Thinking and Beyond

     “Cognitive fusion (the opposite of defusion) is essentially a process by which people become dominated in their experience by the content of their thoughts, lose contact with experience outside of the content of their thoughts, and are restrained to feel and do only what their thoughts say. This is sometimes referred to as being lost or entangled in thoughts or stuck in one’s own mind.
     Cognitive defusion then is the loosening of this entanglement. It is the ability to make contact with direct sensory experiences, or like the ability to have a thought without being dominated by the literal meaning of the thought.”
        Lance M. McCracken, Estelle Barker, Joseph Chilcot. “Decentering, rumination, cognitive defusion, and psychological flexibility in people with chronic pain.” J Behav Med 2014; 37:1215–1225.

     “Try and try as we may, we can’t contain the infinity and eternity of who we actually are in some neat little package of our thinking mind, no matter how sophisticated our thinking may be.”
     Reginald A. Ray. "The Awakening Body. Somatic Meditation for Discovering Our Deepest Life." Shambhala, 2016.

     “True intelligence is to rise above thinking as a source of all intelligence.” Eckhart Tolle
 
     “The transformative power of a conscious, mindful thought is that it reveals its own transiency. For example, the thought ‘Who is thinking?’ is an invitation to make contact with the present moment. In doing so, the thinking process is recognized for what it is. When we’re not so enchanted by our thoughts, we notice something else, something quite simple. We notice that all thoughts manifest and dissolve back into silent listening. This is a great relief. WE don’t have to become shaped by our thinking. We can be liberated from its bondage. In seeing thought as ‘just thought,’ the sky of the heart is revealed, with no footprints. ‘You won’t find the sage out there.’ When there is wisdom, the endless searching for happiness ‘somewhere else’ vanishes. Where is there to go? Beautiful thoughts and ugly thoughts, all arise & cease in awareness, and yet awareness remains unmoved.”
       Kittisaro & Thanissara. "Listening to the Heart. A Contemplative Journey to Engaged Buddhism." North Atlantic Books, 2014.

     “Rather than being your thoughts & emotions, be the awareness behind them.” Eckhart Tolle

     “When you run after your thoughts, you are like a dog chasing a stick - every time a stick is thrown, you run after it. But if instead you look at where your thoughts are coming from, you will see that each thought arises and dissolves within the space of that awareness, without giving rise to other thoughts. Be like a lion, who rather than chasing after the stick, turns to face the thrower. One only throws a stick at a lion once.” Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

      Psychological analysis of our thoughts is not a part of the practice of meditation. The sole purpose of meditation is to see more clearly what is, at each moment, now in the present - without thinking discursively about it. "Analysis deals with concepts. Meditation aims at stilling the mind & watching what is, dispassionately. No thoughts — no ‘me,' no ‘me’ — no neurosis." 
       Bhikkhu Mangalol. “The Practice of Recollection.” Lion’s Roar, July 15, 2016
https://www.lionsroar.com/the-practice-of-recollection/?utm_content=buffer2617b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
 
     “Be aware of your breathing. Notice how this takes attention away from your thinking and creates space.” Eckhart Tolle

     “Presence – there are other words for it such as ‘awareness’ – is a state of consciousness that transcends thinking.” Eckhart Tolle

     Presence is the atmosphere for attending to our own & another's pain and vulnerability, while engaging our own and their inner resiliency and wholeness.
      Palmer PJ, Zajonc A. “The heart of higher education: A call to renewal. Transforming the academy through collegial conversation.” Jossey-Bass, 2010.

      Presence is the manifestation of our innate wisdom, which has the capacity to “hold in meditative equipoise” all of our own & others’ noise / friction / psychological baggage. The terms noise & friction suggest that in general, our psychological baggage is no longer helpful, and now distorts accurate perception and interferes with appropriate response, effectiveness, efficiency, quality of life & most importantly, our ability to dwell in our deepest authenticity.

Just This, Right Here, Right Now

 

Liberating our Thoughts

Rupert Spira : Thoughts are what I call ‘objects’. Anything that has an objective quality is what I call an object. By 'object' I don’t just mean physical objects (eg glass of water). A feeling of loneliness has an objective quality to it. It’s not the taste of tea. It’s the feeling of loneliness. It has distinguishing features. 
     Those distinguishing features are objective. We know them. I feel lonely. The feeling of loneliness has a particular quality that is observable or feelable or knowable. The taste of tea has other particular qualities that are knowable or perceivable. So yes, thoughts are, in that sense, objects.

Questioner : So my relationship to thought can be much the same as my relationship to the world?

Rupert Spira : Yes.

Questioner : In that I can’t really control what happens in the world and I can’t control what thoughts come in, I think that there’s a tendency to identify my quality of being by the thoughts that arise.

Rupert Spira : No. Identify the quality of being just by the quality of being. 
     The screen doesn’t derive its qualities from the image. Your relationship to thoughts and perceptions is the same as the relationship between the screen and an image. In other words, the screen is intimately one with the image. It’s closer than close (clasps hands, fingers interlocking) to the image, but at the same time, it is completely independent of it. 
     That is you. You – this experience of being aware – are totally intimate with all your experience. Every experience you have - that is every so called inside feeling (points to his own chest), but also so called outside perception (points away from himself) - are this close (clasps hands) to you, totally intimate, not even intimate because there are not two things there to begin with. There isn’t a screen and an image. It’s just you, just knowing. 
     So in that sense, you are intimate with all experience, equally intimate. Not more intimate with this (touching to his own body), than you are with this (touching glass of water) – equally intimate with all experience. 
     And at the same time, you, the experiencer, simply being aware, are absolutely independent of all experience. So it’s this mixture of total intimacy (clasps hands) and total freedom (opens hands).

     As we understand ourselves, so we see the world. So if we think (hands on his chest) ‘I am a finite, temporary self that shares the limits of the body’, if we think ‘I am a finite, temporary object’, then our experience will appear (one hand on his chest, other hand pointing outwards) in conformity with that belief. In other words, your experience will be a multiplicity and diversity of finite objects. You will feel that you are separate from everyone and everything, related to them through an act of knowing, feeling or perceiving. I know such and such, I love you, I see the tree. 
     These are the three channels – knowing, feeling and perceiving – through which the inside self, the apparent subject, is connected to the outside object, other, or world. That’s if you believe that you are a temporary, finite subject, made of a mind, living in a body. 
     But if you know that you are simply this unqualified, experience of being aware, then you find yourself equally pervading all experience. You cannot say ‘I am closer to my thoughts than I am to the sound of that car.’ Thoughts are made out of thinking. The sound of the car is made out of hearing. Both appear equally in me. And when I try to touch the stuff that they are made of, all I find is this empty knowing.

Questionner : I know that, but I have thoughts that are in direct contradiction to that experience.

Rupert Spira : So you have to recondition your mind as well as your body. That is part of what we do here. It’s one thing to understand that – and you obviously understand it. But just understanding it is not enough, because your mind and your body have been laboring for decades, serving for decades, the demands and the fears and the neuroses of an illusory, finite self. So just the recognition of your true nature is not enough to put an end to those habits. They come back with a vengeance, very often stronger than they were before, because the separate self feels, quite rightly, that its existence is threatened by our new understanding. It is threatened. Its days are numbered. And it’s going to do everything it can to prevent itself from disappearing. So this tidal wave of thoughts, and more importantly, feelings are going to come back and assail you and try to persuade you of the validity of the separate self. 
     And so much of what we do here is not just about the recognition of our true nature, it is about the realignment of our thoughts, feelings, activities, relationships and perceptions with that understanding. 
     So when these thoughts keep coming back, you have to be firm with them. When a thought appears on behalf of the separate self, the thought’s going to take you off down a journey of activity or relationship or whatever it is. Before the thought tells you to act, question the self on whose behalf that thought is arising. Who are you representing? Ask the thought ‘On whose behalf have you come to me?’ 
     And if it is a thought that is based on being a temporary, finite self, then instead of following the thought, question the validity of the self on whose behalf that thought is arising. And be relentless about that. Every thought that arises on behalf of the finite self, question it rather than doing what the thought wants you to do. And eventually, you will erode this old habit of the mind rising on behalf of an illusory self. And more and more the mind will begin to rise on behalf of the qualities of the true and only self of pure awareness. 
     You won’t stop having thoughts, but your thoughts will be an expression of what you truly are, not what you previously imagined yourself to be. So it is not a getting rid of thoughts, it’s a liberation of our thoughts, indeed our feelings and perceptions from the tyranny of a nonexistent finite self.

Questionner : So do you ever have any thoughts that you have to say ‘no’ to?

Rupert Spira : Yes. Occasionally an old thought arises in me based on old habit of believing myself to be a finite self, and I do exactly as I’ve just suggested to you. 
     To begin with, when a thought rises on behalf of a finite self, it takes us maybe 20 minutes to question the ‘I’ around whom that thought revolves. And we may have to take some time to slowly walk ourselves back to find the true ‘I’ of simply aware being. That may take some time. The first time it may take 20 minutes, and then the second time 15 minutes, and then the third time 10 minutes, and as we become more practiced at this we find shortcuts – we don’t have to go every single step – plod, plod, plod – because we’ve done it before, we go quicker, we find shortcuts. 
     And in the end, we find that when that thought arises on behalf of the finite self, it doesn’t really require time anymore to walk ourselves back. It’s just like an instant recognition, and it falls.

Questionner : There’s often great physical resistance along with the thought.

Rupert Spira : Yes. We’ll spend a lot of time this week exploring just that because the separate self, the apparently temporary finite consciousness that is the separate self, is not just concealed in our thoughts as beliefs. More importantly, it is concealed in our body as feelings. And that in fact is the deeper root of the separate self. And in fact, long after the separate self has been flushed out of our beliefs, it remains present, hiding in our feelings. And in this approach we spend a lot of time, as you know, exploring this deeper root of the sense of separation. First if all exposing the sense of me in the body, gradually encouraging it to come up out of its hiding places, and then gradually allowing it to dissolve.”

Above transcribed from this video:

Finding Freedom from Self-talk's Tyranny

     "How do we avoid becoming lost in our own thoughts, projections, beliefs, and opinions? How do we begin to find our way out of this whole matrix of suffering?
     To begin with, we have to make a simple, yet very powerful observation: All thoughts - good thoughts, bad thoughts, lovely thoughts, evil thoughts - occur within something. All thoughts arise and disappear into a vast space. If you watch your mind, you'll see that a thought simply occurs on its own - it arises without any intention on your part. In response to this, we're taught to grab and identify with them. But if we can, just for a moment, relinquish this anxious tendency to grab our thoughts, we begin to notice something very profound: that thoughts arise and play out, spontaneously and on their own, within a vast space; the noisy mind actually occurs within a very, very deep sense of quiet."

       Adyashanti. "Falling into Grace. Insights on the End of Suffering." Sounds True, Boulder, CO, 2011. p9

     Thoughts ... Clouds in the Sky: http://www.johnlovas.com/2013/06/clouds-thoughts-emotions-are.html

Blue Rocks, Nova Scotia, Canada

What is Mindfulness Practice?

     by Tim Burnett, January 2013

     http://www.mindfulnessnorthwest.com/articles/3048245
 

     "Mindfulness is paying attention, on purpose, to the present moment, non-judgmentally." Jon Kabat-Zinn (1990)

     The practice of mindfulness encourages us to pay attention to the process of our experience – not just the content. We learn to study the feeling and flow of experience and be less caught on our opinions and desires around how we feel experience should be. In other words, mindfulness practices support us in taking a small but important step back – a “breathing space.” And this supports the arising of curiosity and a fresh perspective on our life. 

     When something happens, anything at all, the mind and our senses have a fast and complex interaction. The sum of all of these momentary experiences is our experience of living. You could even say that our mind’s ongoing narrative summary of everything that is happening, has happened, and is imagined to be coming soon, is our experience of self. Too often all we notice is the final result of this interaction and we miss the complex unfolding that just happened. 

     All of this doesn’t happen in mental isolation. Our engagement with experience is embodied. When events happen they happen through the body. And the body is hard-wired for vigilance; ready to respond to threats. When the threat protection mechanisms of the body are triggered by a rapid cascade of events, our systems (nervous, hormonal, digestive) rev us up quickly and ready us to fight, run, or freeze. Our higher level cognitive systems have been shown to go into a restricted mode during these times, lest we ruin our chances for survival by standing there trying to figure things out when we should be running for the hills! 

     Mindfulness practice is a way of exploring the processes that often run our lives. It is a way of bringing these semi-automatic processes into the open and working with them in a way that usually leads to:
          • less time spent in “automatic pilot”

          • more awareness of the details within experiences

          • less energy spent worrying about the future or ruminating about the past

          • greater resilience and an increased ability to moderate our reactivity

          • reduced risk of a long list of stress-related diseases

          • an increased sense of presence – really being there for ourselves and others

          • an increase in a “spacious” type of joy which is able to hold life’s ups and downs more fully and kindly, including experiences we do not like

     Fundamentally, mindfulness practice works by bringing attention back to the present moment. 

     We can think of attention as a theatrical spotlight. In the back of the darkened theater the spotlight is on, casting its circle of light somewhere on the stage. The part of the stage that’s lit up is what is accessible to our conscious awareness. The spotlight of attention is very compelling and when it’s focused in on something that is often all we are aware of. 

     The spotlight of attention might be focused on a sensory event, something we are seeing or hearing for example, but all too often the spotlight of attention is focused on a mental “event.” Our attention is caught by a memory, a worry, or an anxious vision of the future. Have you had the experience of the mind being so caught by this ruminative kind of thinking that you hardly notice your surroundings? Have you pulled up in the car at your destination not remembering how exactly you got there? This capacity of mind to have the spotlight of attention completely trapped – enraptured even – by the thinking is sometimes called being caught in “automatic pilot.” 

     We don’t have to be run by the thoughts and memories that happen to pop into our minds distracting us from our work and activities. We can move the spotlight of attention. We can choose in the place to which we aim. We can also choose how tightly to focus the spotlight. We can zoom in on a detail in our activity/work, or opening it up wide to take in a sunset or the experience of being relaxed and happy with a loved-one undefined not worrying about anything in particular. 

     And yet all too often we lose track of this possibility. Our attention veers off – out of control. A funny look from a colleague, a car veering in front of us on the road, a memory, a worry, - many different events can trigger us to forget all about our powerful ability to influence attention and we are lost to the present moment again.

     Mindfulness practice has two key elements: formal and informal. Formal mindfulness practice is a central element of our time together in mindfulness class. In formal practice we take up particular instructions for working with attention and train ourselves to attend to something steadily for a structured period of time. We set everything else aside and just practice. 

     In formal practice we also train ourselves in a positive way of relating to our habits of wandering attention. When our attention drifts away we work to bring it back gently and kindly, with a spirit of steadiness and persistence. With less blame and recrimination. And in the simplified circumstances we create during formal practice it’s more obvious when attention has drifted away. 

     You could say that the root of mindfulness is developing the ability to remember. To remember that attention is in operation. To remember that there’s more happening on stage than whatever the spotlight is currently illuminating. To remember that we are sitting behind the spotlight of our attention and able to direct it to some extent. To remember that in the darkness at the edges of the stage are many possibilities, some known, some not. We can touch into the many dimensions to our lives beyond our usual story line. 

     As we develop the ability to return attention to present-moment phenomena we are often surprised to see that whatever it is that happening is not the same as what we were worried about. Often actual experience is richer, more interesting, and less problematic than we imagined. What a relief this can be! 

     We can even notice a lack of reactivity, less stress, fewer times when we make assumptions that tie ourselves in knots. And when we do get tangled, with practice we can identify our “tangled-ness” and take it a little less personally and a little less seriously. We develop more patience with our conditioning and habit patterns.

     Where formal mindfulness practice is a kind of an intensive “lab of attention,” informal practices help us to bring this work out into the world. Into the middle of our day. Into those moments that can be so loaded for us. There are many ways to remember to practice mindfulness in daily life. Pausing to take a breath before entering a new room where something requires your full attention, for example. We will discuss others in class. And we will also discuss the ways in which this process is non-linear, organic, and often surprising. 

     Becoming more aware of the embodied nature of experience is profoundly helpful. We learn to listen more to our body. We feel the tightness in our shoulders; the pinch in our gut. Rather than soldiering on, we pause. We breathe into the experience. We listen to the “wisdom” of the body and appreciate it as a kind of early warning system. Often well before the mind catches on to what is happening, our body is lets us know that something is amiss. And responding sooner than later to this helps us right the ship well before it capsizes. 

     Mindfulness is a creative re-engagement with our actual experience. We put aside our sense of knowing exactly who were are and what is happening. We set all of that history and personality down, or at least hold is a little more lightly. We take a fresh look. “I wonder what is happening here?” We see with fresh eyes as we re-inhabit our life. And this freshness, this openness, brings us great gifts, even in the middle of our most challenging moments. 

     One way of thinking of this life is that it’s all happening in this moment. In this very moment. And if we are lost in some other moment we are very literally missing our life.

     “Make the moment vital and worth living… do not let it slip away unnoticed and unused.” Martha Graham

     What is Mindfulness Practice?

     by Tim Burnett, January 2013

     http://www.mindfulnessnorthwest.com/articles/3048245

Alastair Cochrane ARPS   www.dpreview.com

 

Mindfulness - a Deeper, Broader Definition

     "Mindfulness has a wealth of meanings. Mindfulness is living in the present moment, but that is really not enough. Black labs & golden retrievers - amazingly playful, friendly dogs running around - they are living in the present moment, but they don't look like they're being too mindful, literally being led around by the nose. They're very much in the present, but it's not mindfulness. So I call that quality of mind 'black lab consciousness' to distinguish it.
     So then we might say that mindfulness is the observing power of the mind - so we're really observing what's happening, as it's happening. With a black lab there isn't much observation - no stepping back & knowing what's happening. The lab seems pretty identified with what's going on. There doesn't seem to be a lot of self-reflection. The observing power of the mind has to do with stepping back & knowing that we're knowing, rather than simply knowing.
     But even that's not enough for mindfulness, because we can be observing something through a filter of various mental factors, for example the filter of desire or the filter of anger, and we're not aware of that. So we're observing what's happening, but we're not being mindful. So mindfulness is yet something else again. It's not just being in the present, it's not just observing in the present, it's observing in a particular way. It's being aware of what's arising, but without greed or attachment, without aversion or condemning, and without delusion or being identified with it.
     So that's a very particular kind of awareness. And right there it leads the understanding of mindfulness into an ethical dimension. Mindfulness is always a wholesome state of mind, because it's free of greed, and free of aversion. Mindfulness is very rich, it's not a superficial quality of mind.
     People come to retreats and have a daily practice so that mindfulness can operate throughout our daily lives. And it's a tremendous blessing - the more mindful we are, the less we suffer." Joseph Goldstein

     This & other "Buddha at the Gas Pump" interviews: http://batgap.com

Meditation is Powerful

     “As you go deeper into your practice, there will be times of great inner tension followed by release to the point of weeping. If you have not experienced this at least several times, you have not yet really practiced.”
        Kornfield J, Breiter P. A still forest pool. The insight meditation of Achaan Chah. Quest Books, Wheaton IL, 1985.

     Meditation practice does bring about de-repression of psychological material, where repressed, often emotionally-charged material, comes to the surface. This tends to happen gradually, so the meditator accommodates to his/her gradually increasing awareness & acceptance. However, it can occur suddenly, which can be traumatic.
       Willoughby Britton PhD studies the Adverse Effects in Meditation:
         http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-dark-knight-of-the-souls/372766/


     Our task is to discover a freedom that's independent of all circumstances & times.
       Kornfield J, Breiter P. A still forest pool. The insight meditation of Achaan Chah. Quest Books, Wheaton IL, 1985.
 

Curtis Steele   www.cheerfuleye.com

Suffering & the End of Suffering

     "Ego is the movement of the mind toward objects of perception in the form of grasping, and away from objects in the form of aversion. This fundamentally is all the ego is.
     This movement of grasping and aversion gives rise to a sense of a separate "me," and in turn the sense of "me" strengthens itself this way. It is this continuous loop of causation that tricks consciousness into a trance of identification. Identification with what? Identification with the continuous loop of suffering.
     After all, who is suffering? The "me" is suffering. And who is this me? It is nothing more than a sense of self caused by identification with grasping and aversion. You see, it's all a creation of the mind, an endless movie, a terrible dream.
     Don't try to change the dream, because trying to change it is just another movement in the dream. Look at the dream. Be aware of the dream. That awareness is It. Become more interested in the awareness of the dream than in the dream itself. What is that awareness? Who is that awareness? Don't go spouting out an answer, just be the answer. Be It."   Adyashanti

http://www.adyashanti.org/index.php?file=writings_inner&writingid=31

cgravel   www.dpreview.com

WHO is afraid?

     "Even if (whatever we fear) is going to attack me, all that it can attack is that which is not me. All that it can harm is the body, the feelings, the perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. That is the only stuff that can get damaged, and that's not me, that's not self. That which knows of these cannot be touched."     Ajahn Chah
       Amaro Bikkhu "Small boat, great mountain." 2003
       www.amaravati.org/downloads/pdf/SmallBoat.pdf

     Staying with (acceptance of) the physical sensations of fear, AND witnessing it all objectively (a process Western psychology calls cognitive defusion) is how we "process" or work our way through the fear. We grow out from the clutches of fear (anxiety, chronic pain, etc). All that we fear, worry about, or are otherwise imprisoned by, thus "loose their solidity." We are no longer one with, identified with, or fused to these phantoms of the mind. We may remember "the story", but it's no longer "my drama," for the emotional charge has dissipated. We are free. Our mind-heart is relaxed, free, open. We come home to the stillness and silence - to that which knows.

Cognitive defusion information:
http://contextualpsychology.org/cognitive_defusion_deliteralization