What is confrontation?

What is self-inquiry confrontation?

Imagine that you’ve lost your glasses (and also for some of you, that you have glasses to lose).  There’s no one else around to help you look for them, and you’re having trouble looking on your own since you can’t see too well without them.  So, you call a friend for help.  Since your friend is not with you in your house to look, he tries to be helpful by asking useful questions as you feel your way around.

“Where was the last place you remember wearing them?”

“Where do you tend to keep your glasses when you aren’t using them?”

“Are they on your forehead?”

Some questions may hurt your pride or feel insulting if you already have strong ideas about where your glasses should or should not be.  For example, “Are they on your forehead?” might feel insulting if your feeling is, “Does he think I’m stupid?  Of course my glasses aren’t on my forehead!”

Yet, sure enough, sometimes you find what you’ve lost right where you were sure it wouldn’t be.  If you honestly don’t know where your glasses are, it might do you some good to swallow your pride and question your beliefs about where they might be, by checking your forehead.  This would be much more helpful to you than trying to convince yourself that you know where they are but just can’t find them for some reason, or that you can see fine without your glasses.

Self-inquiry confrontation is meant to give the same kind of support as your friend on the phone trying to help you find your glasses.  In this case, however, what has been lost is of much greater importance: Peace, Love, Security, Identity, God, Self, or some unidentified source of longing.  Beliefs, world-views, values, ethics, and self-concepts are questioned in order to help the person being confronted to see through the untruths blocking his way to that which he is seeking.

People may be drawn to the meetings not knowing exactly what it is they are looking for, but having a strong feeling that something is missing.  Confrontation is not about telling a person what he is supposed to want or be looking for.  It is about helping that person look within for himself.  To return to the metaphor of your friend on the phone, it’s as if you’ve forgotten what you’ve lost in the first place, but you know you’ve lost something.  Your friend can only try to help jog your memory by asking you questions.  Each person who attends the confrontation meetings has to decide for himself whether the meetings are in fact helpful to him.

To give an idea of the ballpark, these meetings are often most useful to those interested in such teachers as Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Douglas Harding, Richard Rose, Franklin Merrell-Wolff, Bernadette Roberts, Huang Po, and Hui Neng, though familiarity with such teachers is not necessary in order to attend.

For clarity’s sake, here are some things which confrontation is not:

-A philosophical debate

-A chance to flex one’s own intellectual muscle or knowledge

-An opportunity to convert others to one’s own beliefs

-A group discussion aimed at consensus, agreement, and acceptance

To put it another way, self-inquiry confrontation is not for those who are concerned with what others’ beliefs should be, or for those concerned with what their beliefs should be according to someone else.  It is for those who are interested in looking honestly and earnestly within themselves.

What Is Man?

This was quoted in the last chapter of Daniel Wegner’s The Illusion of Conscious Will.  It’s from Mark Twain’s What Is Man?

“Young Man:  You have arrived at man, now?
Old Man:  Yes.  Man the machine – man the impersonal engine.  Whatsoever a man is, is due to his make, and to the influences brought to bear upon it by his heredities, his habitat, his associations.  He is moved, directed, commanded, by exterior influences – solely.  He originates nothing, not even a thought.
Young Man:  Oh, come!  Where did I get my opinion that this which you are talking is all foolishness?
Old Man:  It is a quite natural opinion – indeed an inevitable opinion – but you did not create the materials out of which it is formed.  They are odds and ends of thoughts, impressions, feelings, gathered unconsciously from a thousand books, a thousand conversations, and from streams of thought and feeling which have flowed down into your heart and brain out of the hearts and brains of centuries of ancestors.  Personally you did not create even the smallest microscopic fragment of the materials out of which your opinion is made; and personally you cannot claim even the slender merit of putting the borrowed materials together.  That was done automatically – by your mental machinery, in strict accordance with the law of that machinery’s construction.  And you not only did not make that machinery yourself, but you have not even any command over it.
Young Man:  This is too much.  You think I could have formed no opinion but that one?
Old Man:  Spontaneously?  No.  And you did not form that one; your machinery did it for you – automatically and instantly, without reflection or the need of it…
…Young Man:  You really think a man originates nothing, creates nothing.
Old Man:  I do.  Men perceive, and their brain-machines automatically combine the things perceived.  That is all.”

Wegner makes the point that this is not to say that the feeling of free will doesn’t exist.  But, he argues, this feeling doesn’t have anything to do with causes for actions.  In his opinion, the feeling of free will is simply an evolved way for the human organism to identify it’s own actions.  It does this identifying by relying on a heuristic based on three factors: priority of thought to action, consistency of thought with action, and exclusivity of causal possibilities.  When a situation meets these criteria, the mind infers that it is responsible for the action, and there is a feeling of ownership of that action, of having willed it.

Decider

This poem was quoted at the beginning of Daniel Wegner’s book The Illusion of Conscious Will:

A leaf was riven from a tree,
“I mean to fall to earth,” said he.
The west wind, rising, made him veer.
“Eastward,” said he, “I now shall steer.”
The east wind rose with greater force.
Said he: “‘Twere wise to change my course.”
With equal power they contend.
He said: “My judgment I suspend.”
Down died the winds; the leaf, elate,
Cried: “I’ve decided to fall straight.”
-Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)

I’ve noticed what feels like a voice following the action-producing mechanism.  For example, if I feel an itch on my nose and my hand rises to scratch it, this action begins to happen before I really notice it.  But then following it as quickly as it is noticed is a voice saying something like, “I’d like to scratch my nose now.”

An image came to mind related to this.  It’s like a quiet person going about his business silently, with an obnoxious person following him around saying everything that they’re doing.  The silent person makes his way to the store.  The obnoxious person tags along, and as soon as he realizes where they’re going yells, “I’m going to the store now!”

Very uninspired week but not painfully so. Missed almost all my meditations, played a video game in all of my free time, totally ignored my to-do list and had a celibacy accident when I thought I was done with those. I finally finished the game I’ve been playing since the retreat a month ago and have been watching a conflict what to do next: find another or turn away. I have voices that want both.

Despite lower energy levels from not being celibate for long, both PSI meetings have seemed great. Perhaps it is contrast to not thinking about finding truth, perhaps it is simplicity I was hoping for out of playing games. Perhaps it is something Art’s doing. That I can see I’ve never been anything other than awareness is a problem.

An exercise to challenge assuming I make decisions is a highlight this week. Trying it three times has left me feeling some doubt about this beloved assumption. It was: dedicate 2 hours to not making a single decision then report one’s findings. After a few days of procrastination I was quickly surprised by what was happening once finally starting.

I’ve continued to play video games some each day and had a celibacy accident. Damn that every movie has stuff not helpful to someone trying to be celibate. While the game playing costs energy, my thinking seems simpler, as I hoped (and thus more like normal people).

On Friday at work, I took notes to meditate on later and this looks like it’ll continue and goes well with thought provoking podcasts. I also cut back to only one one hour meditation to see if it improves quality. So far I don’t see it.

Main topic I was trying to meditate on was what do I want out of life. I figure if I can get it in words, I can measure my life by it much easier. This is maybe the 5th time I’ve tried. At our retreat I had “permanence” but didn’t think much about it. And this week, I went from to answer existential angst, to enlightenment, to right now it’s just feeling want/lacking, all words are interpretations.

Scenes from “Microcosmos” plus Radiohead

A few more inisghts. Also I acted on 2 inspirations, 1. getting a mini-confrontation group on decisions started with others who expressed doubts about decision making and 2. to add something I enjoy to my life: playing some video games. I don’t know whether it’s unfortunate or not, but, as I feared, “1 hour” never happened. I couldn’t turn away for a long time, missing all but two morning meditations, not sleeping enough for work, and watching my energy dissapear but my decision always to keep playing, or after a break, go back.

This morning I woke up disgusted with the game but as the day wears on and I realize it’s chalk full of unpleasantries (and why so damn many?) ignoring them and playing looks appealing again. A little game playing usually has a good effect on my mind: life doesn’t feel like an endless miserable to-do list, my honesty with others and in my thinking increases, and I feel more on a same plane with others. But I can never keep it to a little.

I don’t know what I want next week. On one level I want to put time into some of these insights, on another level, I see a miserable to-do list before me and want to find a kinder experience. I don’t want to keep putting off my to-do list but I’d also like to not be such a miserable slave to it. But I’m afraid I am.

The Woods

I came across this song recently and found that it really hit home, strongly bringing up the feeling that there is something fundamental to this whole mess where I can rest.  It brought tears to my eyes when I first saw this video:

The retreat was very good. Silent periods, silent rapport sittings, participant led sessions, Art and Paul led sessions, and talking until 3am at the fire. I got a huge number of insights and felt after the first day this week had been productive if nothing else happens.

Insights:
My 3 main moods are: 1. an insecure mood I spend the most time in, 2. a very insecure mood I was in that first session Sunday night, 3. a pity/despair mood which is usually, to always, a reaction to tension.
My 4 secondary moods are: 1. Ego boost, which can come from surprising positive feedback from life, 2. spiritual/existential longing, 3. awakeness, 4. an inspired/courageous mood.
Self knowledge is the question. That is: this is my experience, whose experience is it? Dan is the experience.
Two of Shawn’s poems seemed like things I could see so that, “unexpectedly close,” “closer than close,” made possible sense for a moment.

I committed to 30 minutes/day reviewing notes slowly for the next three weeks.

Feedback I got:
- I am happier
- am I too comfortable?
- happier/less weighty
- only awake sometimes – maybe I should work on this (?)
- lighter
- not sureing I’d dave right under the surface (?)
- I should consider studying my dreams. The one I shared for our dreamwork session was a good one
- not having one clear goal for the retreat but rather several goals is “shotgun” approach rather than “rifle” approach
- being not present, spending time in my head
- stoic, able to persist

My mood is pretty influenced by our first day of a week long retreat. Just a little confrontation sends me into a strong self-pity mood. I get convinced I’m totally stuck, a drain on the other seekers who get it, and I wish I could quit but I can’t, or at least crawl in a hole and stop participating in life until it becomes reasonable, but I can’t.

Before this, my week was decent. Some meditation on what do I want out of life, which could get somewhere. I had a very good conversation with Ben. I feel I’m holding back a little but am also pleasantly surprised to hear someone else taking the search seriously. Had an interesting discussion on Landmark Education – do I know I’m going to die? Also: whether this life is the final dream-within-a-dream or not, doesn’t matter, it’s the same observer. Even if other consciousnesses could be experienced, it’d still be by me, the observer. And finally we discussed, does observation/observing end when observation/observed will end? I assume the latter event will occur with the body’s death (or final dream’s body’s death, as the case may be) but if observation/observing’s source is unknown, there may be room to question this.