The Book of Not Knowing

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ISBN: 9781556438578 | 1556438575
Cover: Trade Paper
Copyright: 1/26/2010

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Over decades of martial arts and meditation practice, Peter Ralston discovered a curious and paradoxical fact: that true awareness arises from a state of not-knowing.Even the most sincere investigation of self and spirit, he says, is often sabotaged by our tendency to grab too quickly for answers and ideas as we retreat to the safety of the known. This "Hitchhiker's Guide to Awareness" provides helpful guideposts along an experiential journey for those Western minds predisposed to wandering off to old habits, cherished presumptions, and a stubbornly solid sense of self. With ease and clarity Ralston teaches readers how to become aware of the background patterns that they are usually too busy, stressed, or distracted to notice.The Book of Not Knowingpoints out the ways people get stuck in their lives and offers readers a way to make fresh choices about every aspect of their lives, from a place of awareness instead of autopilot.

Introduction: Grounded Enlightenment	p. 1
Questioning the Obvious
A Powerful Openness	p. 9
Beginning to Wonder	p. 9
Beyond the Self Mind	p. 11
Knowing and Not-Knowing	p. 14
Self and Being	p. 19
Moving Beyond Belief	p. 25
Learning to Not-Know	p. 25
Natural Contemplation	p. 27
Zen Influence	p. 29
Relating Differently to Beliefs	p. 31
Creating a New Perspective	p. 33
Empty Your Cup	p. 36
The Cultural Matrix	p. 41
We Are Culture	p. 41
Not-Knowing in Our Culture	p. 47
The Self in Our Culture	p. 50
The Cost of Our Assumptions	p. 52
Your Own Experience of These Consequences	p. 57
An Experience of Not-Knowing	p. 63
Learning versus Knowing	p. 63
Thinking without a Net	p. 66
What Is an Experience?	p. 69
What Is an Experience of Not-Knowing?	p. 74
What Is an Insight?	p. 77
The Principles of Discovery	p. 81
Four Cornerstones of Discovery	p. 81
Authentic Experience	p. 84
Honesty	p. 87
Grounded Openness	p. 90
Questioning	p. 95
Embracing Paradox	p. 101
Our Self Experience
Conceptual Dominance	p. 107
Creating a Conceptual World	p. 107
What Is a Concept?	p. 112
Concepts Dominate Our Perceptions	p. 115
There's More to Perception than Meets the Eye	p. 118
The Solidification of Concepts	p. 120
Challenging Conceptual Dominance	p. 122
You Don't Have to Rehearse to Be Yourself	p. 129
Being Yourself	p. 129
The Real and the False	p. 131
Masks and Hats	p. 133
Superficial Remedies	p. 137
Looking for Self in All the Wrong Places	p. 139
Unknown Origins	p. 143
Our "Need to Know" Level of Consciousness	p. 143
Mistaking the Uncognized Mind for the Real Self	p. 147
The Origins of Your Self	p. 151
In Search of Real Being
What Am I?	p. 159
Our Experience of "Being"	p. 159
Identifying Ourselves	p. 164
Our Conceptual Self Experience	p. 168
Self and Being	p. 173
What Is a Self?	p. 174
What Is Being?	p. 180
What Is Your Self and What Is Being?	p. 185
The Self: Noun or Verb?	p. 193
Am I a Noun or a Verb?	p. 196
To Noun or to Verb?	p. 199
"Doing" versus "Being"	p. 204
Creating Self
Inventing Self and World	p. 213
The Self-Identity Reinforces Itself	p. 216
The Never-Ending Story of Me	p. 219
Inventions	p. 221
Inventing Personalized Worlds	p. 226
Manipulating Circumstances	p. 230
Lost in Translation	p. 233
What Is Not and Never Was	p. 233
Interpretation Revisited	p. 236
Reconstructive Interpretation	p. 239
Self as We Know It	p. 243
Life in the Loop	p. 244
Creating an Experience of Self	p. 251
The Myth of Real Self	p. 251
Apples and Oranges	p. 254
Believing in Your Self	p. 257
Mandatory Misrepresentation	p. 259
Living as a False-Self	p. 260
The Snowball Effect	p. 262
Assembling a Particular Self	p. 267
The Way You Are in Particular	p. 270
The Self Principle	p. 273
All about You	p. 273
Meaning Steers the Self	p. 276
Two Domains of Survival: Physical and Conceptual	p. 279
Social Survival	p. 282
To Be Frank	p. 286
Surviving as a Self	p. 288
Survival Is Not Being	p. 291
Three Distinctions in Consciousness	p. 291
What Is "For-Itself"?	p. 297
Beyond Happiness and Suffering: Perceiving Something For-Itself	p. 301
For-Itself versus As-Itself	p. 308
Experiencing the Truth Is Not the Purpose of Self-Survival	p. 309
For-Itself versus As-Itself-an Ontological Overview	p. 315
Surviving Isn't Being	p. 317
What Does Persist?	p. 319
Entertaining the Possibility of Not Surviving	p. 320
Penetrating Experience
Recognizing Self-Survival in Your Own Experience	p. 325
Getting from Here to There	p. 326
What Is Being at Effect?	p. 327
Becoming More Conscious of Effects	p. 331
Experiencing Something For-Itself	p. 334
Changing from Reaction to Experience	p. 336
Changing Context Changes Effects	p. 341
Beyond Belief	p. 353
A Quick Review of Belief	p. 354
Getting Free of Our Need to Believe	p. 359
On the Shoulders of Giants	p. 362
Using Beliefs as a Map	p. 364
Radical Openness	p. 367
Eliminating Beliefs	p. 369
The Practice of Dispelling Beliefs	p. 372
A New Experience in Consciousness	p. 376
Freedom from Assumptions-Part One	p. 381
Making Connections	p. 383
Emptiness	p. 388
Freedom from Assumptions-Part Two	p. 407
Self-Doubt	p. 407
Feeling Trapped	p. 413
Suffering	p. 416
Struggle	p. 429
Contemplation	p. 437
Creating a Place to Stand	p. 437
Being as Unknown	p. 441
Contemplation	p. 444
Pre-contemplation	p. 445
Contemplating	p. 451
Developing a Steady Practice	p. 455
Looking Both Ways	p. 465
Awakening the Uncognized Mind	p. 467
Finding Our Way into the Unconscious	p. 469
Contemplating the Uncognized Mind	p. 470
The Process of Contemplating Uncognized Mind	p. 473
Explaining the Process	p. 476
A Sample Bottom-Line Contemplation	p. 478
Guidelines for Your Bottom-Line Contemplation	p. 482
Five Points of Reference	p. 484
The Nature of Reality
The Nature of Emotion	p. 491
Fear	p. 493
Anger	p. 501
Desire	p. 507
Pain	p. 515
The Nature of Everything	p. 523
What Is Everything?	p. 524
The Distinction "Distinction"	p. 528
Distinctions and Existence	p. 533
The Nature of Being	p. 539
Meaning Doesn't Mean Anything	p. 539
In Search of Absolute Knowledge	p. 541
The Possibility of Direct Consciousness	p. 545
The Nature of Being	p. 546
The Paradox of Being	p. 552
Being and Self	p. 553
Being and Life	p. 559
What Now?	p. 559
Life Principles	p. 563
Happiness: Don't Want It	p. 570
Discipline and Freedom	p. 575
The Lava Syndrome	p. 576
A Final Word	p. 578
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The Book of Not Knowing

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Author Biography

Table of Contents

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