Joko Beck's "thoughts" model, "buckets" of thoughts, NDEs?, letting go of "me"...

Joko Beck

David Demets:  

...a while ago I mentioned "functional thinking" ("Can you stop your "blah, blah" thoughts?...") and attributed the term to Charlotte Joko Beck...in her book Everyday Zen and saw her term was actually "technical thinking". Maybe I mixed it up with her descriptions of thinking self, emotional self and functional self ...

"There are two kinds of thoughts. There is nothing wrong with thinking in the sense of what I call “technical thinking.” We have to think in order to walk from here to the corner or to bake a cake or to solve a physics problem. That use of the mind is fine. It isn’t real or unreal; it is just what it is.

But opinions, judgments, memories, dreaming about the future — ninety percent of the thoughts spinning around in our heads have no essential reality. And we go from birth to death, unless we wake up, wasting most of our life with them..."

David Demets

 Hi David:

...i found Joko Beck's teaching useful, at she emphasized "everyday Zen", living in the world, and working w/our emotions (and relationships)...she just didn't have the... cognitive neuroscience that has developed in the last 15 years, so her understanding of "thinking" is not...as it would be now...i.e. we don't need thinking "to walk from here to the corner", the motor cortex does that...as many studies have shown...if we had to think about how to walk to the corner, we would still be sitting...  

Joko's recognition that there are two types of thoughts;  1) "technical thoughts" and 2) "opinions, judgments, memories, dreaming about the future...ninety percent of the thoughts" was excellent...we now understand...the different neural circuitry patterns... that underlie those differences...there are memories that underlie "technical thoughts" that are materially different from those memories that underlie Joko's second category; they are stored in different places and are handled differently. 

 Hi Gary,

That's interesting. I often wonder what the difference is between worrying thoughts and planning thoughts the future. 

Hi David:

"Planning thoughts" are "i will take my daughter to her school tomorrow.  she will need a lunch."

"Worrying thoughts" are "i don't know if my daughter is going to succeed in her school.  her teacher seems to be much too difficult and is very unfair to my daughter in her grading and discipline.  my daughter is having trouble with her playmates; i wonder if she has "social" issues that we will need some psychological help with?"

stillness

Vijey:  Hi Gary 

Just a thought (on blogpost "Can you stop your 'blah, blah' thoughts?...")...on the topic of thoughts.......From...your book "Happiness Beyond Thought"...observation when we categorize our thoughts into three buckets (past, present and future) with no thoughts or very little thoughts in the present.  (blogpost "What is the 'Direct Path' to nondual awakening?..")

An alternative viewpoint...when I observe my thoughts as a passive outsider...most...fall into either "greed" or "fear"...buckets.  Over...5 typical/normal working days...these two buckets...dominate our day-to-day activities.  Any suggestions on how to escape these 2 bandwidth squeezers?

Regards,
Vijey

G. Excellent observation...

Yes, many thoughts can fall into..."greed" or "fear" buckets; other folk might have "desires", "anger", and "fear" buckets, or something similar...thoughts arise because there are emotions with an associated I/me/mine who has them...to "escape these 2 bandwidth squeezers"...investigate their raison d'etre, the "I/me/my"...ask, carefully and with curiosity and interest, "what/where/when is this "I" that has this greed? fear? desire? anger?", etc.

...trying to analyze or "understand" the source of the fear, greed, desires, etc....as our psychology has demonstrated for over 120 years...is a long, difficult, hazardous, and often fruitless search...more powerful and effective to look at the subject...not the object, and see if this "subject/ego/I" is real...

you will find...that deconstructing the "I" has weakened, or...dissolved, simultaneously, ...self-referential thoughts, desires, fears, etc. with one "fell swoop"...all of your buckets may...be empty.

Good insights. Persist.

C4Chaos

C4Chaos

Gary, I'm curious to know your opinion regarding NDEs (Near-Death Experiences)...how do you think it correlates with mysticism and neuroscience?...Dr. Eben Alexander III's book (Life Beyond Death) have put NDEs into mainstream attention...I wonder if you have anything you can share about NDEs from your own experience or any research that you're aware of.  thanks! 

G. Hi, C4Chaos...On NDEs, i really have no personal experience w/the NDEs he is discussing, and i haven't found the discussion...to be "pedagogically-useful", as w/the discussion around other lives, or lives after/before this one.  It just doesn't further my awakening. 

Shinzen Young

It is more likely that it will relieve me of the needed focus and "urgency" of my own awakening by saying i can wait till next life, or waste time/energy by trying endlessly to explain this one by some story line about past lives.  i'll take it as upside.  If i can awaken "now", my current life will be clearer, happier, w/less suffering. Anything that diverts me from that is not helpful, IME.  The real "next life" is the one that emerges when "we" die w/in this life...stillness

C4Chaos:

spoken like a true, sage. thanks for your response. that is what my teacher (Shinzen Young) calls "the gold standard of spiritual maturity".

Q.  Gary,

I hope all is well with you. I've been working with the Sedona method quite heavily...to release some of my social fears, etc.  (blogpost "Surrendering the "I", letting go of suffering").  It seems to do its job.  What I wonder however is about releasing the self, itself...if a fear is a set of neural pathways, and they are able to be released, wouldn't the self, the sense of being, be able to be released as well?...the questions would be something like "Could I let go me? "would I?" etc...

Take care,

Lester Levenson
Creator of Sedona Method

G...great stuff...  

With the Sedona method...releasing of the attachments of the "I", as you have observed...everytime something arises...do the Sedona method...fear, desire, story, falls away, and the "I" that is part of that fear, desire, etc. is left with nothing to attach to...and that particular manifestation...falls away...    

With continual use of the Sedona method, the brain soon "gets it" that this "I"...concept of a single "I", is an illusion.  Each fear, desire, story, etc...has its own discrete, ad hoc, "I"...One "I" dies and others are still...scattered around.  

...the more that the Sedona method is used, the more it becomes "automatic"...w/o even "doing it"...you find it has "done itself" and the fear, etc. disappears almost before it has..manifest(ed).

...the last few "must have" attachments, the deepest and strongest ones, then..."could i let go of this"...gets down to...what you are pointing at, can "I" let go of the "I"?...much more difficult as these are the "everything but that" attachments.

Ramana Maharshi

...the "I" that is doing the letting go, surrenders itself and crawls on to the funeral pyre with the last "could I?", "would I?", when?"..like Ramana said, you stir the funeral pyre with a stick and then you throw the stick into the fire.  

..."i" needed someone, like a Valkyrie, to take what was left of "me"...on "life support"...this turned out to be Ramana Maharshi.  

Good work...

BTW, there is a new youTube video "letting go into the bliss and joy of stillness", and other new ones in "Dialogues on Awakening" series, as well as a guided meditation, "NonDual Awakening Meditation.  Where am I?"...put "Gary Weber nonduality" in search box; w/o "nonduality", you'll also get the San Diego planning commission, fighting in Vegas, a Ramones song...