SOUL

What makes you think that there are unconscious thoughts? Aren't thoughts by their very definition something we are aware of in our mind? If we aren't conscious of them, are they even thoughts at all? What you seem to be pointing to is that if everything is consciousness why is there unconsciousness, or seemingly unconscious matter as well as why is there the subconscious mind. All of which is very interesting to contemplate. My answer is.... I know that I don't know...... haha.

@Gopackgo Just reading the last reply from each of us illustrates so much. You are critical of conceptualizing yet that's all you offered, more and more concepts laden with buzzwords projected onto everything but adding very little insight. My reply was a simple and practical examination of how our conscious and subconscious mind coexist and work together with very few concepts projected onto it. If you don't like projecting concepts, stop doing it.

@username We can keep piling on more and more concepts, ideas, methods and techniques which have their place in our inner work but lost in all of that can be the simple experience of presence. In this present moment with our appreciation of it by awakening our awareness to the experience of just being the hunger is satiated, desire is quenched and our life is fulfilled.

You are trying too hard....... just let it be.

@Gopackgo Yet you calling something an illusion is your mind trying to project just another concept onto something the mind wants to understand, this is just another attempt to control the story so it's makes sense to the mind, so that we can influence it. I know it is a popular concept, one that in spiritual circles is accepted way of viewing it and will find many supporters chiming in agreement but it isn't any more of an accurate representation of reality than any other. Just being present in the moment our awareness doesn't need to make judgements about existence in terms of real or illusion beyond whether it is really a tiger in the grass waiting to eat us or if that bus is really coming at us. The thoughts in our mind come and go and they are as real as we allow them to be, they are as empowered in our mind in making them as "real" as we give the power and allow them to be. The mind and the thoughts in it didn't arise from nothing, it arose from experience and it reflects that experience of the past in the present to orient our self for it's survival. By giving our attention or not giving it, in using this awareness at the core of our consciousness we mold the mind through the present moment, we give it the experience that becomes the source of future reflections. Is it an illusion? Is it real? Our awareness is free from judging and our mind will reflect that which our attention entertains. So we lead our minds by focusing our attention, our awareness is the seed in our consciousness that will bear fruit in in our mind. Does it matter if this experience is real or an illusion? I guess to the mind and it's nature of trying to identify and label it may need to view it this way but is it the mind that only reflects the past or is it awareness in the present that fills our consciousness? In that is where the freedom of our will can be explored.

@Stoica Doru We are intentional beings in cooperation with life using variables and dynamics that may be beyond our control.

@sgn So even though you were prompted to think of a dog by my request and then supplied with dogs through your mind's imagination by unconscious means you then directed the mind to imagine you petting them. Thus you have illustrated and example of how it is both conscious and unconscious that blends to create our thought process. It's not just either one of that we can control or we can't control thoughts, just like it's not just either we have free will or we don't. It's a unified experience of will.

@Gopackgo This is why I acknowledge that it is inevitably a blend of conscious and unconscious, of intentional and incidental, it's rarely ever just conscious or just unconscious. It's both that presents itself as one united process but if we are awake, the distinction can be examined in our consciousness.

@sgn Did you pet the dog in your mind? Does your mind dog bite?

I want you to think of a dog.... any dog you like, just think of a dog, picture this dog and see yourself petting that dog on the head in your mind. Ok.... were you able to do it? If you did do it you just controlled your thoughts, you produced that thought at will. I know, I know.... what does that prove? The same exact thing that is proven when somebody tells you to stop thinking anything, think of absolutely nothing, then if you can't stop the thoughts they use it as an example of how you cannot control your thoughts and thoughts simply arise without you willing them to. It's not as clear cut as we can't or can control our thoughts, it's both and they simultaneously can be happening. At the same exact moment we can be willfully directing our thoughts and have thoughts arising without us intending for them to so have both streams of thought crisscrossing and blending in our mind. With "free will" it's similar in that it isn't as clear cut as we do or don't in exclusivity, it's both and they can be simultaneously happening. In fact, in the same way with thoughts it's inevitable that we are experiencing the effect of both in our mind.

Being exposed to ideas, concepts and opinions that are different, even opposite of our own and how we react in being exposed to them will indicate how open minded we are. The mind by it's nature doesn't want to accept different even though it is very interested in different, meaning it won't accept different by brute force of imposing on it but through it curiously examining the different it will adopt some of the different, the part that fits in with it's already existing paradigm. So even though we may attempt to cultivate a disposition of being open to the different and in our awareness we are intentionally being open to it our mind may still continue to react to the different in the way that it has evolved to be predisposed to behave. It will take repeated and consistent intention in being open through our awareness for the mind to eventually reflect that pattern... to become open to and act impulsively in that "different" openness we are intentionally exercising in our awareness.

The mind is addicted to identification like the body is addicted to food.

B-b-but we are told we can't control our thoughts and we have no free will to change it!

I had never heard this term before but that isn't surprising since I am a spiritual autodidact. Although, just from the description of it I read on Wikipedia I can see why it isn't a favored way that is taught and even anathema for a majority of the teachers. If the way can be described in just a few minutes and doesn't require any of the knowledge, understanding, methods and techniques we may realize why do we need any 'teachers' for? When it is understood how simple exercising awareness to enlighten consciousness is there is little opportunity to sell books upon books or book lists or courses or lecture series or retreats or continuing education or build an empire of material substance on teaching something that any idiot can "be" without any special knowledge and training..... and trust me any idiot can just "be here now", I would understand this intimately since there are few more idiotic than me. Plus the mind just can't believe that this can be so simple... you mean for us to exercise awareness to enlighten consciousness doesn't need me?!? Not my knowledge, not my understanding, not any of my methods or techniques, none of my ideas or concepts... well sure, the mind will concede that it doesn't require my self or my ego in theory but cotdammit that's an idea and concept that the mind needs to believe it is needed! The mind cannot believe we can just be without it's machinations. There are infinite words spoken and written on something that doesn't require a single one of them to be.

There is a limit..... it's infinite. Heh

What's happening is a reasoning from the ideological position of nonduality based on the concept that duality is a construct of the mind in which good/evil and right/wrong are just imaginary and symbolic but not 'real'. Although, to believe that someone who is "enlightened" would rape is to disregard many of the attributes expressed in enlightenment.

The op is my role model for not spelling it roll.......

If you don't know you have free will, you probably don't have it.

I didn't say it is.

Figure out what it is that will fulfill you and seek that. Just taking advice from people without the context of your own life is useless. It's not just about finding someone who has what you seek in fulfillment and following their advice because different people have different ways accomplishing the same thing. Discovering the methods and techniques that work for us just as important discovering what fulfills us. If we don't understand the ways wes effectively work it won't help to understand what fulfills us. So it comes down to understanding ourselves not just in who or what to listen to.

@Shin I was merely applying the reasoning commonly espoused in spiritual circles for ironic effect. Don't take it personally, heh.

Saying that enlightenment is realizing that we aren't the physical and not the self then defend the deplorable violation of someone else by a supposed 'enlightened' person indulging in a vile selfish impulse through harming others, especially women or an innocent child....hm how convenient. People that will go to such lengths to justify an ideological belief even if it means speak in defense of a despicable act of wilful disregard for well being are not the people who I would take life guidance from....that's just in my humble perspective but everyone is welcome to do as they see fit.

It's only effective to be an asshole when one is dealing with a piece of shit.

According to the commonly accepted spiritual paradigm the reason is there's no "you" to make any progress....

There is no real difference between unconscious and subconscious but if I were to draw a distinction between the two I would call unconscious things that we would never be conscious of and subconscious are the shadowy impulses that are on the edge of conscious. By our conscious work we hope to leave impressions on our unconscious habituation so that eventually they become reflexive impulses that rise from our subconscious and could be considered our new habits. There are undoubtedly plenty of spiritualists who present contradictory ideas that often get explained as a paradox of the illusion. As well as the inconsistent logic gets explained away that rationality cannot fully understand spirituality. I can agree that the abstract is difficult to describe but it seems those reasonings get abused in avoiding the doublespeak.