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.

[Sanders]

I don't care which title ...

But the action of changing it was as thought provoking as anything in the thread. How to read - how to be free. Call it my own bias struggling with a bizzare language, "thinking" detached from words is a real challenge. They say that learning your 3rd, 4th, 5th language is much easier than your 2nd. I can't say personally, but I know a guy who speaks (fluently) 11 or 12. He's working on numbers 13 and 14 at the moment - just cause he's bored. An Indian (i.e. from India) guy actually - I talked to him about this, about the ability to think in concepts without the attachment of specific words. He assured me it gets easier as one learns more languages ... and that when he thinks of a concept, he sees it in his mind in various languages, but more as an image.

I was horrible at French ... I tried so hard to learn it. But Japanese, which they say is supposed to be really hard, was easy for me. Go figure! ... But, there's a reason, I'm good with images, not words. The Japanese language is based on characters - every word has an associated character - usually with 2 (or more) pronunciations - but a specific meaning. Once you can connect the image to the meaning, you can usually guess the pronunciation. I found this process easy, and I jumped right into learning the characters - I suppose that's why I was able to learn Japanese much more quickly than French. They say that it's a right-brain, left-brain thing, that Asian languages are more suited to right-brain people, Latin-languages to left. I believe it, cause I'm one of those (to a fault) "lefties" (right-brain).

I'm rambling on about this, because its part of my daily life, and I connect to this topic in this way in a concrete sense. But really, in my own opinion, this is all (what "all" means is up to you) a very personal journey. And there are no short cuts ... and there is no "goal" per-se, the goal is always just out of reach - but you reach and you find yourself reaching for the next new level of understanding in a week or a month or a year ... and its all about thinking out of the box - or, should I say, out of 'your own' box. The "box" is the matrix, the reality you have imprinted (allowed to be imprinted) in your head. New ideas can take you outside of your box, you walk around out there a little bit, you reject it or you embrace it, or something in-between, but the important thing is to walk around outside of the box.

Ahhh, life is, ultimately, about taking risks. The more, the greater risks one takes, the fuller one's life becomes - whether they succeed or fail ... because failure actually is the best part - it is from failure that we learn the most. But the risks we take in the way we THINK are the safest of all risks, yet the ones least explored.

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."



...If you don't know who wrote that, you suck. (IMG:http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[painter]

... "thinking" detached from words is a real challenge ...

I understand why you would say this for it certainly seems to be true. But is it? The word "imagination" references the ability to see in the mind what is not present to the eyes; we have no equivalent single word for "imagining the sound of one's own voice". When I imagine my own voice in my head, I 'think' I'm 'thinking'; but am I? Look at it and study it for yourself -- observe for yourself what is actually going on rather than what you've read or been told or lead to believe. Can I suspend this internal monologue? What happens when I just "am aware" without the habitual tendency to describe or translate or compare?

I'm rambling on about this, because its part of my daily life, and I connect to this topic in this way in a concrete sense. But really, in my own opinion, this is all (what "all" means is up to you) a very personal journey. And there are no short cuts ... and there is no "goal" per-se, the goal is always just out of reach - but you reach and you find yourself reaching for the next new level of understanding in a week or a month or a year ... and its all about thinking out of the box - or, should I say, out of 'your own' box. The "box" is the matrix, the reality you have imprinted (allowed to be imprinted) in your head. New ideas can take you outside of your box, you walk around out there a little bit, you reject it or you embrace it, or something in-between, but the important thing is to walk around outside of the box.

Yes. Only one caution: It isn't only about "thinking". The habits which imprison us are not only matters of ideation; there are also habits of the physical body and the emotions. What there seldom is is a direct observation, without judgement or criticism (which is also habitual), of the depth of these habits. Just seeing: "Such is so."

To understand any of this we have to learn to "pay attention" in a new way.