Stop thinking

I had the kind of dreams that ruin a day this morning.  It leaves me no choice but to communicate something.  As always with me life is about love.  I love jumping right in.

The most important thing to do is get rid of opinion.  Once one does this one can live free.  It is best to trade in opinions for actual knowing. This means don’t have goals or plans. Those are opinions. This means don’t think you know what is going on.  It’s not possible. This means don’t think you know how it should be or how it is going to go. Those are opinions too.  This is not what thinking is for.

Thinking cannot ever represent reality.  Reality is too overwhelming.  You can’t think of, comprehend, or know in your thinking all that is going on at any given time.  Your thinking can’t even tell it’s spinning around and around on a rock that is going around something else, that is going around something else.  On and on it goes.  Pick anything you want, and you won’t know one percent of it in your thinking.  So every thought is useless in this regard. Can you not see it?  You really have no idea what is going on totally, yet your thinking will sure claim it does.  

The total mind though is another story.  It can, and does, keep track of it all.  Thinking is only a small part of the total mind that is you. Your mind has been recording everything since before you were born.  Your body is part of your unconscious mind after all.  It has been recording everything.  It knows everything.

The other day at work I was taking out some boxes to recycle.  On my way back inside I rounded the corner when another guy who worked there was coming along, we nearly collided, and I scared him.  As we were walking back he told me how he had went back there the other night and as he was going into the alley he had a vision of a big guy in the dark, and as he stepped through the darkness a big guy was in the alley.  I told him that his unconscious mind pushed the thoughts through to his thinking.  We are all physic in this way.  The mind knows where everyone is, even those we have not yet met in person.  He thought it was coincidence, but I know that his own mind was looking out for him. He is probably like everyone else and is quite afraid of the power of that realization.  

The thinking doesn't really know much at all.  This is a very painful statement for someone who solely identifies with their thinking, because it means they don’t know very much at all.  That is, they are not very aware at all.  No one wants to hear this or deal with it.  Generally it only happens when all of one’s self-created vision comes tumbling down and their life is in ruin. To be clear, the gap between a thinking mind and one that can step out of thinking is quite large.  It’s a huge gap with a great many things occurring in that gap.

So how does this relate to everyday life, it’s not obvious right?  It’s not like anyone from the outside can tell when someone has stopped thinking. It’s important to know it is a process and not some thing that happens all at once.  If you stopped thinking for a few seconds today, you are going to have to try again tomorrow.  You will have to live it again, and again.  

If one is not prepared when the thoughts stop, it will generally tear them apart. In reality the thoughts do not actually cease, they are just put in their proper place. As with anything else all things are difficult at first.  It makes knowing one’s self very important, because if one has dark thoughts/feelings going on, such things like, worthlessness, insecurity, guilt, anger, they will be manifested.  When thinking stops the magnification of those integrated things becomes quite drastic. One truly needs to have a greater degree of self knowing than not before attempting to silence the thinking part of the mind.

The universe gives us what we think/feel whether it be good or bad.  It’s actually physics.  When one is steeped in “negative” things it is best not to clear their mind else it will all come true for them.  Not many survive such things. The universe doesn't make distinctions regarding good and bad.  Those are human inventions.  

The best way to think of it is as a light wave, the same height it achieves, it must achieve the same low, else it is not a wave. This wave function is in everything. From your thoughts to the rocks you walk on.  

The greatest wave is love.  The deeper in love one falls, the deeper the sorrow that follows.  The deeper the sorrow, the greater the love that follows.  On and on it goes. Can you even imagine all the waves, affecting waves, affecting waves.  Every atom is emitting waves.  Every being, every star, on and on, forever.  You see, your thinking can’t wrap around all that detail, yet it is still happening every second of your life. Just stop thinking, and you will know.  This is why you don’t want your thinking making decisions for you.  It can’t know what’s up.

In Osho’s book on meditation he tells a story of a man who wanted to know how to do it.  Stop thinking, meditate.  He had tried everything.  Sought all the great masters and yet he couldn't stop thinking.  He was told of a great master who knew the way, but he lived in the Himalayas and was impossible to find.  He was told no one ever finds this old man, but he was determined.  

For over two years this man searched for the Master.  He was at the end of his life.  Starving, dying of thirst.  He collapsed in the doorway of an abandoned cabin; no old man inside.  He thought he had found him, but it was empty and deserted. All his hopes crashed home into reality. Laying on his back, sick with defeat, weary to die, he just stared at the clouds.  He had given up.  His mind went clear.

Just as it happened an old man walked up to him, leaned over his face blocking his vision of the clouds, and asked him if he still wanted to know how to meditate.  The man said no, he had figured it out. He now knew how to stop thinking.  The idea is to give up on your thinking.  To realize it can never be what you think it is.  

One more story, but told by Krishnamurti.  Three great scholars/thinkers were in a taxi on their way to a great convention where all the spiritual leaders of the world were gathering.  The topic of discussion was awareness.  The three men in the back were enthusiastically debating their opinions and ideas about awareness and how aware they were when suddenly the car bounced violently and all their heads smacked into the ceiling of the car. As they recovered from the shock of it they were imploring of the taxi driver what had happened?  He had ran over a goat. Haha what a joke. These aware men needed to ask what had happened.  

I tell this story to people a lot and most of the time they don’t get it.  Do you get it?  How aware could they possibly be?  They didn't even know where they were at.  They had no idea what was going on so sure were they that they were aware.  What a joke.

Do you see what this shows about thinking?  Thinking can never be aware.  Thinking can never have knowing; it can only be a reflection of it. At its best it is merely a mirror. If you are thinking you can’t possibly be aware. It’s just not what thinking is for.  Actual knowing comes with understanding your own intuition, which requires not thinking. One has to be aware of one’s Self for that. You see, the total mind is all knowing, so simply silence thinking and one is immediately aware.  Why?  Because the total mind already knows.  It is merely the thinking that is confused.

The issue is that stopping thinking takes tremendous effort if one has been doing nothing but thinking their whole life. Absolutely anything the brain does that much, for so long a time, would be terribly hard to stop.  Anything.  I tried for months and months and months, and I am relentless when I want something.  I have an ability to single mindedly chase something down like few others I've met can. I used long distance training, yoga, sitting by large bodies of water, arguing/debating for hours, read a bunch of books on it.  I did the thing.  I radically changed my life.  I did everything I could. It really does take a tremendous amount of energy to break the habit of perpetual thinking. I didn't go hiking in the mountains for two years looking for someone else though, I sought the answer within myself, but I found it in the same way; after exhausting all options.  

It has nothing to do with this culture either.  It’s a requirement to not listen to culture.  Your true Self cares not about this broken culture, in the same way this culture doesn't care about your soul. Culture is the same as opinion.  Culture is a collective opinion.  It doesn't have much to do with reality at all.  In this way culture doesn't want to be aware because that would be the end of the culture as we know it.  

I am still talking about love now.  If you do what this culture says you should do regarding love; that isn't love.  It’s like the person who admits public school is crazy, but then says they are educated because they went to public school.  Whack.  Being adjusted to a sick culture is not a measure of health.  Jiddu Krishnamurti knew what was up.  

Spiritual life is love.  The love of life.  If you ever stop thinking; you will know love. It won’t be that squishy feeling this culture says love is.  Love is much more than some passing physical feeling. This is an uncomfortable truth for those stuck in the culture: Stopping thinking requires one to be fearless.  That means not being afraid to be wrong. Fear is something the thinking is for, which means fear will keep the thinking engaged.  So you see, to be in love one must be fearless.  Else it is not really love.  So to live a spiritual life one must be fearless.  Like I said, in love with life.

How again does this apply to life?  Here is how I use it.

Some years ago I met someone.  The circumstance was all wrong.  We met in what was to me the worst possible situation.  I was all facade and bravado. My inner self is never available publicly.  I am too introverted for all of that. She was standing there and I was just doing what I do.  Being me.  I even warned her right off the get.  I knew the second I met her she wasn't on my level. First time we met I knew I would love her deeply, so I let her know right up front.  

You see I didn’t think, I had achieved a state of grace before I met her.  Because of the life I have lived there were all kinds of things I could have listed that disqualified her as someone I would date.  If I had applied all those judgments and opinions this culture says one should make, I would never have called her.

I didn't do any of that though.  I didn't list the reasons, her faults, and mine, why it would or wouldn't work.  I just looked at her, and I loved her. It was all I needed. My intuition said handle it, and I did. I made it happen. In my thinking I can find faults, and things wrong, with anyone.  Give me six months with the most beautiful, intelligent girl in the world, and I will pick her apart. That is not love though.

This person was a soulmate. I knew it from the get.  Had I been using my thinking to decide I would have passed her by.  I took a lot of flack from friends for making decisions I made. No one could figure out why I was with her.  That is how you know you are in love; when all the world is against you. It was someone I felt safe with, and my friends didn't know anything about that.  In my life that is the equivalent of winning the Powerball.  It’s greater than the lottery.  

That relationship came to be the best in so many ways that I had never had in life before I could not have imagined it.  How could I have known that in my thinking the first time we met?  How could my thinking even know that two months into it?  Thinking can’t know such things.  If I had listened to my thinking I would have lost some of the best times of my life.  They never would have happened.  

I went with my gut, my intuition, my whatever you want to call it. It never fails me. It is crucial to realize that being in a state of grace does not mean messed up things will never happen. They assuredly will because they are the greatest teachers.  Love requires great awareness, and a tough skin.

Love of one’s self means awareness of one’s Self.  This can be used to measure if one is being honest about love.  If one is not really aware of their Self, then they don’t really love their Self. These are the same things you see.  If you love your self you love your body.  It is you.  You are it.  They are not separable.  Being aware of intuition requires awareness of the body.  This has nothing do with thinking.  Try it right now.  Try to be aware of every single part of your body all at once.  Sight, hearing, touch. organs. tissues.  All of it.  You won’t be able to think.  Try to go out past your body, into the universe; be aware of it all at once: you won’t be able to think.

If you practice that as much as you do all those meaningless things in life you would be on another level in life.  Practice it.  As you attempt to be totally aware it will be certain thoughts that come to mind.  Why?  Why is it those thoughts that the mind lets through?  Why aren't you aware of what is allowing those thoughts through?  Can you see what I am getting at? Can you not see how important this is when meeting someone.  A great love of your life could be standing right in front of you, but because your opinion says someone who is not in good shape is not attractive you pass her up.  What a shame?  What a loss?  Maybe she needed you to get that done?  Maybe she needed you for a while to know how great life can be?  Maybe for you it something else different.  Maybe it is a long list of things.  Who doesn’t have a long list of criteria for a potential mate?

How could you ever know the change she will have on you?  The thinking can’t imagine such things. Stop thinking though, be aware of your Self, and the answer is always right there.  For me I saw someone I was meant to meet.  I threw out all judgments.  My intuition did not let me down.  I had some of the best times of my life.  

I did however cause myself great pain.  Even though I know it to be an illusion it is still quite painful.  I brought it on myself. I did of course have thoughts.  I made the mistake of thinking that person was someone I would be with much longer than I was.  I confused my love for her with my thoughts.  As if somehow my love for her made my thoughts magically true.  My thoughts polluted my sense of reality and pain ensued.  It caused us both great suffering actually because we were trying to make something imaginary real. I was meant to love her, no doubt, but I was not meant to live with her forever.  Those two things are about as far apart as thinking and not thinking.  I hope I expressed that correctly.

It was also painful for me because my thoughts say that one I love should love me back, and this is not the case at all.  It is rarely ever the case.  It’s just the thoughts generated by this culture that cause so much strife.  These pains were generated by thoughts, not by reality.  

For me at least, I have finally come to terms with the fact that my life is not about me.  I’ve tried to illustrate the process of not thinking.  It doesn’t happen all at once.  In my life I could stop thinking enough to see whom to love, but not enough to know how long that love would last.  My thinking created the suffering.  My thinking had me wishing for things that are not real. In reality there was no loss, only gain.  I gained so much, and lost nothing because my love was genuine.  It is only my thinking that sees a loss, and that is because thinking is the ego defined, selfishness defined.  

It was not about me.  I’m searching for god yo.  I’m breaking my heart till it opens.  I recommend you do the same.