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Enter with a different attitude … not knowing … with the mind of a child
The big problem is when we unconsciously defend our opinions … “we usually
don’t do this on purpose. … at times we may be conscious … but we just feel
that something is so true that we can’t avoid trying to convince this stupid
person how wrong he is to disagree with us.”
But before we can wash away incorrect assumptions, we have to realize and
acknowledge we have assumptions and opinions … about what we think an
individual should do, or what life is all about, etc.
On Dialogue by David Bohm
suspend assumptions and judgements
Suspend those assumptions, so that you neither carry them out nor suppress
them. You don’t believe them, nor do you disbelieve them; you don’t judge
them as good or bad.
You simply see what they mean – not only your own, but the other people’s
as well. We are not trying to change anybody’s opinion.
coherent thinking
Even HATE is a very powerful bond. And if people can stay with it together,
then they are really sharing … then that can change into something else. If
people could stay with power, violence, hate, or whatever it is, all the way
to the end, then it would sort of collapse …
Because ultimately they would see that we are all the same. And
consequently they would have participation and fellowship. … They
become more open and trusting to each other. They have already gone
through the thing that they are afraid of, so the intelligence can then
work.
[We are] going step by step into what is [DIALOGUE]. Please don’t wait till the end, hoping
to have a complete description of how to [DIALOGUE]. What we are doing now is part of
[DIALOGUE].
Now, what one has to do is to be aware of the [ONE WHO JUDGES], and not try to resolve the
contradiction and bring about an integration between thought and the thinker. The [ONE
WHO JUDGES] is the psychological entity who has accumulated experience as knowledge;
he is the time-bound center that is the result of ever-changing environmental influence,
and from this center he looks, he listens, he experiences. As long as one does not
understand the structure and the anatomy of this center, there must always be conflict,
and a mind in conflict cannot possibly understand the depth and the beauty of [DIALOGUE].
In [DIALOGUE] there can be no [ONE WHO JUDGES], which means that [CONDITIONED] thought
must come to an end—the thought which is urged forward by the desire to achieve a
result. [DIALOGUE] has nothing to do with achieving a result. It is not a matter of [VOICING
YOUR OPINION], or [STICKING WITH] your [ASSUMPTIONS], or [DEFENDING YOUR IDEAS], or any of
the rest of that immature nonsense. … [DIALOGUE] is not something apart from life, to be
choicelessly aware … [in daily life] or is [DIALOGUE].
J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life, December 23, 1995
Dialogue:
Communication Towards Unity
Krotona Institute of Theosophy – September 21-23, 2018
Michele and Pablo Sender
invocation
In this large group we are not going to decide what to do about anything. This is crucial. Otherwise we
are not free. We must have an empty space where we are not obliged to do anything, nor to come to
any conclusions, nor to say anything or not say anything. It's open and free. It's an empty space.
“Occupied” is the opposite of leisure; it's full. So we have here a kind of empty space where anything
may come in – and after we finish, we just empty it. We are not trying to accumulate anything. That's
one of the points about a DIALOGUE. As a friend of mine used to say, "The cup has to be empty to hold
something."
differences
… ways of communicating
nature of the material mind
The mind always seeks for explanation.
Through the personality our knowledge will always be partial, limited, conditioned.
We know ourselves only in relation to something. There is a conditioned reflex to take
ourselves for a somebody, a thinker, a seeker, a doer, a sufferer.
Most of the time we live in reaction and double reaction.
There is a lack deep with in ourselves. This lack is a central one giving rise to all the
others. The need to fill this lack, quench this thirst, urges us to think and act. Without
even questioning it, we run away from this insufficiency. We try to fill it first with one
object then with another
The idea of being a person, an ego, is nothing other than an image held together by
memory.
our aim
It is upon the serene and placid surface of the unruffled mind that the visions
gathered from the invisible find a representation in the visible world.
Otherwise you would vainly seek those visions, those flashes of sudden light
which have already helped to solve so many of the minor problems and
which alone can bring the truth before the eye of the soul. It is with jealous
care that we have to guard our mind-plane from all the adverse influences
which daily arise in our passage through earth-life.
Mahatma Letters, no. 65, p. 169
some of our work
We must be careful what feelings we allow to arise within us; we need pay
no attention to the feeling which press upon us from outside
Thought and feelings – emanate from our own minds
Moods – which come without volition on our part
Definition:
“Bundles”, or groups of attributes; everything finite, inapplicable to
the eternal and the absolute. There are five … attributes in every
human living being …. These unite at the birth of man and constitute
his personality.
Theosophical Glossary, p. 302