SURVIVING A BLOGGER BLACKOUT & MORE FUN WITH KRISHNAMURTI

I would assume that just about anybody who has ever tried to maintain a “Blogger” blog -- at least those among the anonymous millions that make up the hugely bloated wasteland otherwise known as the “blogosphere” -- has, at one time or another, been subject to a Blogger “lock-out,” an exciting situation where you can’t write any posts. I’ve spent the past week fuming and spewing over this Blogger peculiarity, whereby “robots” (Blogger’s term) decide you’re running some sort of spam scam with your blog, gumming up the works for everybody and generally being a technological nuisance that must be taught a lesson, if not eradicated completely. Now, this blog has no chance of ever becoming anything but an incidental flyspeck of obscurity within the larger blogdom picture --monstrosities like Google (Blogger) and Kos have seen to that -- so jerking around this nothing monument to futility seems plainly ridiculous. But, oh well.

Anyway -- I’ll delve into this rather interesting topic later; right now I think I’ll just stick up some more Krishnamurti-isms, which I was planning to do before Blogger’s blindly arrogant corporate swagger-stick smacked me across the bridge of my nose and left me wallowing in pain-wracked frustration. In any event …

As long as action is the outcome of desire, of memory, of fear, of pleasure and pain, it must inevitably breed conflict, confusion, and antagonism. Our action is the outcome of our conditioning, at whatever level; and our response to challenge, being inadequate and incomplete, must produce conflict, which is the problem. Conflict is the very structure of the self. It is entirely possible to live without conflict, the conflict of greed, of fear, of success; but this possibility will be merely theoretical and not actual until it is discovered through direct experiencing. To exist without greed is possible only when the ways of the self are understood.

Inwardly and outwardly it is easier to repress than to understand. To understand is arduous, especially for those who have been heavily conditioned from childhood. Although strenuous, repression becomes a matter of habit. Understanding can never be made into a habit, a matter of routine; it demands constant watchfulness, alertness. To understand, there must be pliability, sensitivity, a warmth that has nothing to do with sentimentality. Suppression in any form needs no quickening of awareness; it is the easiest and stupidest way to deal with responses. Suppression is conformity to an idea, to a pattern, and it offers superficial security, respectability. Understanding is liberating, but suppression is always narrowing, self-enclosing. Fear of authority, of insecurity, of opinion, builds up an ideological refuge, with its physical counterpart, to which the mind turns. This refuge, of whatever level it may be placed, ever sustains fear; and from fear there is substitution, sublimation or discipline, which are all a form of repression. Repression must find an outlet, which may be a physical ailment or some kind of ideological illusion. The price is paid according to one’s temperament and idiosyncrasies.

… Truth is not a thing to be attained; it is seen or it is not seen, it cannot be perceived gradually. The will to be free from repression is a hindrance to understanding the truth of it; for will is desire, whether positive or negative, and with desire there can be no passive awareness. It is desire or craving that brought about the repression; and this same desire, though now called will, can never free itself from its own creation. Again, the truth of will must be perceived through passive yet alert awareness. The analyser, though he may separate himself from it, is part of the analysed; and as he is conditioned by the thing he analyses, he cannot free himself from it. Again, the truth of this must be seen. It is truth that liberates, not will and effort.