a fresh living thing......................

      To understand anything you must live with it, you must observe it, you must know its content, its nature, its structure, its movement.  Have you ever tried living with yourself?  If so, you will begin to see that yourself is not a static state, it is a fresh living thing.  And to live with a living thing your mind must also be alive.  And it cannot be alive if it is caught in opinions, judgments and values.
      In order to observe the movement of your own mind and heart, of your whole being, you must have a free mind, not a mind that agrees and disagrees, taking sides in an argument, disputing over mere words, but rather following with an intention to understand - a very difficult thing to do because most of us don't know how to look at, or listen to, our own being any more that we know how to look at the beauty of a river or listen to the breeze among the trees.
      When we condemn or justify we cannot see clearly, nor can we when our minds are endlessly chattering; then we do not observe what is;  we look only at the projections we have made of ourselves.  Each of us has an image of what we think we are or what we should be, and that image, that picture, entirely prevents us from seeing ourselves as we actually are.

-Jiddu Krishnamurti,  Freedom from the Known