Chapter 2
Beyond the Thinking Mind
The human condition: Lost in thought
Most people spend their entire life imprisoned within the confines of their own thoughts. They
never go beyond a narrow, mind-made, personalized sense of self that is conditioned by the past.
In you, as in each human being, there is a dimension of consciousness far deeper than thought. It
is the very essence of who you are. We may call it presence, awareness, the unconditioned
consciousness. In the ancient teachings, it is the Christ within, or your Buddha nature.
Finding that dimension frees you and the world from the suffering you inflict on yourself and
others when the mind-made 'little me' is all you know and tuns your life. Love, joy, creative
expansion, and lasting inner peace cannot come into your life except through that unconditioned
dimension of consciousness.
If you can recognize, even occasionally, the thoughts that go through your mind as just thoughts,
if you can witness your own mental-emotional reactive patterns as they happen, then that dimension
is already emerging in you as the awareness in which thoughts and emotional happen the timeless
inner space in which the content of your life unfolds.
The stream of thinking has enormous momentum that can easily drag you along with it. Every
thought pretends that it matters so much. It wants to draw your attention in completely.
Here is a new spiritual practice for you: don't take your thoughts too seriously.
How easy it is for people to become trapped in their conceptual prisons.
The human mind, in its desire to know, understand, and control, mistakes its opinions and
viewpoints for the truth. It says: this is how it is. You have to be larger than thought to
realize that however you interpret your life or someone else's life or behavior, however you
judge any situation, it is no more than a viewpoint, one of many possible pespectives. It is
no more than a bundle of thoughts. But reality is one unified whole, in which all things are
interwoven, where nothing exists in and by itself. Thinking fragment reality - it cuts it up
into conceptual bits and pieces.
The thinking mind is a useful and powerful tool, but it also very limiting when it takes over
your life completely, when you don't realize that it is only small aspect of the consciousness
that you are.
Wisdom is not a product of thought. The deep knowing that is wisdom arises through the simple
act of giving someone or something your full attention.
Attention is primordial intelligence, consciousness itself. It dissolves the barriers created by
conceptual thought, and with this comes the recognition that nothing exists in and by itself. It
joins the perceiver and the perceived in a unifying field of awareness. It is the healer of
separation.
Whenever you are immersed in compulsion thinking, you are avoiding what is. You don't want to
be where you are. Here,Now.
Dorgmas - religious, political, scientific - arise out erroneous belief that thought can encapsulate
reality or the truth. Dogmas are collective conceptual prisons. And the strange thing is that people
love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of 'I know'.
Nothing has inflicted more suffering on humanity than its dogmas. It is true that every dogma
crumbles sooner or later, because reality will eventually disclose its falseness; however, unless
the basic delusion of it is seen for what it is, it will be replaced by others.
What is this basic delusion? Identification with thought.
Spiritual awaking is awakening from the dream of thought.
The realm of consciousness is much vaster than thought can grasp. When you no longer belive
everything you think, you step out of thought and see clearly that the thinker is not who you
are.
The mind exists in a state of 'not enough' and so is greedy for more. When you are identified with
mind, you get bored and restless very easily. Boredom means the mind is hungry for more stimulus,
more food for thought, and its hunger is not being satisfied.
When you feel bored,you can satisfy the mind's hunger by picking up a magazine, making a phone call,
switching on the TV, suifing the WEB, going shopping, or- and this is not uncommon transferring the
mental sense of lack and its need for more to the body and satify it briefly by ingesting more food.
or you can stay bored and restless and observe what it feels like to be bored and restless. As you
bring awareness to the feeling, there is suddenly some space and stillness around it, as it were.
A little at first, but as the sense of inner space grows, the feeling of boredom will begin to
dimish in intensity and significance. So even boredom can teach you who you are and who you are bot.
You discover that a 'bored person' is not who you are. Boredom is simply a conditioned energy
movement within you. Neither are you an angry, sad, or fearful person. Boredo, anger, sadness,
or fear are not 'yours', not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go.
Nothing that comes and goes is you.
'Iam bored.' who knows this?
'I am angry,sad, afraid.' who knows this?
You are the knowing, not the condition that is known.
Prejudice of any knd implies that you are identified with the thinking mind. It means you don't
see the other human being anymore, but only your own concept of that human being. To reduce
the aliveness of another human being to a concept is already a form of violence.
Thinking that is not rooted in awareness becomes self-serving and dysfunctional. Cleverness
devoid of wisdom is extremely dangerous and destructive. That is the current state of most of
humanity. The amplification of thought as science and technology, although intrinsically neither
good nor bad, has also become destructive because so often the thinking out of which it comes has
no roots in awareness.
The next step in human evolution is to transcend thought. This is now our urgent task. It doesn't
mean not to think anymore, but simply not to be completely identified with thought, possessed
by thought.
Feel the energy of your inner body. Immediately mental noise slows down or ceases. Feel it in
your hands, your feet, your abdomen, your chest. Feel the life that you are, the life that animates
the body.
The body then becomes a doorway, so to speak, into a deeper sense of aliveness underneath the
fluctuating emotions and underneath your thinking.
There is an aliveness in you that you can feel with your entire Being, not just in the head. Every
cell is alive in that presence in which you don't need to think. Yet, in that state, if thought is
required for some practical purpose, it is there. The mind can still operate, and it operates
beautifully when the greater intelligence that you are use it and expresses itself through it.
You may have a overlooked that brief periods in which you are conscious without thought are already
occuring naturally and spontaneously in your life. you may be engaged in some manual activity, or
walking across the room, or waiting at the airline counter, and be so completely present that the
usual mental static of thought subsides and is replaced by an aware presence. or you may find
yourself looking at the sky or listening to someone without any inner mental comentary. your
perceptions become crystal clear, unclouded by thought.
To the mind, all this is not significant, because it has more important thing to think about. it is
also not memorable, and that's why you may have overlooked that it is already happening.
The truth is that it is the most significant thing that can happen to you. it is the beginning of a
shift from thinking to aware presence.
Become at ease with the state of not knowing. this takes you beyond mind because the mind is always
trying to conclude and interpret. it is afraid of not knowing. so, when you can be at ease with not
knowing, you have already gone beyond the mind. a deeper knowing that is non-conceptual then arises
out of the state.
Artistic creation, sports, dance, teaching, couseling- mastery in any field of endeavor implies
that the thinking mind is either no longer involved at all or at least is taking second place.
Apower and intelligence greater than you and yet one with you in essence takes over. There is
no decision- making process anymore; spontaneous right action happens, and you are not doing
it. Mastery of life is the opposite of control. you become aligned with the greater consciousness.
It acts, speaks, does the works.
A moment of danger can bring about a temporary cessation of the stream of thinking and thus give you
a taste of what it means to be present, alert, aware.
The truth is far more all-encompassing than the mind could ever comprehand. No thought can
encapsulatethe truth. At best, it can point to it. for example, it can say:"all things are
intrinsically one."That is a pointer, not an explanation.
Understanding these words means feeling deep within you the truth to which they point.
End.