I sometimes like to read accounts of near-death experiences. One I read earlier this month has stuck in my mind. In it the narrator talks about the changes in her quality of mind as she began her return to the body—or her re-entrance into the dream of being in a body. Whatever it may be.
She talks about being in a feeling of complete and joyful universal understanding; of being able to simultaneously hold within her experience many different selves and yet know without a doubt that they were all one, all in complete communication with each other without words, and yet were all simultaneously one with All-That-Is or God, without any aspects of time or space or separation. As she began to return to the body with which she no longer identified, she could feel the loss of mind bit by bit until she re-entered what we call our usual human mind—one that is beset with patterns of endless circular thoughts.
I like to think of it as entering a swarm of bees.
Within this swarm-of-bees mind it's important to understand that all thought is a bee. You can't get the bees to settle down by thinking. There is absolutely nothing that can be done with thought. Every thought you think adds a bee to the swarm and excites its motion. Once you get the hang of this, what remains is to systematically investigate what is stinging you.
As you notice more and more closely what is and what is not thought, you come to realize that all thought, without exception, contains within it a subtle painful reference back to a body-self that you supposedly are. All thought wants you to do something to change what is happening right now—either by rejecting it, fixing it, or clinging to it.
The swarm-of-bees mind, is the human mind, is the ego. There is no possible solution within it. Involvement with the swarm, the sensation of the swarm, the continual striving and stinging of the swarm are all the experience of believing that we are these bodies, we are these temporary limited, endangered selves. There is no endangered self outside of the swarm.
So—what to do about this situation. This is where it gets tricky. Any plan of attack adds more bees. Even a plan to stop thinking adds a bee. It's an ever-escalating situation.
The solution is difficult to describe in words. Thought requires words. So the solution is more of a shift in focus than anything else, and it's a shift that is so simple and easy it defies reason. The solution is to just relax into this, here, right now. This here right now, without exception. This plain old now, right here. Take a deep breath. Thought goes on, it's okay, but you'll notice if you do this that thought cannot exist in the present moment. It doesn't happen here.
This is why the present moment feels so empty at first—there's no swarm.
As you release your grievances against the present moment—whatever and whoever is happening in your life right now—a subtle sense of appreciation seems to grow. It was always there, always there, but the buzzing of the bees masked it. As appreciation grows, the buzzing seems to become more distant, the environment less claustrophobic. The swarm is still there but at a greater distance and its buzzing is much less energetic and convincing. You realize that it is your attention to and identification with thought that makes it seem real. You feed the swarm by identifying with it.
The world seems to have more spaciousness now, more air. Life feels more open, safer. But all of these things are effects, not goals. They cannot be approached with thought. There is nothing you can do to make them happen because they never stopped happening in the first place.
