Two Thoughts

[Xmac]

I am reactible for what I believe and I'm responsible for what I know.

Unconditional Love is redundant as conditional love is an oxymoron.

[Gardenarian]

I unconditionally agree with your second statement.

Could you expand on the first one? I don't understand.

BTW, nice to see you around Xmac!

[Xmac]

I unconditionally agree with your second statement.

Could you expand on the first one? I don't understand.

BTW, nice to see you around Xmac!

I'm just saying in my own way something I realized recently which is that one will always react when one believes something and respond when one knows something.
This is from another post:

To be able to respond to inner thoughts and outer stimuli instead of reacting is response-able behavior. In responding there is choice (or at least what appears to be choice), in reaction there is decision which is a form of decide. To decide is to "kill or cut off" one of two outcomes (cide is the suffix meaning to kill, as is found in suicide, genocide, pesticides, etc.). As the masks of drama have a happy and sad face, to "re-act" is to create drama out of "either/or" thinking, as contrasted with the non-violent "choice" which allows the creative to arise.

Responsibility is to the ability to see choices, and acts that flow from that seeing are without stress, happen of themselves and are frequently novel. It, responsibility, emerges from a mind state, the perspective of which is wholistic and not engaged in ignore-ance. So then, authentic, (using the root aut: self; directed from within, as in authoring and authority) responsible behavior may not appear as the common usage of the word implies since it is the essence of spirit emerging spontaneously in the material world.



To just add to the above, responsibility, in the usual sense, is a story of right action viewed superficially. If one pays their bills on time, it can be either responsible or not and the same goes for not paying bills. Letting beliefs run our behavior is irresponsible as I see it, even if it means one is paying one's bills etc.

I recently realized that my car registration was expired because of various conditions related to moving. Anyway, I felt resistance to renewing it, so I didn't. I took my bike, borrowed a friend's car a couple times and traveled less for a while. I learned about myself and the system in which I functioned. I relate to it differently now, just a bit. This was because I didn't react to the thought, "OMG, I've got to get my car back on the road NOW"!

I'm going to see how far I can take this because I sense that it is the key to the unthinkable freedom some search for. It means holding a space around a reactive thought like, "I'm going to be homeless" and allowing it. Yes, allowing it to unfold if that's what is occuring and opening to the new possibilities of being fully responsible: response-able.

[Gardenarian]

Respond vs. react. I love this, and all the digging out of the roots of responsable, respond.

[LDAHL]

I'm just saying in my own way something I realized recently which is that one will always react when one believes something and respond when one knows something.


Can you know something that you don't believe?

Can you believe something that you don't know?

[Xmac]

Can you know something that you don't believe?

Can you believe something that you don't know?

Ignorance and belief, as I see it, are complimentary aspects of human consciousness, or the twins of suffering. Belief, comes from the anglo-saxon root, "lief" which means, "to wish". I ignore the other side of the story when I believe. The other side of the story is had from the inside, as opposed to looking to the outside only.

A couple years ago I was sitting at my desk when I thought, I need to go to the bathroom. I noticed just as quickly that I was already moving, that the thought was just narrating after the fact. I was then under the belief that I was then going to the bathroom, until the phone rang and I went to answer it.

The point in this is that the "voice", what I used to think was me, is always guessing at reality or narrating after the fact when it doesn't know anything. When I believe that it is me and it is right, that is worshipping the false god, if you will. When reality seems to match what the thought predicts or expects, the ego takes credit for what transpired. This may be related to the Biblical statement that 'it is easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle than to enter the kingdom of heaven'. The rich man is one who takes credit or lays claim to many things: this is my deed,my thought, my hand, my soul, my kids, wife, house, dream, etc. etc. etc.

Knowing on the other hand is silent, spontaneous and without doubt. This is the collective Self, the universal mind, or God (whatever term floats your boat) manifesting in the present, whereas the believer is always prattling on about the past and future, oblivious to the eternal now.

I see some thoughts coming up and out as being longer lasting provisional knowledge, but ultimately nothing true can be said. This is why I'm more inspired by spiritual finders/teachers that seem to grok this: all language and psycho-linguistic static is self referral in that the dictionary can only use words to define other words and on and on. The word lemon, for example, could never be defined, even with a trillion words, to sufficiently make one understand the taste of a lemon. I remember as a kid looking up the word "the". I thought well let's see them define that one! And of course there's no "the" in the real world, it's just a part of speech.

Believing is the dream, the dismembering (separating from wholism or unholy) , the forgetting Self. Knowing is the real, the remembering, the for-giving of ego.