Watching though there is nothing to learn

Good morning everyone,

Here is today's quote:

I am learning about myself—not according to some psychologist or specialist—I am watching and I see something in myself; but I do not condemn it, I do not judge it, I do not push it aside—I just watch it. I watch that I am proud—let us take that as an example. I do not say, “I must put it aside, how ugly to be proud.”—but I just watch it.

As I am watching, I am learning. Watching means learning what pride involves, how it has come into being. I cannot watch it for more than five or six minutes—if one can, that is a great deal—the next moment I become inattentive. Having been attentive and knowing what inattention is, I struggle to make inattention attentive. Do not do that, but watch inattention, become aware that you are inattentive—that is all.

Stop there. Do not say, “I must spend all my time being attentive”, but just watch when you are inattentive. To go any further into this would be really quite complex . There is a quality of mind that is awake and watching all the time, watching though there is nothing to learn. That means a mind that is extraordinarily quiet, extraordinarily silent. What has a silent, clear mind to learn?

The Impossible Question, pp 25-26

Here is my reflection.

This practice of watching the inattention is negative inquiry, seeing the false as false so that the true can be revealed. If you start to go further and focus on trying to cultivate the positive - attention - then you start creating problems. Then you'll need an image of what attention is, a method to bring it into beeing, a teacher to teach you the method, and from there you start to accumulate further conditioning. All you really need is intelligence, for which only a simplicity is needed, the inward simplicity of being alone. Intelligence is that quality of the mind that is awake and watching all the time. With intelligence we learn about ourselves from ourselves, and for ourselves. It's not a selfish action, it is self-observation, studying onself, becoming free without becoming dependent and becoming lost in a new pattern of conditioning that is only a step away from the one we just had.