why is doing things mechanically –

does doing things mechanically hinder understanding?

what does it mean to understand oneself? 

should understanding oneself even be the goal? if it helps you break the shackles of the mind and achieve freedom. 

does understanding oneself lead to that? what is the truth here?

what is my destination? the new town? the self-identity?

does it matter how i get there? 

how do i get there?

what do i do? 

how long will it take? you can’t predict how long it will take. nature will determine that

are you willing to wait? but waiting does not guarantee that i will get there. only my actions do.

do you keep trying till you get there? yes, if that is my greatest desire

will understanding the mind help break free from it? 

how will you know that you’ve broken free? when it doesn’t control you? when you can play with the thoughts?

what are my greatest desires? 

are they good or bad? 

can things be categorized as good or bad? if so, is that the universal truth of their existence and does it matter? if not, why do you seek it? 

how many desires do you have? 

what is the most basic and ground reasoning for the desire?

what is distracting you from fulfilling that desire? is the distractor the true greatest desire? 

is it possible to cultivate/develop a different desire? where does that come from? how will you know if it is genuine? 

do societie’s prescriptions, conditioning and noise dilute the messages from the core? 

to understand my inner being, the core (the voice without a name), do i need my purest voice? if yes, i have to undo society’s baggage. if not, what do i need? do i need anything at all?

does being free from the mind mean accessing my core being? but isn’t ‘the core being’ something invented by society?

what is it really? 

does accessing what it really is come from recognizing the voice? separating it from all the noise?

the questions that im asking, how many are written because they seem ‘appropriate’ and what i ‘should’ ask. 

how many questions are using the terminology seen in spirituality and self-help books and ideas?

doing things mechanically and through prescriptions keeps man fixated in the solution. always seeking to arrive at an answer. completely ignoring the understanding of the problem one is faced with. even in the very act of trying to understand a problem mechanically, one is ironically searching for a solution but is stuck in the method. 

if one is to genuinely try and understand a problem through questioning, he will be faced with many unexplained dead-ends, crossroads, and loops. it is the curiosity in exploring all the paths that will help one to map out a wide understanding of the problem. an insincere attempt at understanding will see one taking shortcuts. ah-ha. shortcuts. a prescription. society hates people that take shortcuts because it is seen in the same realm as cheating. so are they really bad if they help you arrive at the destination quicker? a man that is stuck in the methodology will be stuck in the maze longer than a man only focusing on the exit. 

two men are put in two identical giant mazes with the aim of escaping. it is a randomly generated maze. kilometers wide.

one man is given the ability to consult with others about escaping. 

the other is not. he has to figure it out himself. 

the man consults with several revered gurus

one of them says “you must follow the light”

another says “you will escape eventually after you try all the paths, it is about the journey”

another says “let your heart guide you”

another says “don’t listen to what others say”

another says “be practical and have appropriate rest”

another says “pray everyday and god will free you”

another says “whatever route you follow, don’t commit a sin” 

another says “if you listen to me then i will tell you the secret, they’re all wrong”

the other man simply has to find his way there. whatever way he knows best. whatever understanding he develops whilst he’s in there. whatever truths he discovers in the maze. he does not have voices in his ear. he simply has the single aim of arriving at the exit. lets call him the simple man. or the jungle man. 

the spiritual man is confused about which belief to follow? there are so many out there. they all seem to have worked for each of the gurus. they all sound so good. what do you follow? and if it fails have you wasted all that time following it? how do you know that that’s the right strategy to follow? 

after –

as soon as something interferes with the creative process of exploration is it best to stop? like right now, i started to feel like this was going to be read. so the writing started to get guided by what would sound good and what will they think if they read this, is it up to a good enough standard for them, is this something they would consider a good piece of writing. 

these external motives seep into the work and dilute its purity. it gets titrated, infected, hacked, and raided by society’s lies. the artist’s work is ruined. the work is slashed. the work is rendered ‘altered’. this is poison in the mind. it reeks of it. after being conditioned your whole life by society. by others. by lies. 

the artist’s only power, and source of life is polluted. he dies quicker the stronger society has a grasp on his thoughts. he becomes bankrupt as the people spread the messages. he is enslaved. brought from his peaceful isolated dwelling by the shore where he paints his only pure interpretation to a city of masses. where propaganda and lies are the only languages spoken. where everything said has an agenda. where people are not self-sufficient, they are reliant on each other for pleasure. where that is the only goal. to feel good. years pass by and the man is no longer an artist, he does not produce what his heart desired. he does the same things done by everyone else. he does not question the reason he is doing it. this man is bankrupt in life. he has died the moment he entered the city. he is breathing and moving but he does experience life the way he once wanted to or even have the freedom of choosing which way to experience it. 

this man is me. trapped by so many fears. conditioned into me. afraid to explore the territory beyond the walls created in the mindfield. 

but to escape there are many questions that arise.

do you know what is beyond the walls? is it worth finding out?

is your life not already comfortable enough within the walls? 

if you’re met with savageness that eats you up, will you regret it? if you do, then you are still alive. and you can still do something about it. 

how high are these metephorical walls? can it be measured? not in a quantitive way. you just have to feel yourself leaping over them?

how long is the wall? is it encompassing or can i eventually walk around it? how long is the walk around them? 

lets not get stuck in this metaphor. no metaphor is complete. it simply seeks to illustrate a point for the truth can not be condensed into one metaphor. are any of these statements even true. 

the more questions that i ask, the more unsettled i am. the more confusion arises. it just all seems infinite. the exploration in itself might be a distraction to arriving. you forget where you are going. 

do you choose a question and examine it thoroughly then? that seems mechanical and solution based. another dead end. 

why are you asking so many questions, do you really think they’ll help you arrive at a conclusion? 

then what else do you do? do you observe? do you do nothing? 

what guides you? 

need you been guided?  

the troubling realisation is that i do not know how to answer these questions for myself by myself. i keep looking outside of myself. maybe someone wiser will know? someone more intellectual? 

there is possible reasoning for this. the first one being, that im scared of being arrogant and assuming i know what the answer is. now, is that a lack of confidence i have developed that im probably not right or is it perhaps acknowledging that i dont know everything?

“truth is that which is not belief or opinion”.