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:

Letting Go of the Adult Blankie

     Abraham Maslow's "law of the instrument" is about the common tendency to overly rely on the most familiar tool: If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as if it were a nail.
     Most of us, including mental-health professionals, don’t realize the extent to which we overuse & even identify (cognitive fusion) with linear discursive thinking & it’s constant echo, “self-talk”.
     As a result, we subconsciously erect roadblocks between our superficial self-concept & a much deeper reality. Such resistance comes in many forms: from tending to resist meditation practice, trivializing such practices, fearful distrust, all the way to aggressive antagonism towards anything (esp meditation) that may loosen our (ego's) fearful grip on what we (incorrectly) assume to be our one & only reliable cognitive tool by which to control life.
     ALL of us, including yours truly, at some level, resist releasing this tool since it’s firmly tied to the ego. Our linear discursive conditioned egoic level of consciousness believes that releasing exclusive reliance & identification with this superficial level of consciousness is death! But of course it isn't. If it were, we'd die each time we made love - "la petite mort" refers to a brief weakening or release of egoic sense of self. Optimal health involves learning to hold our sense of self ever so lightly, not clutching it in terror like a drowning victim clings to a small piece of wood.
     Hence the incredible patience, gentleness, skillfulness, & persistence needed for us to discover, & learn to trust, our deeper post-symbolic intelligence. See:
http://jglovas.wix.com/awarenessnow#!What-Lies-Beneath-our-Thick-Armour/c17jj/56cc59920cf24bcda4714415

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

MBSR has More Breadth & Depth than Assumed

     "The overall goal is to enable clients to relate in a non-identificatory and flexible way to experience ...  The ACT (Acceptance & Commitment Therapy) model holds that psychopathology is due to relating to thoughts as literal truths (cognitive fusion), as well as maladaptive attempts to escape from or control unwanted experience (experiential avoidance). The strategies in ACT include metaphors, experiential work, exposure in the service of valued goals, as well as traditional mindfulness exercises to promote non-judgmental and non-reactive awareness of internal experiences."

       Vollestad J, Nielsen MB, Nielsen GH. Mindfulness- and acceptance-based interventions for anxiety disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Br J Clin Psychol 2012; 51(3): 239-60.

      All of the above is included in Jon Kabat-Zinn's MBSR, particularly if the facilitator makes skillful use of the language of Western psychology. The components of MBSR form an organic whole, the purpose of which is identical to Buddhist practice ie awakening. The effectiveness of any of these practices is inversely proportional to how goal-oriented (to self-regulation***) the participant remains, regardless of what brought them to the practice. See also: http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/01/intention-shifts.html

Photo: chennai srobin   www.dpreview.com