We can't simply take the way things seem and just work on that, because that would be another kind of mistake thought makes--taking the surface and calling it the reality.

When you are thinking something, you have the feeling that the thoughts do nothing except inform you the way things are and then you choose to do something and you do it.  That's what people generally assume.  But actually, the way you think determines the way you're going to do things.  Then you don't notice a result comes back, or you don't see it as a result of what you've done, or even less do you see it as a result of how you were thinking.  Is that clear?

Bohm: Your questions contain hidden assumptions; that's the point.  Therefore, when you question the question itself, you may be questioning a deeper assumption.  But that's done non-verbally.  Do you see what I mean?  To question the question eventually has to be a non-verbal act, which you can't describe.
Q: And that may break all the patterns?
Bohm: Yes, somehow it breaks the pattern.  Now, the suggestion is that this pattern of the system is not something with which we are stuck.  It may not be absolutely inevitable; there are signs that it could break.
Q: What do you mean when you say that questioning the question has to be non-verbal?
Bohm: If I say I have a question which may contain assumptions that should be questioned, I could question them verbally.  But what would lead me to question my question?  Eventually I can put it into words; but I'm saying the first step, the first flash of insight, is non-verbal.

Look at the question.  Don't answer it right away.  Newton took a long time before he even got to the question, and he was quite bright.

The system [of thought] doesn't stay with the difficult problem that produces unpleasant feelings.  It's conditioned somehow to move as fast as it can toward more pleasant feelings, without actually facing the thing that's making the unpleasant feeling.

Can we learn to become more learning-oriented individually and collectively, rather than 'I know' oriented?

Q:  You're saying that the pain is being done [to me] by me?
Bohm:  By the same thought that does it all in the first place.

If you engage in positive thinking to overcome negative thoughts, the negative thoughts are still there acting.  That's still incoherence.  It's not enough just to engage in positive thoughts when you have negative thoughts registered, because they keep on working and will cause trouble somewhere else.

If we can be cheered up by positive images we can be depressed by negative ones.  As long as we accept images as realities we are in that trap, because you can't control the images.

The pleasure-pain reaction is generally appropriate for the animal, but you can see that for thought it is not.  The criterion for coherent thought is that it is true and correct.  But if you can get pleasure or pain from thought then coherent thought is no longer functioning.  Rather, the criterion has become whether the thought gives pleasure or pain, consequently that thought becomes destructive.  If thought can be determined by pleasure or pain, that's already the beginning of a lot of trouble.  And we conditioned by that.