I have been reading a book that I have wanted to read for a long time, To Be Human by J. Krishnamurti. It is my mother's book and I brought it with me from Michigan to the Netherlands. The book has been sitting on my shelf for 8 months without being touched. But I moved it to my nightstand about 1 week ago, and then I finally opened it and started reading it yesterday morning. The book was just calling to me for some reason. It seems I was meant to have these words in my life right now. I am facing a big disappointment in my personal life. Through the core teachings of this book (and I'm only 1/4 of the way through the book!) the door has been opened to the truth. To understanding the observer and the observed and through this process of understanding, realizing that there is no observer or observed - only observing. I cannot attach to these emotions and let them consume me. I am the sky and the emotions are just weather passing through. I always loved this metaphor. Anyways, I am proud of how I am handling this. It's been a really, really rough year. I moved across the Atlantic ocean to a new continent and country by myself to start my Ph.D. I have been mostly socially isolated working alone in my apartment for 8 months. Several people close to me have died recently, including my grandfather and a childhood friend (who was my first ever connection to the Netherlands) that died by suicide. It feels like this all should have broken me. Like I should be at a tipping point. But I'm not. I feel alive and right where I am supposed to be. I'm not afraid, I'm not going to hide from heartbreak and pain and loss. I am a human being that has the capacity to feel these things and to move through them towards a quality of mind that is awake, aware, intense, that has no trauma, no suppression nor indulgence, that is not controlling itself all of the time or at any time, that is free and therefore never lies in the shadow of yesterday. Freedom is not at the end, but at the beginning.
Below are some of the words I have underlined as I am reading...
"In this choiceless awareness or observing without the observer, the thoughts and images subside, like water that has been stirred and muddied returning to a state of clear stillness. This stillness however is energizing. In it there can arise insights into the true significance, the origin, workings, and limitation of the thoughts and images experienced: If the mind is aware of its limitations without condemnation, without justification, if it is purely aware of its limitations, then you will find there comes a freedom from that limitation. And in that freedom, truth is realized."
"Any prolonged study of Krishnamurti's "teaching" confronts one with a mind whose nature is constantly unfolding and deepening, always dynamic and never static...There is something new, therefore, in every moment of being. The challenge is to see it."
"Truth is a pathless land. Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest, or ritual. Nor through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective discussion."
"Life is relationship and action."
"To find your truth you have to live tremendously, with no security other than the security in intelligence that comes through insight."