As I see it, what I have been writing goes right to the heart of self-awareness. Please explain what you mean.

Emotional maturity. Understanding one's own emotional triggers. Coming to acceptable terms with oneself and the world. All those things and more... perhaps? — creativesoul

Is this what you were talking about? These are among the things I am talking about becoming aware of.

I think you may be skirting around self-awareness.
— creativesoul

I'm not sure which of my comments this is responding to. As I see it, what I have been writing goes right to the heart of self-awareness. Please explain what you mean. — T Clark

Poorly expressed on my part. Self-awareness it is then. That's the way it seemed.

Poorly expressed on my part. Self-awareness it is then. That's the way it seemed. — creativesoul

But I'm not talking just about self-awareness, what's going on inside myself. I'm also talking about awareness of things going on out in the world. Like the example of the hearing test.

As I think about your comment, I think that, in a sense, all awareness is self-awareness.

I have become aware that some of my behavior has been hurtful and self-serving to people I like. That made me feel bad, but it was important that I know it. I have become aware that someone I have known for years is a true friend. I don't have that many friends. It made me feel really good. Most of the things I am aware of are not emotionally charged. Whichever, the emotions may be different, but in my experience, the process and experience of the awareness itself is similar. — T Clark

Right. I was just answering the question about what becoming aware feels like. I took feels to mean emotional 'feelings'.

We can walk barefoot and accidentally kick a rock that we didn't see. Becoming aware of that has quite a different feeling, one that causes - or at least can cause - emotional feelings to arise within.

Don't think it would make much sense to say that all awareness is self awareness. It requires us, but's that's different. We become aware of things. Not every thing is us.

What it seems like you're saying is that we need to think like lower animals which have no concept of their own death, or their future. How is thinking like lower animals transcendent? — Harry Hindu

Lower animals don't have these concepts to transcend. Obviously, we can't eliminate these concepts, but we may be able to loosen their grip on us, and in so doing relieve the anxiety they may produce.

The fact that we know we can die is knowledge that enables us to avoid death. It is the basis of all our medical knowledge in understanding how our bodies work and their relationship with the rest of the world. — Harry Hindu

Animals seem to avoid death well enough. In fact, they normally strike a good balance with their environment, whereas we tend over manipulate our environment, to the point of the extinction of countless species, and perhaps our own in the near future.

To be clear, I was talking about a temporary meditative state. This isn't a condition that can be maintained in day to day life, assuming that were even desirable. Being mindful is something that could be practiced in normal life.

Lower animals don't have these concepts to transcend. Obviously, we can't eliminate these concepts, but we may be able to loosen their grip on us, and in so doing relieve the anxiety they may produce. — praxis

So it sounds like it's merely a way of deluding ourselves into forgetting ourselves for a time. What you seem to be calling transcending, I call deluding. Delusions are a means of alleviating stress associated with ideas that produce anxiety. They cover up reality with fancy ideas that make one feel good, but aren't objectively true. I really don't understand what it means to transcend our self, or our idea of self. It's just another form of religion, which itself is just another kind of delusion to make us feel better about our existence, but isn't necessarily true, or the way things really are.

Animals seem to avoid death well enough. In fact, they normally strike a good balance with their environment, whereas we tend over manipulate our environment, to the point of the extinction of countless species, and perhaps our own in the near future.

To be clear, I was talking about a temporary meditative state. This isn't a condition that can be maintained in day to day life, assuming that were even desirable. Being mindful is something that could be practiced in normal life. — praxis

Animals seem to avoid death, but death is not something that they are aware of to avoid. They are simply engaging in the instinctive behavior of flight when they are aware of a predator.

Other animals have devastated their environments too. Other animals have become extinct, long before humans arrived on the scene, at the hands of newly introduced predators or diseases into their environments. You need to acquire the context of natural selection over the eons to see that humans are really no different from other animals in this respect.

Being mindful is the same as being aware. What is it that you want to be aware of - truths or delusions?

What you seem to be calling transcending, I call deluding. Delusions are a means of alleviating stress associated with ideas that produce anxiety. They cover up reality with fancy ideas that make one feel good, but aren't objectively true. I really don't understand what it means to transcend our self, or our idea of self. It's just another form of religion, which itself is just another kind of delusion to make us feel better about our existence, but isn't necessarily true, or the way things really are. — Harry Hindu

The way things really are is individuated? In reality, my keyboard is really separate from the desk it sits on, and the desk separate from the floor, etc... That how reality really is?

Well, I do see everything as interconnected. I mean our own bodies wouldn't exist if not for food and air - both of which exist "separate" from our bodies, but then I don't need meditation, or some fancy use of language, to be aware of, or understand that. It's just something that I know, and isn't temporary, but is integrated into my entire worldview.

@apokrisis

I've thought a lot about the things you've written as part of this thread. I went back and reread your posts. I'm working on putting what you say together with what I experience to see if I can get a match. I'm going to put down my thoughts about things you have written in various posts. Some of them I have responded to before.

So first up, introspection is not some hardwired biological brain capacity - intrinsic to "being conscious". It is very much a learnt skill that we pick up as part of our cultural upbringing and made possible because self-directed speech does allow us to focus our attention and create a narrative story of "what is going on inside". — apokrisis

I don't have any argument about this. I don't think the Buddha's mind became like a feral child's. How can we know we are enlightened without a cultural context and conceptual structure?

So it is therefore quite easy to miss stuff in our own heads if we haven't formed the right conceptual structure to notice it. — apokrisis

I think it's more than that. The subconscious isn't just stuff we haven't learned or learned to see, it's also stuff we've hidden or whose signal is too weak for us to detect.

Generally, my introspective understanding of my own thinking and experiencing processes utterly changed after a few years of studying the neurology of the phenomenology. Once I had learnt the correct constructs, I could know what to expect to see and so actually start to see it accurately. It became a habit to not just think thoughts, but to be also able to catch how a pattern of thought came together. — apokrisis

There have been some really interesting discussions on this forum about consciousness and awareness and the neurological basis for them. That's really changed the way I intellectually understand the phenomena, but it hasn't changed the experience for me. It's interesting that it has for you. I don't envy you, because my way of perceiving them is part of me. It fits me. On the other hand, it would be fun to be able to experience them both ways.

On the other hand, again there is a learning issue. Positive psychology does try to train people to notice the fine-grain detail of what they feel. It is a skill to be learnt, and one that thus involves the learning of a conceptual framing. People might not realise when they feel anxious or tense. Once they start looking, they can see how their body is responding and separate their feelings in that fashion. — apokrisis

In another post on this thread, I wrote about what it feels like to become aware. What I wrote is consistent with what you say above, although I think it is seen from a different angle.

Then we can start to introspect through the eyes of scientific knowledge. This should be the truest picture. — apokrisis

Oh, good. We've found something on which we can really disagree. I'm from science. It makes up a big part of my world view, so it obviously effects how I am aware of the world. The metaphorical cloud I wrote about previously is completely consistent with my scientific understanding of the world. Our disagreement relates to whether or not science has a privileged view of reality. I believe strongly that it does not. Science does not provide "the truest picture."

So society really does shape what we believe about what we should find "inside". It is the prime source of any conceptual structure. And it approaches introspection in its own often quite self-interested way. — apokrisis

As I said, I don't disagree with this.

Some more thoughts on rereading your posts

So animals are certainly aware of the world in a direct or "extrospective" fashion. They are wordlessly plugged into the here and now in terms of how they are feeling, thinking and reacting.

Then humans have a speech-structured mind. Language is a machinery that allows us to step back and comment on the further fact that we are "selves" doing all these things. Language creates a distance from just the doing and so makes the doing reportable, controllable, memorable, interpretable. — apokrisis

Looking at my own experience of awareness, I think there is something between the animal's "wordlessly plugged in" and the fact that healthy adult humans are selves. I'm not claiming that experience is not culturally mediated. I'm still thinking about that. I don't meditate in any disciplined or consistent way, but I have experienced the world without words or concepts - my metaphorical cloud is one example but certainly not the only one.

For better or worse, much of what I experience is fully immersed in words. I am a very verbal person. On the other hand, I can see people without words as a patchwork of my own feelings and images about their personalities, characters, and temperaments. Sort of like a smaller version of my universal cloud. I'm not talking about telepathy or anything supernatural. My feelings and images are sometimes, often, wrong. I'm not claiming special knowledge, just a particular way of seeing. The same is true of some other aspects of the world at certain times.

From comments you make in other posts on this thread, you seem to be suspicious of that way of looking at things. You characterize them as some sort of formless forgetting. That's not true at all.

So it sounds like you just didn't have the "right" training in how to conceptualise that part of your experience. — apokrisis

As I said previously, not being aware is not just a matter of training or social conditioning. I can recognize what anger, shame, and fear feel like, but I sometimes get caught by surprise when I realize that I have been feeling that way without knowing it.

Well my answer is only going to be that Buddhism is just another form of social mind-control. It is a model of how to be a self that is promoted within a certain culture as it is pro-social for that culture. It serves that society's organisational interests.

But then I'm also arguing that we are only ever creatures of our cultures. So it is not a bad thing in itself that we are culturally programmed to have a particular view of our "selves"......So it is just another cultural game - and one actually designed to strengthen culture's hold on your thought patterns. — apokrisis

This is the thing you have written in this thread I have thought the most about. I'm not sure what to do with it yet. My first impulse is to disagree, put it all on your lack of imagination or empathy, but I'm not sure about that at all. I need to think more about it.

Thanks for giving me so much to think about. I may want to respond or re-respond to some of your other posts too.

Well my answer is only going to be that Buddhism is just another form of social mind-control. It is a model of how to be a self that is promoted within a certain culture as it is pro-social for that culture. It serves that society's organisational interests. — apokrisis

(Eckhart Tolle says what I have to say far more eloquently, but ...)

It can be, but there is something to be said about religion in general, whether it's Buddhism, Christianity, or whatever.

All religions, at their absolute core, contain the same fundamental (and simple) truths that are universally applicable. For instance, the truth that all physical forms are impermanent - this holds true whether you're Buddhist or Christian.

However, over time, this core of wisdom at the heart of each religion has been repeatedly misinterpreted, added to, and consequently obscured, either by selfish people seeking to promote their own beliefs, or by those simply not able/willing to understand those core truths. In other words, noisy human minds were applied to those simple truths which then became what you, Apokrisis, described.

This is why there are many religions and many offshoots of each. They all started pretty much in the same place, and diverged over time, farther and farther away from the truths they intended to teach.

If you take away all the obscurity, you will find those few priceless pearls of wisdom at the heart of any religion. It's just that most people are unable to see them, because of the depth of the obscurity and because the so called "experts" are "teaching" and "preaching" all the wrong things about the religion.

Go to any church on a Sunday ... are they going to be talking about impermanence ? Or that life exists only in the present moment ? Or that all suffering can be tied to desire/fear ? No ! They're going to be talking about anything but those simple truths. They will "teach" anything but what really matters.

Religion, today, equals obscurity, and like you said, a form of mind-control. But, if one looks deeper, there is truth/wisdom to be discovered.

The beautiful irony is that one does not need to be "learned" to know those simple truths that each religion intends to teach. It's only because of that obscurity that we have "priests" and "ministers" who read chapter after chapter of obscurity and bullshit and pass it on to others who listen spellbound. The real truths don't require any reading or learning ... just the realization of one's consciousness.

Real spirituality/religion has nothing to do with weekly trips to a building or the reading of books or donations or rituals or ceremonies .. in fact, all of those are nothing more than a charade that gets in the way of the ultimate goal. All that's needed is a seeing beyond the obvious.

All religions, at their absolute core, contain the same fundamental (and simple) truths that are universally applicable. For instance, the truth that all physical forms are impermanent - this holds true whether you're Buddhist or Christian. — Aurora

I think I'll let Christians tell me what their fundamental truths are. I'm pretty sure you're not qualified. From my perspective outside all recognized religions, I think what they have in common is two things - 1) a common (universal?) human experience of being part of something larger than oneself and 2) the human capacity and compulsion to tell stories.

However, over time, this core of wisdom at the heart of each religion has been repeatedly misinterpreted, added to, and consequently obscured, either by selfish people seeking to promote their own beliefs, or by those simply not able/willing to understand those core truths. — Aurora

So, if I may be allowed the hyperbole, all people who don't share your view of the fundamental truths of the world are either selfish or stupid.

Go to any church on a Sunday ... are they going to be talking about impermanence ? Or that life exists only in the present moment ? Or that all suffering can be tied to desire/fear ? No ! They're going to be talking about anything but those simple truths. They will "teach" anything but what really matters. — Aurora

They're going to be talking about God, strangely enough, and right and wrong, heaven, the four noble truths, and how to treat your neighbor, etc. Go figure.

Real spirituality/religion has nothing to do with weekly trips to a building or the reading of books or donations or rituals or ceremonies .. in fact, all of those are nothing more than a charade that gets in the way of the ultimate goal. All that's needed is a seeing beyond the obvious. — Aurora

My wife is a smart person. She was raised Catholic. She rejects a lot of the things the church doctrine says, but she values the experience of fellowship with God. She takes that weekly trip to the building and participates in the rituals because it helps put her heart and mind in a place that is receptive to God's presence. I'm not Christian. I don't go to church, but I wouldn't have the nerve to tell someone they're wrong and that I'm the one who knows what they really should believe.

Real spirituality/religion has nothing to do with weekly trips to a building or the reading of books or donations or rituals or ceremonies .. in fact, all of those are nothing more than a charade that gets in the way of the ultimate goal. — Aurora

What's the ultimate goal?

To realize that you're a conscious being, given a temporary form to dwell in.

This may sound exceedingly simple or trivial or insignificant, but there is a vast depth to what can follow from this realization.

Well, I do see everything as interconnected. I mean our own bodies wouldn't exist if not for food and air - both of which exist "separate" from our bodies, but then I don't need meditation, or some fancy use of language, to be aware of, or understand that. It's just something that I know, and isn't temporary, but is integrated into my entire worldview. — Harry Hindu

Sure, fine, but there's a difference between conceptual understanding and experience. Meditation or other forms of manipulating awareness are designed to experience this lack of separation and transcend our own worldview or interest, and view the world from a vantage point that is, in Thomas Nagel's words, "nowhere in particular."

That's an odd goal, quite frankly.

That's an odd goal, quite frankly. — praxis

Ok, well then please enlighten me ... what kind of goal would you find less "odd" ? Perhaps one about money ? Or politics ? Or global warming ?

I'm pretty sure you're not qualified. — T Clark

You're right. You seem to know it all. What can I say that will further this discussion ? Probably nothing, so I won't bother.

To realize that you're a conscious being, given a temporary form to dwell in.

This may sound exceedingly simple or trivial or insignificant, but there is a vast depth to what can follow from this realization. — Aurora

I'd like to plumb the depths a bit. When you say a conscious being with a temporary form to dwell in, are you suggesting that the conscious being is independent of the temporary form and may not be temporary itself?

what kind of goal would you find less "odd"?

Happiness is a good goal.

I'd like to plumb the depths a bit. When you say a conscious being with a temporary form to dwell in, are you suggesting that the conscious being is independent of the temporary form and may not be temporary itself? — praxis

The consciousness that animates every living form is eternal, but the form that it animates is temporary. So, when one is born, it is the one (eternal) consciousness manifesting as a form, but when one dies, the consciousness doesn't die with that form. In other words, you can think of the form as a channel for the consciousness to pass through. So, each form gets an opportunity to "live" through that consciousness.

If this sounds like bullshit, ok, it is not the easiest thing to see.

Just try this one thing ... let's say that someday, you are overwhelmed with anger or some powerful negative feeling/emotion, and suddenly you find yourself stepping back from that emotion and seeing it instead of getting lost in it ... just as an observer, without any judgment of thought ... totally neutral ... and the turmoil suddenly turns to peace. What is that place you are watching those negative emotions from ? Is it the mind ? Or is it something outside the mind/body ?

Or, let's say you find yourself staring at something beautiful, like a sunset or a bird on a tree branch, and suddenly, you find yourself at total peace. There is no mind involved, no body involved. Just a perceiving without imposing any ideas/thoughts on it. What is it that perceives ?

Sometimes, even after a loved one dies (or simply leaves, as in a breakup), the survivors say, "I still feel his presence around the house." The form is dead/gone, so what is it that lingers ? (And no, I'm not alluding to some horror movie crap).

What this is really about (and spirituality, in general) is giving a person a new perspective from which to look at life and the world. One might think that this esoteric abstract bullshit has no practical purpose, and that it is just for the books. On the contrary, when you are able to distance yourself from your mind and body, when you realize that your identity is no longer just your mind and body and other forms like material possessions (which is to say, how good you look, how much you know, how much money you make, etc, etc, etc), think about how much it simplifies your life and how much peace is to be had from that realization.

But of course, nothing anyone says or does will convince you, nor should it. You have to see it for yourself. Convincing is utterly futile. And, if you don't see it, that is perfectly ok. Life continues solely on that other plane - the plane where only form is honored. That's fine too.

That's the best I can do to try and explain it. Language is really quite inadequate when it comes to these things.

Happiness is a good goal — praxis

"I plan to be happy on Friday at 5 pm" :)

Yes, a good goal ... and quite naive. If you're talking about true happiness, you cannot aim to be happy; you can only be happy now (i.e. in the present moment). When the future comes, it will also be now.

(When I say "now" for conciseness, I mean "in the present moment", just to be clear)

Have you ever planned a kickass vacation with a lot of great anticipation ? And then, when the vacation actually came, it sucked ? Or you were anticipating a great date with a hot new girl/guy ? And it turned out to be crap ? Think about it for a minute - what does that prove ?

You enjoyed the anticipation of the future event, not the future event itself, and you enjoyed that anticipation now. You cannot plan to be happy :) ... for the simple reason that you cannot predict the exact circumstances or "form" a future moment will take. You can only react to the form of the present moment (by being happy or sad or whatever). So, you cannot plan to be happy in the future, because the future may involve a divorce, bankruptcy, an earthquake, or a black ant in your food (or a million other things you cannot possibly foresee).

If you really want to "plumb the depths", ask yourself what real happiness is. Is it the temporary ego satisfaction that comes from a new car or a raise at work or how about a sexy new partner ? Or is it something deeper. And, if it is something deeper, does it need to be planned for ? Or enjoyed now ?

I'm going to borrow a beautiful expression from another forum member here. I think his name is Michael Ossipoff. Hope he'll be ok with me borrowing his words.

The "perpetual postponement of satisfaction" that we constantly engage in is the reason we are eternally miserable. That is what we get for having happiness as a goal :)

Said another way, the "goal" is to "have no goal" ;)

If none of this resonates with you, any further words of mine will likely be futile.

What is that place you are watching those negative emotions from ? Is it the mind ? Or is it something outside the mind/body ? — Aurora

It’s the mind.

It’s the mind. — praxis

Ok :)

As I mentioned, it is not my place to convince you and doing so would be futile anyway.

If you believe it's the mind, who am I to tell you otherwise. You know yourself best.

The consciousness that animates every living form is eternal, but the form that it animates is temporary. So, when one is born, it is the one (eternal) consciousness manifesting as a form, but when one dies, the consciousness doesn't die with that form. In other words, you can think of the form as a channel for the consciousness to pass through. So, each form gets an opportunity to "live" through that consciousness. — Aurora

That is something like the Vedantic view - that there is an inner being that migrates from life to life, undergoing the experiences caused by previous actions until such time as the goal of mokṣa (liberation) from the cycle is realised.

Buddhism teaches something similar, but also very differernt, as there is no innermost being or everlasting essence which migrates from life to life. Rather intentions give rise to consequences, which themselves perpetuate future existences, up until the time one realises that there is nobody driving the process, and it abates through the recognition of ‘no self’.

I just entered this site about half an hour ago and am delighted with the articulate level of the contributions. I have been aware a rather long time and early on in my lifelong confusion has prompted me, even as a young child,to doubt the sustained peculiarity of reality. A few years ago, after I had graduated as an industrial designer from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NYC back in 1959. I got involved with a firm producing an exhibition on brain function and I worked with a neurologist who helped me dissect a couple of human brains to understand the architecture of different brain functions. As an artist and a designer I claim no profound expertise in the matter and, in those early days, brain function was still quite primitive compared to today. Nevertheless, the sense that nerve structure required precise organization physically to produce a thinking aware mind divested me of any illusion that there was any kind of dynamics other than the complex physical matrix of nerves involved.

Even as a child, my dreams were brilliantly colored and, as today, I had several every night. But, beyond this, even when awake,I could close my eyes and watch a kind of inner video that progressed in various unexpected ways that were entertaining. I have been surprised to discover that other people do not experience this. After a good many years of wondering about this and reading about how various thinkers made sense of reality I have come to a general guess about what is going on in my head.

The brain itself has no direct contact with reality. Its only contact is with its several basic sensory systems and these systems send nerve pulses identified by the brain with their origins to differentiate them.The nervous system in humans and in other animals was developed with the basic agenda of life to survive and reproduce so our reality is actually an inner construction of the brain to model the necessary abstracted version of what goes on out there so that we can survive and have kids. There is a great deal going on outside that is of no use to us in the basic agenda so our genetic design and our experience tosses away the huge bulk of stuff that is irrelevant and what we get at end is a matrix of useful abstracts that we call reality. There is a huge dynamic library in our brain that saves all this input to be available on needed demand. But the self, the me that we each believe to be who we are,is an instrument that the brain places in its limited internal construction of the outside world and that is what each of us identifies as reality. We don't see, hear, smell or feel with our nerve inputs.We do all these things with the brain. It puzzled me for years as to how a hypnotized person could actually "see" what thee hypnotist suggests.That's because none of us sees with our eyes. We see what the brain constructs from its impulses.

And the inner brain is continuously constructing all sorts of possible realities we never experience when awake because what we experience is the highest probabilities it can infer from its sense impulses which it continually upgrades. When we sleep with our eyes closed the brain gadget we call ourselves experiences the fantasy reality constructions that the brain is manufacturing all the time as dreams.

At least,that's what I think is going on.

At least,that's what I think is going on. — Jan Sand

I like the way you've put his all together. Some of the internal experiences you describe I have felt also. A lot I have not. Generally, yours seem more intense and well defined. In particular I like this:

There is a great deal going on outside that is of no use to us in the basic agenda so our genetic design and our experience tosses away the huge bulk of stuff that is irrelevant and what we get at end is a matrix of useful abstracts that we call reality. There is a huge dynamic library in our brain that saves all this input to be available on needed demand. But the self, the me that we each believe to be who we are, is an instrument that the brain places in its limited internal construction of the outside world and that is what each of us identifies as reality. — Jan Sand

I think that's a good way to look at reality, by which I mean it is consistent with how I do. It also clashes with a more common understanding that reality exists independent of human participation. If you look back over my posts on metaphysics, you'll see that everything I say eventually comes back to my understanding that the universe is essentially human. That you can't separate some sort of objective reality out from our understanding of it. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth if that's not how you see things.

This consciousnesses you speak of is mindless?

I'm not sure by what you mean as mindless. I see myself as a kind of surface effect of the huge ocean of intellect of the unconsciousness that feeds words to me as I need them to speak and processes to me as I need to drive a car or fly a plane or tie my shoes. It's a continuous resource of ideas and memories and processes that my conscious mind needs to operate. And it thinks on its own about solving problems. When I write poetry I find it manufacturing lines automatically as I write. I sometimes create graphics out of colors spreading on wet paper not by creating images but by recognizing patterns automatically that merely is pulled from memory templates. In my dreams I sometimes visit galleries of paintings I have never done and haven't even the skills to perform. This brain thing that underlies everything I do is far cleverer than the me that I know with immensely more resources than I have.

I'm not sure by what you mean as mindless. I see myself as a kind of surface effect of the huge ocean of intellect of the unconsciousness that feeds words to me as I need them to speak and processes to me as I need to drive a car or fly a plane or tie my shoes. It's a continuous resource of ideas and memories and processes that my conscious mind needs to operate. And it thinks on its own about solving problems. When I write poetry I find it manufacturing lines automatically as I write. I sometimes create graphics out of colors spreading on wet paper not by creating images but by recognizing patterns automatically that merely is pulled from memory templates. In my dreams I sometimes visit galleries of paintings I have never done and haven't even the skills to perform. This brain thing that underlies everything I do is far cleverer than the me that I know with immensely more resources than I have. — Jan Sand

I really like this description. The image I use is of a spring - water bubbling up to the surface through the rock from an underground source. Just about everything I feel or want comes up out of that spring and goes directly into action. There is rarely any mediation from conscious processes except to say "no." That's where everything I write comes from. Everything I feel. That's what I think of when I read about acting without acting in the Tao Te Ching.

By the way, if you are responding to a quote from a specific post, you can highlight that quote. A tag that says "quote" will pop up. If you click that tag, the quote will be copied down to your response along with a link to the quoted text. That makes it easier for everyone to know what you are responding to.