[MD] atheistic and content

[MarshaV]

Hello to the Hamster,  


On Mar 14, 2010, at 11:54 PM, Ham Priday wrote:

> 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.

And what awareness of the drive do you have when your not paying attention?  


> But unless your vehicle was programmed to drive itself, you would
> not have lived to tell about it.

A conceptually constructed hypothesis, but it doesn't negate the fact 
there was no awareness of the drive.


> 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.

Most of the opinions that flow through our minds are also outside our 
awareness.  They are a static dance of mental negligence.  
 

>  As they have no special significance (value), we blot them out of
> consciousness and replace them with thoughts about something
> that is significant.  

If we're not paying attention, who's to determine their significance?  
Is it more important to replace the now with past and future imaginings?  
I don't think so.  I working to keep my attention on the present, a 
mindfulness of perceptional and conceptional experiences.  It's not
so dull as you might imagine.  


> I understand that, Marsha; but to claim that "most experience is outside
> awareness," as if consciousness was only incidental to it, is nonsensical.  

I don't think it is nonsensical.  It is very enlightening to discover how 
difficult it is to hold awareness in the present.  


> 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.

There is the difference between static experience, based on the
past and the future which are both constructed by memory, and the 
dynamic experience in the present.  


> 
>> 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?

Because if we're not aware of the present experience, what are we aware of?  


> 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".  

I have been watching, paying attention, staying aware of the thoughts
that ripple through my mind.  Not constantly, of course, but I'm making 
an effort.  Why I probably tend towards giggling.  -  I use MoQ terms because
I have found the MoQ to provide the best 'pointing to the moon'.   
 

> But as much as you weave these patterns, and interact with them,
> you can't escape the fact that you are their Knower.  

The experience, seeing for example, is fact, the seer and seen are constructed 
from patterns.  The Knower is unknowable, so what is said about a knower
is a static pattern of value.  The three, seeing, seer and seen seem to be one,
and the knowing, knower and known seem, also, to be one.  Separating them
seems to be makes them static.  
  

> Surely your conscious awareness of something is not a simple "attachment"
> of one pattern to another.  

Awareness is one thing, attachment seems to be another, but this is still 
work-in-process.
   

> YOU alone are the cognizant subject of your experience.

I'm sticking to unpatterned experience and patterned experience, with YOU 
being of the patterned variety.



> 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 ;-).

Existing.  


> Hope you run into some really good patterns this week.

The same to you Ham.



Marsha