Is the Answer Outside the Self?

What happens when we stop looking for answers outside our own mind? If you can realize that the very fact of seeking is born of our inner conflict, then perhaps a new way of approaching life's difficulties will arise. Is it possible for you to probe the mechanism that causes us to live in fear and apprehension? To understand deeply the origins of a troubled and confused mind. You cannot understand yourself by reading what others have written. It only feeds the illusion of opinion and conclusion. One must live a life of intelligent uncertainty. Freedom is insecurity and not knowing. It is the beauty of spontaneous understanding that is not born of or the result of what has gone on before. Freedom is the outcome of a deep understanding of the origins of a self that is caught in its own illusion of knowing.

There is nothing complicated or mysterious about understanding the self. One just has to allow freedom to take hold of ones consciousness so that it is possible to see without the self that is trying to exert influence. You must leave all the baggage behind so that you can see clearly in the moment. How utterly beautiful and peaceful is the mind that is without the clutter of the known. It is the simplicity of a mind that has left behind the concept of time and of being. The conceptual mind cannot understand beyond its content, because it is its content they are not separate. As the mind increases its knowledge, it continues to add to its conceptual image of reality. Seeking outside the self only increases confusion and adds to an already conflicted mind. If it is possible to let go of the tendency to conceptualize based on what is accumulated, then the mind may experience freedom that is not the result of another concept. Instead the mind realizes a deep understanding of its self that leads to a clear understanding of the circumstance of the moment. Rather than looking through the image of self (ones knowledge), a person looks with an emptiness that is the negation of a self that is comparing and concluding. If you can look without conclusion, which means without referencing then something quite illuminating may happen.