Thoughts Are Like Wild Horses

The following was inspired by my wife K.

Meditation...or mind-watching, is like going into a pen of wild horses...at first the horses rebel and resist wildly against your presence amongst them. There will be fear and panic in the air for an unknown stranger is in the midst. There will be a great commotion, lots of noises, wild movements, hoofs running to and fro, kicking up dust making it hard to see what is going on. There will be a few dominate horse that may charge at you to test you for fear, to try to dominate you, but have no fear...hold your ground and they will not harm you. There will those who run to the furtherest reaches of the pen to avoid you as if to hide. All will be very disturbed by your Presence. But if you will hold your ground, if you will not panic, if you stay very still, your Presence will extend a Peace out into the pen, and slowly but surely, a calm will come over everything in your purview. If you remain in this stillness long enough all the wild horses would become quiet and still too, even against their will. Peace and stillness will enter the pen, and Calm will rule over all that was previously wild and unruly. The key is in the daring to remain still long enough for your Presence to do its Good Work.

The Life-Blood of The Ego

The ego does not like peace of any kind for too long...it needs conflict and controversy in order to thrive and grow.

The ego keeps a reservoir of grudges...memories of past wrongs and mistakes, or perceived current wrong in order to drawn from and initiate a feeding pattern. The awakening of the ego feeding pattern begins with emotional resistance to what-is.

The ego has a way of throwing a monkey wrench in the works when it needs to feed, but especially when things are going too smoothly.

This monkey wrench...the sabotaging of things when they are going smoothly, can be as when an indivivual turns on himself in anger and/or violence, or when it turns against another in anger and/or violence.

The ego can not for long tolerate peace and tranquility and must soon generate discord, or otherwise latch on to someone else's wrong, rightly or wrongly, in order to disrupt the peace, and to set the stage for obtaining the food that sustains it...resentment and judgement.

The ego can be so disturbed by peace, and so hungry for food, that it sometimes resorts to violence and destruction, even against those closest to it, in order to obtain its needed food. The others negative reaction to the provocation being its goal...its literal life blood.

The ego can only feed and thrive when it receives negative emotional feedback in return for its "attack". This is the treasure the ego prizes most of all.

The ego does not give up too easily, especially when its host is unconscious or powerless to do anything about it.

It continues to attack until it is convinced there is nothing more to gain, perhaps leaving a body on the cross in the process.

But in the end, whether nailed to a cross, or some lesser "punishment", if you remain emotionally unmoved, the other ego is denied its food, and the light grows there instead.

Denied its ego food, the soul, the real person, in the grip of the ego, has a chance to wake up and recover.

In the meantime, we wait without hate, and with the understanding that the other has been taken over for a time, but will return at some point.

Between Thought and Feeling

As he was being killed Jesus had the "thought" that the people beating and killing him should be forgiven as they did not know what they were doing. He was fully conscious of the reality of things...even under that kind of incredible duress. In our egotistical state, there is the thought, however unconscious, that the person doing us wrong should know better...and maybe they should, but a person in their right "mind" would never harm or do violence to another.

If the attack upon us, verbally or physically, is so sudden as to seemingly leave us with only the feeling...of fear or anger, there is always "thinking" of some kind underneath it. If the feeling is fear, there is the unconscious thought that suggests "I don't want to die" and it causes us to run or become paralyzed with fear...and if the feeling is anger there is the thought that suggests that "I must retaliate" and moves us to do harm in return.

However conscious or unconscious the thinking, there is always a mental suggestion...or a conditioned, hypnotic response based on a earlier suggestion, at the root of egotistical movement/reaction. It is the opposite of the realization of what is right in a given moment which is the root of enlightened movement/action.

Conditioned response can jump so fast from thought to feeling that it takes extreme objectivity to detect it...but there is, none the less, a thought process, however unconscious, however ancient, at work in all negative reactions.

The Dark Master Within

In the pursuit of becoming objective to ones self, I wonder how many others have run into the following dilemma? For sometime now, whenever the subject of becoming objective to ones thoughts, of "watching" ones thoughts, came up, my friend would say "but I don't see any thoughts". Because she would often hear certain "teachers" speak of "watching" ones thoughts, she was concerned that she was missing something important because she did not "see" any thoughts. She would, it seems, easily become aware of "feelings" that she experienced, but she just couldn't "see" any thoughts associated with those feelings. And so she often had difficulty moving beyond what she "felt" in a given moment. If the "feeling" was a negative feeling, this could become quite a distressful situation.

After puzzling over this for a time it occurred to me to wonder if she was getting hung up on the word "watch", so I said "OK, forget for a moment about the idea of "seeing" your thoughts...the question really is do you "hear" your thoughts? Do you hear the chatter in your mind, the internal voice that sounds like you are speaking to yourself, or of other people' like your mother or father, speaking to you inside your head? Are there things like music, commercials, old conversations being replayed in your mind? Do you "hear" things like these?".

She said "Actually I do hear those things". That was when I realized that she was indeed getting hung up on the word "watch", which really means more to "listen" to what is in the mind. The word "watch" had itself became a block to her progress because her ego suggested to her that she must actually "see" her thoughts. This only sowed confusion, which was "its" goal, "it" being the ego. It was an egoic trick of self-preservation. She was looking within yet was not "seeing" anything because she did not know that to become self-aware, to become objective to ones self, really means to become aware of the internal dialogue, the inncessant voice stream, noise and chatter in the mind that is the substance of the ego itself.

Thought can not become aware of thought, in the same way that the eyes can not see the back of the head that hold them. Luckily however, a shift in her understanding, of realizing by the Light of Reality a fuller extent of what mind watching/hearing/perceiving means, there has been a profound effect in her understanding and objectivity to self. Now that she can "hear" her thoughts, she is learning to identify how her ego speaks and moves within her mind, how it likes to judge, accuse and blame. How it likes to convince her that she is always right, and never wrong. And now that she is growing in understanding of how the ego acts and works within, now that she is becoming aware of its presence, of its "voice" twisting truth to its own advantage, it can no longer so easily remain the dark master that moves her unconsciously.

It is amazing how the ego can get hung up on such a small thing like a "word", and how such a little suggested "thought" can block ones progress on the road to enlightenment and salvation from ego. It is also amazing to see how liberating just a little Light, just a little shift in understanding can be.

Successfully Navigating Daily Life

Mastery of the fine art of communication between one human being and another is defined by impeccable timing. Knowing when to speak and when to withhold makes all the difference between an effective, appropriate word and the word unwisely spoken. Timing has a lot to do with being fully in the present moment and knowing the requirements of that moment. Being in the moment is key to perfect listening, and perfect listening makes possible perfect understanding and seeing clearly what is appropriate to do or say. The unwise word is based upon presupposition and preplanning where as the timely word, perhaps drawing upon past lessons learned, is always spontaneous and fresh, never planned nor rehearsed, but remains essentially a product of the current Reality. 

Preconceived ideas, well-thought out arguments, rehearsed points and the like are all indicative of ego, the inferior way. The wise know how to set these mental constructs aside and dare to be brave, that is, he does not reach for the security of forethought but knows that the blessed state of insecurity, meaning complete reliance upon the Moment for all that he needs, is the Superior Way. It is also the Way of Innocence in that when a man is as a child before the Present Moment, fully and completely dependent upon The Moment to take charge, he will see the Way through, say the right thing or remain silent, and know the Way to go. Unless a man becomes as a little child, he will forever be subjected to little ego-mind with all its short-sightedness, limited perspectives and inability to tap into the creative Power of the Now. Indeed, as is said, paradoxically, true security comes by embracing your insecurity. 

The Man In The Mirror

All of life should be seen objectively, and with dispassion. That is, little, if anything, should get under our skin and move us from the outside. We are meant to be in sole control of our emotional machinery. We should not be controlled by some stranger on the highway giving us the finger, or some grumpy cashier at the corner convenient store, nor even the naughtiness of our children. No, we should not allow anyone or anything on the outside of us to control our reactions. Otherwise we are simply not our own persons with personal happiness and peace beyond our control. To be moved from the outside is to be at the mercy of the world around us. 

This morning I was cutting it close to being on time for work. As I approached my exit off the highway I had to squeeze between two vehicles in order to make my turn. Although there was plenty of room between the two for some reason the red pickup truck behind me took offense as I moved into the lane in front of him. He laid on the horn and in my rear view mirror we made eye contact. He angrily raised his middle finger at me and sustained it for a long moment. I looked at him, his finger and at the same time scanned myself to see what I may have been feeling...but saw nothing...not a single reaction. I simply watch him as dispassionatley as if I was watching a boring TV show in my living room. After a moment of this "watching" he suddenly withdrew his finger, hit his brakes and put as much distance as possible between me and him. He acted as if he had seen a ghost. But what he "saw" was "no reaction", and it took him by complete surrpise, and more.

The funny thing about ego is that it can not function long without ego food...emotional reaction from another ego. But when you do not respond to provocation the ego doing the provoking is left with the uncomfortable sensation of nakedness...of being exposed, causing it to flee its reflection seen in the mirror of non-reaction. It is perhaps the first opportunity that a person gets to see themselves as they truly are. This seeing/experiencing of oneself...of one's negativity...of one's impatience, unforgiveness, upset and the like...makes change and transformation possible, as no problem can be overcome until one knows there is a problem. Emotional non-reaction to ego allows for the seeing of self in the Light of Reality. For this reason, patient, emotional non-reaction is called Love...the greatest transformational tool in the Universe.

Faith: Growing From Within

A woman wrote: "Faith that is seen is not faith."

Is this really true? A biblical verse seems to contradict this "As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead." James 2:26 If faith is evidenced by works (like growing in ability to be patient and kind toward others) then such things can indeed be observed within one's self. Indeed, they MUST be seen in order for faith to grow. 

The evidence of growing love and faith is seeing how we grow less and less bothered, less and less irritated by others. This can only happen when our negative, irritated, impatient thoughts begin to lose power over us by our growing objectivity to them. In this case, the seeing becomes freeing, and freedom from negative thinking is clear evidence that one is growing in the fruits of The Stillness within. For example, one day we see that we did not handle something properly and we sincerely regret that. We watched it happen, it pain us a bit and we let it go because we know we can do nothing about it. This letting go and letting God deal with the problem is the same as having faith in a Higher Power. Then one day comes along and a similar situation arises and, lo and behold, we discover that we have handled it better than the last time. Perhaps in a surprising or creative way. In any case there has been a clear change for the better, there has been growth, and it is plain that something new has been added unto us, but we do not know HOW we have changed. We only know that we HAVE been changed. We see that in giving the problem over to a Higher Power we were rewarded with new ability, a growth in grace and power that was clearly not there before. We see how doing nothing of ourselves allowed Creative Intelligence to do the work within us, through us. And seeing this leads to more faith born of Stillness, which is rewarded with more growth in grace and ability in a never ending progression of transformation.