Learning How To Be Free: An Invitation, from a painter Options

[painter]

NOTE: The original Topic Title of this thread was "Learning How To Read . . ." but I've changed it in hopes that we can begin to escape the literal associations of the word "read". If "free" suffers the same fate, I may change the Title yet again.

I've been thinking about this for a long time. Months.

Over the course of being a member of this forum, especially in the context of "Alternative Theories," I've occasionally mentioned the necessity of "knowing how to read." Of course what I mean by this isn't directly related to knowing how to read the words you see before you here. All of us know how to do that more or less. If you're not familiar with my having said anything about this, I point you specifically to this post on my pinned and closed 'esoteric' thread here: http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum//index....t&p=7894218

A few members of this forum have asked me to say more about what I mean by this "learning how to read" business and it is this that I've been contemplating for a long time now. Having given it some serious consideration I've decided to post and pin this thread here as an open "invitation."

First I am inviting you to engage with me and one another in some discussion here about this topic. However, I am very aware that discussion of this topic is by necessity limited so long as it remains nothing more than discussion. To go further requires something more of us: Specifically a willingness to engage in exercises and experiments which can begin to move us beyond mere discussion into the realm of actual experience and knowledge based upon that experience.

This invitation, therefore, is offered as a starting point in the hope that some of you may wish to go further and take all this to another level. All I will say about that at this point is that the possibility exists, although necessarily limited by this forum/text medium within which we correspond. For this purpose I'm in the process of establishing another forum, participation in which will be by invitation only and will require that users not be anonymous and have a genuine interest in coming to a more direct understanding through observation.

So, I will leave this as it is. Feel free to ask whatever questions you wish and we'll see how this goes.

[painter]

Whoa whoa whoa!
Let's slow down a bit.

Each of us has a point of view informed by all the influences we've incorporated in our lives. However, what I'm aiming toward is not a discussion of our various points of view but something else. As I said above:

. . .
We do not really know ourselves from the inside out. We've not even been taught that such a thing is possible. And for this reason, no matter how much we know or think we know or how many years of schooling we've had, we're all ignorant, all "asleep" in relation to this other level or quality of intelligence that may be possible for us.
. . .
All of us are unique specimens and yet all of us are in the same boat. We're all "neurotic" in the sense of fragmented, divided against ourselves and one another, living lives that are largely fictions, mostly cut off from and unaware of the possibility of connecting with something deeper, a form of intelligence within ourselves that doesn't come from "out there," can not be found "out there."

It is this possibility of discovering something from within ourselves that is my focus.

I'm asking that those of you who wish to engage in this thread try something different. For the time being, leave aside everything you think you know, everything you've heard and read and been influenced by, accepted as fact or disagreed with, and ask yourself this simple question: "What do I know without doubt to be true?"

Now, of course, I'm not asking about our knowledge of the external world. Hopefully that is obvious. What do we know from the inside out?

Lets see if we can have a discussion from a different place in ourselves. We're all very clever. Our brains never cease their chatter and commentary. Opinions form, come and go. We all have a lot of information stored in us and at our disposal, literally at our finger tips. But that isn't what this is about, isn't what I'm getting at. Not at all. So, lets slow down, take this one step at a time. Tell me who you are -- and how you know.