Confidence vs Not Knowing

Antero said:

"The way I understand your question is whether enlightened persons as such exist or is there just enlightened activity by various individuals.

Although like Chris I prefer to use the word 'awakening' instead of enlightenment, in my experience both of the statements are true.

No doubt about, Irreversible Awakening has taken place as a result of the favourable conditions created by my practice. IMO having doubts means that the realization needs to get deepened and the measure of this realization is how useful one is to other people.

Does this answer you question in any way? I would also be interested to hear what is the motivation behind your question, having doubts youself? If this is tuning into an interesting existential question, maybe we can split this off to a new thread for others to comment as well "

The motivation behind the question is going to be difficult to articulate.

My mind has not yet reified its relationship with thoughts and I'm curious what direction this is going. I'll try to make a concrete example.

If someone were to ask me if I knew what a "tree" was I could either say: "Its a green thing with leaves" or I could say "Frankly, I have no freaking clue what a tree is". If I said the former, then it would be a concept, "tree", referring to other concepts, "green", and "leaves" so it would be a true statement in a purely conceptual way and this would be okay with the thinking mind. The latter would be a reflection of the thinking mind now becoming aware that it lacks the ability to capture the reality of momentary experience and really ultimately doesn't know what anything is.

So my experience lately has been less and less confidence in my thoughts. So I guess I'm basically curious if there is a reintegration that occurs or if the mind continues in the direction of less and less knowing, or perhaps both.

The way this has been manifesting experientially is that my personality acts just as confident as always, but I will often spontaneously laugh out loud at what I just thought or said after immediately seeing how silly it is. The relationship between that which is aware and thought is now filled with irony and humor.

I think (!) for all useful purposes, a tree is a green thing with leaves. I think also that the deeper our awakening goes, the more we need to be sure we don't drift into a self(!)-involved la-la land but rather bring that awakening to *every* action, belief, interaction, behavior, etc. That's a responsibility. If we are honest with ourselves and listen to the heart, I think we generally do know what is "in line with awakening" and what is not, and will act accordingly.
The last two months have brought a rather sharp deepening of this sense of not knowing for me personally. But I've found (after some disorientation) that this just manifests a deeper freedom and a clearer confidence that daily life carries itself out with a spontaneous flow and energy. For whatever reason that has been accompanied by an even deeper sense of humility and sense that the most important thing in my life is to bring awakening to my every action, 24/7. That is accompanied, also, by much peacefulness, good humor (enjoying laughter with friends and family), delight (I laughed like a child watching the waves on the shore this morning), and the occasional desire to whack people over the head (with love!) when they are being dishonest or harmful. That's where I'm at, anyway; let me know if it feels at all helpful to you. Not sure it will.

"If someone were to ask me if I knew what a "tree" was I could either say: "Its a green thing with leaves" or I could say "Frankly, I have no freaking clue what a tree is". If I said the former, then it would be a concept, "tree", referring to other concepts, "green", and "leaves" so it would be a true statement in a purely conceptual way and this would be okay with the thinking mind. The latter would be a reflection of the thinking mind now becoming aware that it lacks the ability to capture the reality of momentary experience and really ultimately doesn't know what anything is."

If I may, this is something we all have to address at some point but it's also possible to over analyze it. You, me, and everyone else live in a universe with different attributes that can be perceived if we incline the mind this way, or that way. It'll probably make you crazy of you try to reconcile those two perspectives (relative/conceptual and absolute/non-conceptual, let's say). I know, because I've been there and done that. I'd suggest a brief read of Nagarjuna and then some warm milk, a few cookies and a nice nap. That kind of thing usually makes me feel better

Serously, though, Justin, it'll be fine. You will continue to refine your perception of this "stuff" and with any luck you'll continue to laugh out loud at the absurdity of it when you can see both sides of the coin.

My own two cents: Though to some degree those of us who meditate seriously experience many of the same bench marks there is an infinite degree of varaiability based upon practicioner, expectations, personal history, etc. In my own experience I found myself going deeper and deeper into the non-conceptual and experiential, but ultimately I felt I was naively disregarding conceptuality which has its own purpose and rewards. So, even though in the absolute, experiential sense I don't know concretely what a tree is, I also clearly know what a tree is. Lately what feels right is to be able to employ both of these when appropriate as favoring one side as the truth began to feel to me like a sort of pushing away dressed up as dharma. My opinion on this will no doubt change in some ways as it always seems to.

Since I have had glimpses of "In the thinking, just thought" and the space between awareness and thought seems to be growing, I now view thought as basically harmless pure phenomena as long as it isn't 100% believed.

But, there is sort of a feedback loop here, because experience informs thought patterns. So now the thoughts are thinking, should I believe myself?

This is likely getting too esoteric and philosophical, which is counter to just experiencing this moment, but yet, the thoughts are curious if someone has come to a realization or synchronization between experience and thought along these lines.

I've also been playing around with a way of diagramming out non-conceptuality to explain this to beginners, and it has occurred to me repeatedly that this feedback loop between non-conceptual experience and thought is an interesting aspect.

That will be interesting to see if you write it up eventually. Beginners have such a radically different relationship to thought, and the relationship to thought changes so much over practice...

Yeah, there's definitely an interesting loop in our experience -- we have a sense contact, then mind gets hold of it and processes, names and judges (among other things), and then along comes the narrative process well afterward, trying to loop back to tell the story of what just happened and to take credit. Of course, the sensing doesn't stop in the meantime, so our experience is an endless stream of sense, process, name, judge, loop back and take credit, sense, process, name, judge, make up a story to explain it, sense, process, name, judge, pretend "I" made that decision....

Ad infinitum