Observation of New Things

It's about 30 minutes before dawn.  I hear a wild goose off in the distance, and then my neighbor cough. Now and then a car passing on the distant street. My thoughts come and go.  I feel I should grab one of those thoughts, wrestle it into submission, and present it as a blog post.

But that can wait.  For now, I'd rather just watch the night turn into day.  The refrigerator comes on.  The furnace creaks.  I hear wind chimes from across the yard.

The sky is light enough the trees are silhouetted against it now.  The early dawn.

I think an odd thing about observation is that we so often want to give it a purpose and then guide it. By guide it, I mean we want to weed out some of what's happening because it doesn't fit in with our purpose -- with what we're looking for.  Then, too, we want to hold onto other parts of what's happening because those parts actually fit our purpose.

Yet -- when we observe with a purpose in mind -- we more or less observe what we expect to observe.

I've lived in this cottage for almost a year now, and this morning was the first time I've noticed how many wind chimes there are in my immediate neighborhood.  I wasn't expecting to notice them, though.  I was instead having one of those rare moments when you observe without much in the way of expecting anything. 
 
It seems to me that it can be extraordinarily difficult to observe without any purpose.  For the most part, we're looking for something.  Often, that "something" is beauty, pleasure, or whatever we expect to find because we've seen it before.  But whatever it is, we are actively looking for it.

Still, it's in those rarer moments when we are not looking for anything -- when we do not seek beauty, pleasure, or this or that thing -- that we are most likely to discover the new.

Jiddu Krishnamurti on Writing Down What One Thinks and Feels

"If you find it difficult to be aware, then experiment with writing down every thought and feeling that arises throughout the day; write down your reactions of jealousy, envy, vanity, sensuality, the intentions behind your words, and so on."

"Spend some time before breakfast in writing them down, which may necessitate going to bed earlier and putting aside some social affair. If you write these things down whenever you can, and in the evening before sleeping look over all that you have written during the day, study and examine it without judgment, without condemnation, you will begin to discover the hidden causes of your thoughts and feelings, desires and words."

"Now, the important thing in this is to study with free intelligence what you have written down, and in studying it you will become aware of your own state. In the flame of self-awareness, of self-knowledge, the causes of conflict are discovered and consumed. You should continue to write down your thoughts and feelings, intentions and reactions, not once or twice, but for a considerable number of days until you are able to be aware of them instantly."

"Meditation is not only constant self-awareness, but constant abandonment of the self. Out of right thinking there is meditation, from which there comes the tranquility of wisdom; and in that serenity the highest is realized."

"Writing down what one thinks and feels, one's desires and reactions, brings about an inward awareness, the cooperation of the unconscious with the conscious, and this in turn leads to integration and understanding."

-- J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life