[MD] atheistic and content

[Ham Priday]

Hey, Marsha --


I asked if you've "ever had an experience that you were not aware of."

You replied:
> No would be a wrong assumption.  The standard example is driving
> here or there and upon arrival having no awareness of the driving
> experience.  Most experience is outside awareness and later what is
> useful seems to be constructed into a story based on patterns.

If your driving was "automatic" you might not have been paying attention. 
But unless your vehicle was programmed to drive itself, you would not have 
lived to tell about it.

We all perform actions that become so habitual we don't give them a 
thought -- brushing our teeth, feeding the cat, taking out the trash, 
climbing the stairs, etc.  Our "experience" of these events is perfunctory, 
"absent-minded" or routine.  As they have no special significance (value), 
we blot them out of consciousness and replace them with thoughts about 
something that is significant.  I understand that, Marsha; but to claim that 
"most experience is outside awareness," as if consciousness was only 
incidental to it, is nonsensical.  By definition, experience is what we're 
aware of.  Like value and thought and feeling, if we're not aware of it, it 
doesn't exist.

> From investigation I can find no self in direct experience;
> the self is created when the story-telling begins.  Knowing is
> all that can be directly experienced, the known and the knower
> are constructed based on patterns from the past.
> It seems there is direct experience until the mind attaches
> and spins a web of meaning.  It seems to me when you say
> content, you are talking about patterns.  There are no boundaries
> in direct experience.  The boundaries come later.

Why does my saying "experience is the content of awareness" conjure up 
patterns to you?  I can't help but suspect you are being disingenuous, 
Marsha. You've adopted the term from the MoQ and have convinced yourself 
that everything must be a "pattern".  But as much as you weave these 
patterns, and interact with them, you can't escape the fact that you are 
their Knower.  Surely your conscious awareness of something is not a simple 
"attachment" of one pattern to another.  YOU alone are the cognizant subject 
of your experience.

You know this as well as I do, Marsha.  So, why should I waste my time 
proving that you exist?  Maybe I just like to make you giggle ;-).

Hope you run into some really good patterns this week.

--Ham


>> "Not this, not that" is how we describe undefined or
>> "unknown" phenomena.
>
> Unknown being unpatterned experience.
>
>> How can you call the Knower an "unknown"?
>
> I call the Knower a static pattern.
>
>> Awareness is the subjective locus of all experience
>> and the knowledge derived from it.
>
> It seems to me that knowing is the patterning of experience
> constructed upon awareness.
>
>> All experience --  including its relative Quality or Value --
>> is dependent on the cognizant subject of our relational world.
>> WE are the agents who bring Value into being.  Without
>> awareness there is no experience, hence no being and
>> no knowledge.
>
> There is unpatterned experience and patterned experience.
> Patterned experience is analogy.  Your 'WE are the agents
> who bring Value into being.' is analogy.  I see it more as
> experience there is no knowledge, whether one is aware or not.
>
>> I can appreciate that this concept is mind-twisting to a
>> staunch Pirsigian.
>
> It's the investigation of the nature of static patterns of value
> that seemed to hold the key.
>
>> But if you understand what I'm saying, and reflect on it for a
>> moment or two, perhaps it will help to untwist your tongue.
>> It certainly should straighten out your epistemology.
>> If I'm right, it will be evident in your next epistle.
>>
>> Good luck and thanks, Marsha.
>>
>> Essentially yours,
>> Ham
>
> Thank you Ham.  I don't think I have written anything less
> tongue twisted than before, but it is challenging to try.
>
> Marsha