What do I do when I am learning to read and write? At first there is no awareness of reading and writing. We have only an immediate, broad, awareness of a local environment. We gradually are taught, or observe, informally at first, the function of words, in signs, picture books, packaging, computers, and toys. I commit my self to the letters, words, numbers, and find an interest in the symbols, and the results I get from them, the stories, the skills and the knowledge. This is the normal outcome and is the accepted path of being educated which we take for granted. So as parents, teachers, educators, administrators, who have committed to this process, which is now completely indistinguishable from a normal function of our daily lives, we see no problem in that goal, although we might admit there are problems.

But return to the beginning where we have a broad awareness of the general, local environment and no individual purpose to read. We are learning language and talking by listening and interacting, and perhaps reading a little because we are recognizing words at the supermarket, or on TV, and from picture books. But we haven't any idea of imaging words or numbers in a symbolic fashion. I wonder at this point why some children don't accept this process? Why do they not have the interest, or not comply with the practice, of studying these symbols. Is it because, having what is akin in its natural state, to a holistically intelligent view, do they see something amiss, a danger, a stupidity, or a sacrifice, which will adversely affect them were they to commit to the process?

Of course they might not have conceptualized, verbalized, this position. Then with no understanding of what is involved in studying letters and words, they are mystified by what others are doing. Where others comply, accept, these students are perhaps unknowingly maintaining their independence, their freedom. So the question is, is the individual able to learn to read and write, to function in the ordinary world, without submitting to a condition where words represent a reality in conflict with intelligence? Can the individual learn to be aware of this difference, reality and words, and how thinking becomes affected, and so intelligently, passionately, acquire skills for themselves, freely?

Can the self live in the sacred?

The word greed is lost on most people. I notice that there is more reaction when their personal aspirations are brought into question. So if I look at my interest in becoming a success, getting higher qualifications, being involved in a program, running an activity, developing a career, and see this as merely self-interest, wanting to get rich, to join an elite, I feel threatened. Ordinarily most people don't see their fears, seeing only normal behavior. A lack of security, poor living standards, income dependency, expensive housing, and so on, is solved by working hard, accumulating wealth and status, and making sacrifices. A progressive and positive action which is taken to be unquestionably logical, reasonable.

Either you are beginning this or are involved in it, and want to achieve the goals, get the rewards. This is no conspiracy theory. The word con-spire, means together+(a)spire. So just being an ordinary person is a conspiracy. Although we politely think of it as a society, a civilisation. This is the movement from the have not to the have it all, and it is this participation in an accumulating process that gives it the sense of development, growth, that implies improvement, and makes it right and good. So we just don't see greed. We see it as living. We need to grow food, build houses, make clothes, produce household goods, provide services, and all of that is the complex society. So my questioning is not of this situation, but why the mind has become inwardly conditioned to duplicate this situation into a mental architecture. The like of which brings people to act selfishly and to personally protect and defend their involvement.

What makes the individual aggressively, destructively, self-centered? Are our actions that we choose, the love, hate, agreement, disagreement, cooperation, rebellion, sharing, selfish, are they due to the actual material conditions and physical properties of the places we inhabit or is it a human condition? Historically, we could say we have caused this dilemma by what it takes to survive, and to make it all happen. Progress. We could say it is deep within the human psyche and our state of affairs is a mutual dependency between the material and the spiritual. We could believe we are intricately entwined in the process. The question I am looking at is what can I do now to change, not just to end greed, but to be where the mind needs no personal center, no involvement, no dependency, no accumulation, no aggrandisement.

Is contradiction an excellence?

My mind, the mind that is aware, is the mind befuddled. The conditions of any situation are the conditions of the mind. Awareness is merely acknowledgment, recognition, mimicry, and we give ourselves status, good or bad. We are making choices. There can't be a life apart, different to actual living. So this is the human condition. We are in fact living selectively according to the conditions, which is conformity. That's why it is called work, or study, career and so on. There is only the field where this takes place, and to excel that is my reference.

Then we experience conflict. What I question is what is the cause of the conflict. I question I am individually the source of everyones problems, dissatisfaction, disorder, incompleteness. This is what is put to us at school, at work, socially, ethically and so on. I question self-improvement. Can we do all those civilised functions with no sense of self? Or do we inevitably have to face the conflict, which is self? Not my self, your self, and not selflessness. What we have to do is see mind as it is, not as it should be.

I am not good with logic, but I am wondering are you asserting this or are you interested in what it means? I ask because I don't want to be involved in either shaking your faith or supporting your claim. It seems to me that God as you put it is just the image I have in my mind that we call seeing. That's not an argument for or against. Why do people have to have proof? Obviously the word, the human experience of God, is not sufficient. That seems to me to be much more meaningful. Our inadequacy is replaced by the idea of God. If we could be in a state of grace, in the sacred, as it were, the word God, as we would use it, would diminish the sacred to something less than what it is. That wouldn't be God. The word doesn't do it justice. So why bother with that word at all? If it's something different, some indescribable state, greater than the mind, then we have no way of knowing through thought.