Some anthropologists are telling us - and I believe they are right -
when thinking first began to happen in humans, humans were very surprised and they thought that some god was
talking to them in their head. A part of that was the development of language and so language
started to happen in people’s heads. And over the millennia the voice became so all-pervasive
that it took over people’s sense of identity. Whereas for long time after the arising of thinking
humans still had a sense of rootedness in being, the natural sense of rootedness in the depths of their being. And gradually over millennia they
got drawn more and more into the thinking-heads-mode. And then their whole sense of identity was
no longer rooted in the depths of their being but in the voice in the head.
There is a lot of talk happening these days - not just talk actually - on/about addiction.
Many people are addicted to all kinds of things and substances. But one of the greatest addiction
and you probably never read about it in the newspapers - because the people who are addicted
to it don’t know it - is the addiction to thinking. It’s actually addictive.
Can't stop thinking is like can’t stop drinking, can’t stop smoking, can’t stop eating,
can’t stop thinking. Thinking is the greater addiction than any of these.
... And it's a pseudo sense of self. So there is a great reluctance on the part of most people
to let go of thinking. The identification with thinking, believing
in your thoughts, having no space outside of the movements of thought - lack of space
inside! - that is the unconscious condition, spiritually completely unconscious. And then
you are burdened with a heavy ego. You are the ego. Which is not an entity apart from
thought. It is thoughts that you have identified with. And, the first moment of freedom comes
when you realize that certain thoughts have been going through your head for years, perhaps.
And that they are only thoughts. And that you are not the thought, you are the awareness!
The awareness of thought is not a thought. It’s simply the ability to look at a thought
like a light shining on a thought and I call that pure or unconditioned consciousness whereas
thought is consciousness that has become a form. An analogy we could use is to say that
consciousness is the vast ocean and thinking is the waves and ripples on the surface of
the ocean. And every wave and ripple has a very short lived life, it’s very fleeting
like every thought, but it pretends to have an independent existence. And then what happens is:
this continuous identification with the stream of thinking leads to a very serious
disfunction in one’s sense of identity because then your sense of who you are, your sense
of I-ness, your sense of self, is derived from whatever your mind is telling you about
yourself. Ideas, opinions, viewpoints about yourself - in other words - your sense of
who you are is derived from thought. There is a deeper sense of self possible to humans
that is not ‘thought’, where you truly live as a sense of self, but not as a story
in your head. So you no longer derive your identity from something you are telling yourself in your head.
There is such a thing as the collective mind
and so: many thoughts are not your thoughts. They arise in the collective mind and they
are energy fields or energetic entities. When we deal with so-called our ‘own’ minds,
we deal with far more than with our own minds … and whatever awareness arises in you is
not just your benefit, it has an impact on the totality of the collective mind.
When awareness arises in you, then it arises in the collective mind of humanity, too.
So it’s not just a personal thing. In the same that any thinking that takes possession of
your mind is not really personal. There is no personal thought as such. It pretends to
be personal … it’s human collective mind! There is no ego apart from thoughts. The thoughts
…. Identification with thoughts is ego. But the thoughts that go through your mind,
of course, are linked to the collective mind of the culture you live in, humanity, etc.
They are not your thoughts as such, but you pick them up from the collective … most of them.
And so, you identify with thinking and the identification with thinking becomes ego,
which means that you simply believe in every thought that arises and you derive your sense
of who you are from what your mind is telling you who you are!
We tend to continuously identify with our thoughts. So, if I identify with my thoughts,
then who am I? If I am not the thoughts that arise in my mind, that tell me this or that
about other people and myself and so on. Who or what is it that identifies with thoughts?
Now, no thought could be there without consciousness. Consciousness is the light in which thought
forms appear. So, for any thought to be there, there must be the light of consciousness in
which the thought appears, otherwise there could be no thought. So who you are in essence
is the light of consciousness behind the thought. And that’s already a great realization that
you are able - you actually have a choice - of directing attention. You don’t have
to go with your attention all the time where the habitual thought patterns want you to go.
The habitual thought patterns want your attention every time. Every thought says:
‘I matter, give me the attention, follow me, go this way,…’ and another negative
thought, and another one, and another one, …
Your priority is no longer to follow the thought where it wants to take you. Because a thought
has a magnetic pull. It wants more of your consciousness, it wants to grow … because
it’s a little entity. It wants to grow so it wants your attention and in subtle ways
in tries to get your attention. But it can use all kinds of things to get your attention
and if you are not careful, if you don’t know the mechanism … it’s not so much
an intellectual understanding, but it’s a simple realization that this is what the
mind does: it tries to pull you in. It’s fine, that’s what it does. Once you know
that, you can allow thought to arise without following it where it wants you to go,
which is to another bigger thought and to another one …
When you are totally and continuously immersed in this stream of thinking you begin to inhabit
a conceptual reality which separates you from the actual aliveness that is happening all around you.
Stepping out of complete identification with
thinking really remains the key so that your reality is no longer only a conceptual reality.
And you can meet another human being in that sense of clear presence without imposing immediately
judgements on him or her.