Monday, 11 July 2011 14:36 Written by Nirmala
Someone used the contact form on here to ask the following:
What if thoughts dont come from us but to us, the brain being like a advanced radio, tuning in to a field of potential thought? What if thoughts are reading us as much as we are reading them? What if thoughts are aware? Would knowing this change our thinking and our attitude towards thoughts? Would it change our thoughts attitude towards us?
Here is my response:
My sense is that thoughts and also intuitions and insights come from many different sources, and the mind is like a radio that picks them all up. Many of the thoughts our mind picks up are simply triggered from our memory and so often they are of limited helpfulness in understanding this new moment. Some people are very sensitive and their "radio" even picks up other people's thoughts which may or may not even be relevant to their experience.
And then there are thoughts, or really insights and knowings, that come to us from deeper dimensions of our being. These can sometimes be profoundly helpful and liberating in the moment that they appear.
So how do we tune the "radio" of our mind to a useful and liberating station? It seems the mind just picks up all of the stations and plays every thought that arises. So perhaps the best we can do is to clearly discriminate between old conditioned thoughts that come to us from memory, and the deeper knowings that also appear in every person's awareness. By sorting out whether a particular thought or insight is very true or not very true, the various bits and pieces of information and intuition that appear in our minds are put into perspective. The important thing is to know how true all of our experiences are including thoughts and intuitions.
I would invite you to check out the free download of part two of my book, Living from the Heart, available here. It offers a simple direct way to sort out how true various thoughts, feelings, inspirations and insights are. Simply put, if something is true, it opens your heart and quiets the mind. If it is not so true, then it has the opposite effect of closing your heart and increasing the thoughts in your mind. Let me know if you find it helpful.
As for thoughts themselves being aware, I would say that everything is alive and aware and is affected by everything else. However, just as some things are more true than others, some forms of life have more awareness. Obviously a human has more awareness than a bug, and the bug has more awareness than a grain of sand. My sense is that thoughts are like incredibly small bugs with a very short life span. They hatch, mate and die in a flash. See if you can find the thought you were just having, or do you need to think a new thought? So even if a thought has awareness, it does not exist long enough as a separate form to evolve much or be affected by much.
I hold all ideas lightly, and yet the biggest truth is that there is just one awareness here. All of the forms and identities that appear from thoughts to bugs to human beings to galaxies are temporary expressions of this one awareness that is dreaming (thinking?) them all into existence. What a beautiful dream it is!
Friday, 17 June 2011 15:03 Written by Nirmala
Someone emailed and shared the following:
It often happens that I casually meet good-looking women during day-to-day activities. As soon as this happens something registers in my mind and my equilibrium and tranquility is gone. I believe my thoughts and give attention to them, trying in every way to go and explore the situation. Of course I finally have to give in and to renounce the situation.
But the problems start there. For hours and days to come thoughts about that situation come back over and over again and even if the real situation is long gone. It seems I am unable/I don't want to turn my attention beyond them to the present moment, to my looking presence.
And I responded as follows:
Sorry to take so long to get back to you. Your experience of being caught up in thought is a very common one. The mind is structured to focus in this way and so it appears you are just "cursed" with a good mind :)
The antidote is not to change or fix your thoughts or the mind, but instead to experience them even more fully. How do you know what you are thinking? What is thought really? What is the benefit or reward you experience from these thoughts? What happens if you just let your thoughts be the way they are? What else is present right now besides thoughts? If you experience your thoughts more fully, then it becomes easier to also experience more fully everything else that is present.
It is great that you have enough distance from your thoughts that they do not control your behavior. That allows you to not act on the thoughts if they are not really true for you. And by the way, there is nothing wrong with acting on a thought or an attraction to a woman if it is true for you to do so within the overall context of your life and of the particular situation. But when it is not true to act on a thought, then there is an even bigger opportunity to explore thought and the nature of your mind.
One way to discover more about the nature of your thoughts is to drop down into the heart or belly and experience your thoughts from there. This can naturally give you more distance from your thoughts, and make it even easier to simply observe their nature, as well as to experience more of the rest of reality. There is nothing wrong with thoughts, they are just a very small and limited aspect of reality. When we experience thoughts from the head, the thoughts are magnified and made to appear much bigger and more important than they really are. When we experience the same thoughts from our heart, they appear "actual size" and it becomes easier to have perspective on how important and meaningful they are.
In the case where a thought has this obsessive quality, then there are probably also charged emotions or deeper layers of your conditioning that are also being triggered. And of course in the case of seeing a person that you are attracted to, this can trigger your natural sexual desire. You can explore any such emotions or desires in the same way as the thoughts themselves. How do you know you are attracted? What is it like to just feel your desire without trying to get rid of it or to satisfy it? What else is present besides the attraction or pull of the desire?
Desire can be a wonderful doorway into presence if you follow it back to its source, instead of following it out to the object of your desire. Desire flows from the essential joy and love within our hearts. By following a desire back to its source, you can experience more and more of this natural happiness and the sweetness of love that is present in your heart. And what a relief to discover that you do not need to satisfy a desire to get to the satisfaction and joy within your Being.
I hope this helps.
Saturday, 21 May 2011 18:02 Written by Nirmala
I just added a new audio recording of a short talk I gave at a recent satsang here in Sedona. The talk points to the space that does not come and go and serves as an introduction to spending some time meditating on the simple space that is here in front of you right now. You can listen on the audio page or by clicking on the play button below:
NEW: What Doesn't Come and Go: An Introduction to Meditating on Space (24 Minutes)
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