Million Year Old Thoughts

A thought pops in your head. Just like that. Why? Well, thoughts pop in your head all the time without your effort, approval or permission. Some of us get so caught up in thought that we believe everything we think. Yes, that's it. We fall prey to the compulsory nature of thought. Sometimes a thought will please us and make us reminisce of an event of the past. This is the memory. The memory is always tied to the past. The memory is a center and storage unit for all these thoughts that pop into the your head space without notice.

The thoughts that hold so much weight or the thoughts that we "think" hold so much weight, we tend to identify with. We think....well let's look at this. If we say we think, who is doing the thinking. If the thinking is entirely constructed of thoughts tied to memory then it is of the past. It has its limits. Some of these thoughts can mutate, mute or even merge into the background only to emerge from the depths in the most inopportune times. They are pesky visitors that can disrupt what we might call "inner peace".

When a good thought comes long, we tend to smile and like to hold on it. That instant feeling of pleasure is a welcoming thing especially when we may be in stressful moments. The thought fades and we move on, but part of us longs for trying to recreate that experience the thought provoked. That constant seeking. That itching to escape from "what is".

The problem is identifying with the thoughts. Getting caught up in the vortex of synapse firings. We cling to thoughts that excite us and personalize them. They become "ours"(we think//cling). That possessive action can lead to division and conflict. When you start to cling to the thought and identify then to start to inflate that ego of yours. The thoughts are mostly the reactions to stimuli and the past. So all the thoughts that flow through are from some part of your memory. The center of the past. The storage unit of images and sensations created from the past. Do you see?

Thought is always old and from the realm of the known. Always of the past.

So who is to say that these thoughts are ours? Thought happens. Do we really think that we are doing the thinking? The "thinker" requires a division or categorization from the "thinking". This division ultimately breeds conflict and confusion. We are the thinking in a sense. Not separate. The observer is the same of the observed. It is when we step back and try to separate ourselves or identify with thoughts then things get tricky and conflicting.

Once again, thinking happens. To think that we think is a thought in itself.

It's about the reaction. The reaction to external and internal stimuli. We seldom realize how reactionary we can be on a moment to moment basis. These thoughts construct the self which is product of the past. We then think we are in some type of control of our own world. We tell ourselves to think happy thoughts or simply take "control" of our own thoughts. There is that word. Control. We like to think that we are in control. It reinforces the self and then strengthens the identification with the compulsory nature of thought. What happens when we don't try to gravitate towards a choice between two opposites? What happens when we just watch the thoughts come and go?

We focus some much on discipline and willpower. We use these constructs to escape the what is and move towards the "what should be". This zaps us from the totality of the present. This takes us into the realm of the conceptual. Into the realm of thought. This benign sense of effort that we think we have goes back to how control arises from the center of the past. The center of memory and thought. Acting from the known and not observing or understanding of why something is happening in the first place. It  is the endless cycle of the cause and effect of cause and effect.

Is there room for the mind to see things anew? Without categorization? Without labeling? Without trying to escape what is through some type of "method"? A method implies something already known. A method implies that "someone" thought up what a method "should" be. When see what is and not gravitate towards what we think should be, we start to open up and understand. We open up ourselves to the unknown. The undiscovered. The area that is tied in the routine and cyclical nature of thoughts.

These thoughts simply aren't ours. Think how far thought has come. Think of where you came from. Think on how thought can form illusive identities. Think of your conditioning. Think of why thought comes and goes in the first place. Look at thought without trying to escape it or putting more thoughts in your head. There it is. That space between. Breathe.

DG