1983-07_22 Conscious Dialogue Q&A-1

Talk: 19830722-Larry_Rosenberg-UNK-conscious_dialogue-1470 Start_time: 00:25:48 Display_question: How can we ask questions from a real, deep place during the Q&As? Keyword_search: question, pause, slow, hear, answer, real, teachers, book, transform, intention, discovery, doubt, fear, true, mind, joyful Question_content: Larry: Okay, before you ask the question, there's a string attached. Yeah, yeah. Just pause and be with the question. There's no rush. This is slow motion tonight… really hear the question and see if it changes it or if anything comes up about it. And if not, that's all right. And then we can all just pause for a moment or so. Questioner: It isn't really a question. Larry: Okay. Questioner: It's just a thought about questions. Very often when we ask a question, we have an answer that we want and that we hope will be the answer. And I think a real question is when you don't have any answer in mind and you're just looking to see what might be true and you don't know, rather than fear or expectation or something like that. So you just ask because you're hoping it'll go a certain way. Larry: Mhm. Why don't we ask real questions? Questioner: You mean, why do we ask questions that we want to come out of certain… Larry: That matter to us. Questioner: One reason sometimes is that you're afraid they might–connected with what I said–they might not turn out the way you expected. Larry: So that means fear? Questioner: Fear or you might not want to reveal yourself or you don't even know what your real question is; there's too much else on the surface. Larry: One thing that–perhaps we can all ask ourselves right now–is there a real intention to find out, about anything that may be on your mind, whenever it comes up and if there is something now? Because if there's a real intention to understand that releases the mind of discovery; a mechanism goes into play that's very beautiful. If there isn't a real intention to understand, to find out, then we may present ourselves as being interested in inquiring, but there's no real energy there. And when you look closely what it is is we're still dependent on authority. We're afraid to doubt. We're afraid to challenge ourselves in a very basic and deep way. And it's much easier to let somebody who obviously must know tell us. And we've had a lot of practice doing that, an enormous amount of practice. And what that practice has done–that is external authority telling us what's true–is it makes the mind insensitive. So for the mind to be rejuvenated, for the mind to become joyful in learning, I think it has to understand that if it's true, if there's a real dependency. In other words, we can't fake it. Break_line: And in my own case, I know I've spent a lot of time noticing where I was blocked because it's so much easier to let someone else tell you and then not take responsibility. But after a while it becomes deadly. Particularly when you find out that they probably didn't know either. Break_line: What if there were no teachers and no books? Just alone on an island and just feverish work just generated a whole universe on that island. What if we use that energy, since we had no help, supposing there was no help at all–no IMS, no teachers, no books. In a way, that would be wonderful. We'd be thrown back on ourselves. And there's tremendous energy in that. Perhaps questions that come out of that, whether we ask them to ourselves or to another, have a real force and a real ability to transform. End_time: 00:31:23 ___________________________________________________________________________________