Not Fighting Thought
No luchar contra el pensamiento
A student describes noticing the shift from being lost in thought to simply seeing thought as thought, and asks whether this knowing is itself part of the illusion.
Not Fighting Thought
A student describes noticing the shift from being lost in thought to simply seeing thought as thought, and asks whether this knowing is itself part of the illusion.
I would like to refer to my experience during the meditation just now. I was enjoying the meditation from the start, and then I was lost in thought. I noticed it through a sense that I suddenly wasn't hearing what you were saying. There was a feeling of awakening, a coming to realize that I had been lost in thought. I'm paying more and more attention to this sudden awakening from being lost in thought.
After that, I was in a stage of being more aware of what you were saying and what the mind was saying. There was a kind of learned experience: not to resist being lost in thought, and not to resist what the mind was trying to do in pulling my attention from your talk. So what I'm trying to make out of this is: is this knowing of what's happening the illusion? Is this knowing that notices me coming out of being lost in thought the person, or is it something else?
One question: you said you had a moment where you felt or decided not to resist going into thought, right?
Yes.
And was that more like a sense of just indulging in thought, or was it a sense of not fighting?
A sense of not fighting and being okay with what thought was doing. There was a feeling that thought could pull me in, and then I lost my attention on what you were saying.
The shift from fighting thought to allowing it
That's what I thought you were referring to: not fighting thought. I think that's a good thing, because usually when we start this work, we end up fighting a lot of our thinking with a sense of needing to get out of thought or stop thought.
When what you describe happens, there is a subtle but deeper disidentification, where you can be in thought, allowing thought, but with a subtle sense of this knowing: the knowing that you are now in thought.
That's a significant step, because you stop the fight with thought. We can only fight thinking with more thinking.
When you're able to allow thought to do what it does, even if it's distracting you and you can no longer process the words of what I'm saying, you've shifted into a deeper sense of seeing the mechanics, the bigger picture of what's happening.
That's a really valuable shift. You don't need to fight thought. You can let thought do what it does. Metaphorically, you take a seat further back, and you see: "Thought is doing this." You see the mechanics and dynamics, the habits of what you used to engage with, and you can start to see it for what it is: more thought, thought, thought. Even if it distracts you, at least you're now no longer fighting it with thought energy.
So don't worry too much about how thought can be distracting. If you were losing the words of what I was saying, that's less important than you noticing that it's thought.
When thought becomes "reality" again
What you need to watch is how it might suddenly happen that it's no longer recognized as thought. It becomes the reality. You go back into the thinking and it becomes the reality of what's happening.
Yes, this experience of being lost in thought and then suddenly there are a few seconds of awakeness. There's more and more of a sense of what this feels like. I didn't even realize I was lost in thought, and suddenly I'm totally out of that state, by itself. That is what I've been tasting more and more. The more it happens by itself, rather than through a sense of a doer doing it, the more it feels like ease.
Yes. Before, you are in illusion: you are in thought, believing thought is real. Then you can be in thought, knowing it is thought. In a sense, you're bringing wakefulness to the state of being lost in thought. The knowing of being lost in thought is a step in wakefulness.
So that knowing is not thought?
It's a step in which, as you pointed out, it's happening on its own. It's happening on its own because you've seen through illusions, and so it would then very naturally and spontaneously happen that you just can't buy them. You can't be pulled in, because you've seen through them.
But there's still an in-between. Some thoughts will come that will be more convincing, and then you might go back into the illusion. But this disidentification is already happening.
Yes. And there is also a knowing that this seeing, and the whole process, is not being done by someone.
Knowing a thought as a thought
Yes, it's just seeing, seeing reality for what it is, which is to know a thought as a thought. We rarely think a sound is an image or an image is a sound, but we often think thoughts are reality.
For example, we can think about tomorrow and believe that is something more than thought. If you think about tomorrow, imagine tomorrow, all you are experiencing is thought. You don't ever experience tomorrow.
No, totally. And what I experienced was that when I was listening to you, I also had the sensation of sitting on the chair, and the visual field. It was all at the same time. There was no gap between all these senses.
Exactly.
The openness is more inclusive of the sensing. Different senses: hearing, waiting, all at the same time. The noticing of things is wider. It's not so focused just on your words, for example. There's noticing of others as well.
Exactly.
So I'm working with this openness, and I'm purposely trying to warm myself into noticing it happening by itself, rather than forcefully trying to notice more and more. I can feel when there's a personal intention behind it: it doesn't feel right.
The connection between sensation and the pull into thought
Yes. The thing you can look at is when you feel compelled and find yourself not just lost in thought, but completely believing the reality of thought. And then when that switches and you can disidentify, try to notice what sensations were happening, because there's a connection between sensations and our temptation to be lost in thought. As you see through this, you will start to see what the mind is, in a sense, helping you with.
Yes, there's gripping. There's a feeling of gripping, something gripping the attention.
It feels to you like it's pulling or gripping, but notice what the gripping is helping with. There are likely going to be some sensations that are uncomfortable, and the gripping of thought helps distract from those sensations.
You mean the gripping is the sensation?
When you say gripping, I think you're referring to this kind of contracting into thought.
Yes, the pull into thought.
Yes. That pull: look into what's driving it. Don't see it as something pointless. It has a function. All you need to do is look. Just see that the pulling into thought has the function of distracting from sensation.
Oh, you mean there's some bodily sensation that is really pulling me?
It could be body sensation, it could be emotion, it could be a feeling. Something. But it will be more in the body space, in the area of the body. You can notice, for example, what's happening with the breath: if the breath is being kept shallow, if there's a tightness. If you notice tightness in the body alongside the grasping into thought, that's the connection.
What I'm suggesting is this: once you start noticing that contraction into thought, open the seeing to include what's happening in the body at the level of sensation, emotion, feeling. You will most likely, every single time, recognize that there is some form of discomfort, some form of contraction, and the gripping into thought is just a mechanism for detaching from that.
Yes, totally.
And as you are then able to simply include the sensations and the experience of the body in your openness, the contracting into thought will lose its function. It will become unnecessary.
Yes. Thank you, that helps.
Opening to mystery
May I say a little more, since my connection seems to be better? I guess with opening to that mystery, being with that mystery, that energy, that's where maybe I was connecting to the image of the flower, because it seems like a process of becoming more open to that in the body.
The thing is, you can be fully open to that now. The body then catches up, because there is nothing other than mystery. There is only the illusion of something knowable.
Okay. Thank you.