| When
you get, beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are not your ego/mind,
you will be truly free.
This is the ultimate freedom, freedom from
your mind.
This is also the basis of enlightenment.
You think/assume you are you, that you are your
thoughts, you are your body, you are you. But you already know
there is more than one "voice" in your head. You may already have
noticed there is a committee in your head. You could also think
they are all different aspects of you but somehow they are all still
you, maybe..
You are probably so accustomed to the chatter in your
head that you may not realize how much time and attention you devote
to it. You may not realize that this chatter/thoughts in your
head have the highest priority for your attention. In other words you will listen to or pay attention
to the thoughts/voice in your head at the expense of everything else.
When having a conversation with another you will probably give you own
thoughts priority over the words/ideas of others, or the person you
are with. When you boss is explaining a new job to you, you may
miss some of the explanation because you are "in your head, listening
to your thoughts" or preoccupied with your own thoughts.
You have done this so often that it seems
natural, normal to you or a "so what".
When I start working with clients, the first session
can be a lot about this process. It is not that what I am
saying is more important, it is that they are unaware of what they are
doing, they are unaware they have a choice which one they want to listen
to. This is the first level of loss of freedom.
Being a habitual slave to your thoughts/chatter in your head go mind.
If you were more aware of this freedom to choose
on a moment to moment basis, you would have more freedom in your
life. Freedom to direct and focus your attention without being
>>interrupted<< by your ego mind which you now assume you
have to listen to. The news of course is you don’t have to listen to it,
that this is a deep habit, actually an addiction.
BACKWARDS
You may believe that the ability to choose what to focus your mind on,
like a single object, a book or a rose, symphony, or sunset is boring.
But this is backwards, because it is the chatter or random thoughts that
are boring and mundane and the ability to focus on a single object
-totally- is like being one with it, it is very satisfying, exciting and
the beginning of the experience of beauty.
Finding the real you
Finding the real you can be about while you are on the bus or at the
cafe, just become aware of the stream of thoughts going through you
mind. But instead of becoming involved with the thoughts, just watch
them, detach from them and let them go. Each time you let go of a
thought you will most likely immediately get/have another one. This
actually describes life, physically reality proceeding outside and your
mental thought reality racing along inside, consequently life feels
hurried, pressured, etc.
Grand thought watching
This is one of the hardest and simplest process there is. Its
profoundness is a measure of its difficulty, and it is very difficult.
GRAND THOUGHT WATCHING: Sitting
in your room alone with no TV, music, food, window [unless it is looking
into a quiet still garden], no distractions of any kind, for at least
two hours.
You can have a pencil and paper and jot down one word descriptions of what is going through your mind.
During the process the first thing you will notice is the quantity of
thoughts, then you may begin to notice the randomness of thoughts and
how seductive they are and how difficult it is not to engage with them.
You will notice there is like a thought thinker generator or machine
in your head.
My favorite analogy is to see the stream of thoughts
as a ski lift, each passing chair is a separate thought and
you can watch it go by or get in and go for a ride. Which is engaging,
agreeing or disagreeing with a thought.
Some thoughts may be seem ridiculous, foolish, some important, some scary, some painful.
If the thought you are taking a ride on
is:
- Fun, your point of view/mood of the world at that time will be fun too;
- If it is depressing, it is most likely that your point of view or outlook on the world will change to depressing.
- Negative, your point of view/mood will most likely be negative.
Positive, you point of view will be positive.
The purpose of this exercise is for you to experience
beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are not your mind. That you have
a mind and it has thoughts and you are the one listening to your mind.
Grand thought watching will eventually convince you that
what you focus your attention on creates your mood or point of view.
In other words your random thought thinker machine is controlling your
life. You of course are allowing this and you are probably not aware
of the power of thoughts and their side effects. Grand thought watching
also demonstrates another principle. That is "base line reality"
Base line reality is if you are sitting in your room alone
and you are not thinking any thoughts, not needing or wanting anything
different, you must be continent, OK, neutral. If you were to practice grand thought watching for an
hour a day, it will give you the tools to change your life.
For example once you become convinced
that your mind chatter is random, not god or your higher self, and that
you do not need its random observations to protect you, you will experience
a level of freedom that is so delicious, so wonderful, feels so good,
and is very empowering-it is hard to believe it is real.
However, it is probably your first taste of true reality.
A reality not distorted by your ego mind or mental overlays. A
reality that is not blocked or contrived, a reality that is not charged,
a reality that simply exists. Your thoughts in the form of judgments are just random
thoughts too, but they add a charge to people, things in physical reality.
This distorts your experience of reality because you are projecting
the charge onto reality and then pretending it is real. The freedom in this is beyond words.
It in fact may not make any sense to your mind, but it
can be experienced by you, which is proof beyond a shadow of a doubt
- to you.
Grand thought watching is like the least expensive and
most powerful seminar you could attend.
After a week of grand thought watching for at least an
hour a day, you will be amazed at the shift in your awareness.
After a month of grand thought watching you will be lighter,
happier, and healthier than you can imagine. Because the root
of most problems is being seduced into negative thinking by the random
ego thoughts.
By constantly letting go of the thoughts they don’t take
you for a ride, don’t distort your reality, don’t create problems.
This is the non-violent way to change your life.
So without force your life changes, not without
effort because it requires great diligence and determination to keep
from engaging with the thoughts and to remember to disengage when you
notice you are engaged.
The emergency procedure is to stop thinking and be very, very aware and awake.
After a month of grand thought watching
Perhaps you are on a date and you thought thinker machine
has a thought about getting fired last week. Before grand thought
watching you would have grabbed that thought and gone for a ride. Perhaps,
spoiling your attitude, point of view, smile and your date. But after
a month of G.T.W. you simply let the thought go by, you don’t get in/on
and go for a ride. Or it tells you what it thinks your date is thinking,
now you can see this as a random thought, see that it is not your mind
being clairvoyant-mind reading. At this moment you can disengage from
your thoughts and be totally with your date, prospect, mate, etc.
This is the ultimate freedom. This ability
is the only true power, or real security. The ability to disengage from
your thoughts is magic, powerful, enlivening and enlightening.
When you get, beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are not your ego-mind, you will be truly free.
This is the basic freedom, freedom from your mind.
This is also the basis of enlightenment.
Sitting in stillness
Eventually the thoughts will cease, perhaps for only short moment, then
longer ones and it is in this space between the thoughts that you will
experience peace.
The peace that passes all understanding because understanding is an ego mind function .
Being willing to sit in stillness will reap
rewards for you heretofore unimagined. It will relax your muscles. It
will disappear wrinkles. It can heal your body. Brilliant ideas and
solutions will appear in your quiet mind, you will just know them when
you resume your daily routine.
You will also feel a sense of connection, a
connection that your mind will not understand and will most likely
question. This connections to your higher-self, your god-self, your
sub-conscious that is the infinite intelligence that created and
maintains your body. This ultimate power that is hiding deep inside you
can be harnessed to create whatever you need and want.
G.T.W. is also akin to mediation.
It is a form of meditation which I loosely define as "stopping thinking".
In my opinion, it is not formal meditation and it is not far from it.
excerpted from Thought Management/Mindmaster (C) 1987, 1999 R. Todd--All rights reserved |