Photo:  ‘Reflection’ by Andzia – Pixabay  https://pixabay.com/photos/reflection-joint-landscape-nature-3550907/

WHAT IS A PROBLEM

I’ve been reviewing the book, ‘Searcher Reaches Land’s Limits,’ volume II, by Richard Dixey, preparing for the upcoming course.  And I’ve been also considering how I ordinarily think about things, which involves selecting objects and narrowing them down to discover, what for me, becomes more meaningful.  It seems the more precise or detailed the object of my focus, the better I know it. But that’s the interesting thing, the more detailed I become with the object of my attention, the more I seem to discard as being unnecessary.  The process seemed to begin with a broad, not quite defined idea or direction, and I then proceed with what seems to fit, as I discard what does not fit… underlying this were barely noticed judgments.  And underlying the judging process, also unnoticed, was a criterion or bases for my judgments… a kind of unseen knowing of what fit, or did not fit, within the scope of my meaningful searching.

Then I came across this passage from the ‘Searcher’ book that points to how I employ ‘Time’ as an integral part of my process of ‘searching for the meaningful’ in my life.  A linear approach to time, is already limiting the search for what’s meaningful.  Put another way, searching is the process for solving a problem.  I’m looking to know something I don’t know well enough.  It’s a problem I wish to remedy by “thinking” my way through it.  Here’s an excerpt from the book that not only describes my problem, but its historical aspect too…

“What is a problem? It’s a piece of experience that we have identified in terms of something to be done. It is an exemplar of an identified object in a five-degree mind [a limited slice of 360 degree mind seeing in all directions]. If we take an ordinary approach to problems we’re going to have to address them one by one in a linear fashion. Furthermore, the identification of a problem, extracting it from its ground, limits our capacity to find a solution. We’ll often end up with solutions that create further problems. It’s almost as if there is a continuum of problems. One thing leads to another. We never get away from the reaction we caused in solving the first problem, which then manifests in a series of new problems that come after as a result. No matter what we do, something else goes wrong, right around the corner. We can see this in catastrophic political events. History is a catalogue of attempts to solve problems by which further problems are created.”

PAGE 209, PARAGRAPH 1, CONT’D [Revelations of Mind]: Such a mind cannot penetrate to the root of our problems, so it is difficult to comprehend how our problems may be related. Yet we know how they tend to manifest in our experience: No sooner is one problem resolved than another comes up in its place. When they come up faster than we can resolve them, we feel overwhelmed.

“It’s a bit like whack-a-mole. You hit one button and it causes the other button to pop up. That’s how most people live their lives—one thing after another. They never stop until eventually they give up and die. This is a consequence of the narrowing of the circle of experience, a narrowing caused by identifying a known thing. Our capacity to respond to actuality becomes limited to a very small percentage of what’s happening. In such a way of being, problems and their solutions have a kind of reciprocity. A solution creates a problem which creates a solution which creates a problem.”

PAGE 209, PARAGRAPH 2 [Revelations of Mind]: A more accurate understanding of mind’s dynamic—open 360 degrees in all directions—would reveal the threads that connect all of our problems and enable us to cut through them all at once. Tracing the process of pointing out, identity, labeling, recognition, and minding, we may see how mind imposes a linear progression on time, flattening the fullness of its 360 degree perspective into past, present, and future—the province of the intellectual, concept-bound mind.

“Trying to project upon experience a construct of past, present and future is extremely limiting. This projection of time is itself a construct, and as a consequence unconstructed experience transcends the experience of time. However, it is inevitable that such a global awareness collapses into linearity once conceptual knowing takes over. It is through developing the capacity to engage directly prior to generating our normal categories of experience that we are able to make better choices, even if our subsequent actions are necessarily time-bound and linear. Our problems arise because instead of having a global knowing prior to a linear outcome, we have a time-bound conceptual cognition prior to a linear outcome. By so doing we cripple our ability to make choices. This is one of the profound benefits of being able to engage directly. It’s not that direct knowing is going to be able to transcend linearity if an action has to be undertaken, any more than direct knowing can act without an ego to carry it out. It is just that in direct knowing the ego is guided by wisdom rather than by a super narrative of ‘me’ generated from ‘my’ personal history.”

“What we really want is for our ego to be guided by wisdom. This could be the beginning of the development of a new way of being. If we could confront our problems with the 360-degree perspective of direct knowing before choosing a course of action, our choices would be much wiser. The inevitability of problems and their solutions recreating each other would be overcome.”

“…When we engage with concepts, ideas, images, recognition and perceptions we’re engaging with mind. They are all products of mind but not mind itself. Mind itself is more than the sum of its parts, more vast and spacious than the objects of knowledge it creates. Recognizing this is essential if we are to let go of conceptualization and enter the path. If we don’t recognize it then all we can do is substitute one conceptual framework for another based on new sets of positions and beliefs. But this will still imprison us within the Regime of Mind.”  Chapter 38, p. 36-40 [Emphasis added]