back to basics

Most of you probably understand what I mean when I say that you are not your thoughts. You probably have experienced standing back and noticing, becoming cognizant of, the thoughts that are passing like clouds through your mind, and getting a distinct sense that they actually have no more to do with you than the traffic on the street, or the sounds on the radio, or whatever seems to be playing on network television.

Thoughts happen. They range from the sublime to the truly frightening. The entire arena of thought is really very much like the whole internet, or like YouTube. It's largely junk with some interesting observations thrown in. However, every conceivable thought, no matter how lofty, has something in common with every other thought, no matter how base—and that common denominator is the nature of its origin. All thought begins with the delusional yet very real-seeming experience of the separate self. Thought arises simultaneously, is co-emergent with, the experience of separation.

So the very origin of thought is on shaky ground to begin with. It's a lot like thought in a dream. In a dream, thought is arising based on the dream drama, as though the dream drama were actually real. When you awaken from the dream you see that not only wasn't the dream drama real, but any and all thoughts or emotions associated with it were completely meaningless because they were based on the belief that what was not happening in reality, was.

The thought-stream, the internal dialogue, the storyline, is sometimes called the ego, or the mechanism of ego. When listened to as though it were real, it creates a sensation of solidity. It creates a feeling of stable identity that can stand as separate from the identities of other people, objects and occurrences.

All thoughts, when identified with, when given that injection of energy that comes when you hop on and follow along with them, create form on some level. Whatever you include in your attention creates form on some level—so powerful is the force of your attention.

When you watch a little YouTube video, sometimes it amuses you and for the next few minutes the world seems brighter. When you stumble upon one of those "God, I wish I hadn't seen that." type of YouTube experiences, you may find that for the next few minutes your world seems darker.

In exactly the same way as you choose what you expose yourself to on the internet or YouTube, you can choose to be aware of the quality of the thoughts you choose to inject with the powerful creative force of your own identifying attention.

All of this presupposes that you are actually noticing that there is thought, and then there is no-thought, sometimes called "the space between thoughts." To me it feels like space, period, in which all that seems to appear, occurs. A living, cognizant, shimmering silent aliveness, the love and grace of which can inform your choices.

In order to even become aware of this situation, it's necessary to spend some time turning inward and noticing what is happening in your mind. Imagine if you had no idea how to change the channel on a TV, or stop a nasty looping YouTube video, or even turn off a computer or a radio. It's the same thing. It's necessary to use the blessed power of your attention to turn inward and notice the workings of your own mind, on a regular basis. It requires a little bit of effort, similar to the effort required when you learned to brush your teeth every day, or eat right, or get some exercise. Same type of effort.

If you are suffering, and if your world seems dark, you have been (justifiably so, it may seem) identifying with dark, unhappy thoughts and they have attracted more thoughts like them. This has done nothing to harm or change that shimmering essence within you, but your access to it (or its healing access to you) is limited by the fact that your attention is trapped. Learning to shift those atrophied muscles of attention—to understand that you are not a victim of circumstances—can be difficult at first. It's a lot like learning to use a once paralyzed limb, or learning to overcome an addiction.

Eventually you begin to understand that whatever you give your attention to, grows. Your attention is like the sun, rain and nourishment all rolled into one. And as you withdraw your attention from something, it begins to wither. So as you turn your attention away from the thought stream, to the space between thoughts (also called the now, or the present moment, just as it is) your experience of that space grows, and the thought stream in your proximal experience quiets down and becomes less and less obtrusive. These things happen on their own, the way muscle grows when you exercise. It's just the way it is. Nothing about you has changed. You have just freed your attention from its entrapment in thought. It will drift back again and again and again, but each time you notice it, the freeing happens more and more easily until eventually it is automatic.

Comments

[Peter]

Thank you Marian,
not much to say about such a lucid, simple and helpful reminder. Have been attending to the simultaneous arising of thought and sense of seperation-you're right! So interesting to see how quick and subtle it is, like thought thinks it can 'put one over' on Presence-Ha!