The External Is Already Imagined
Lo Externo Ya Está Imaginado
A student shares a growing sense of trust and detachment from future outcomes, and the teacher offers a subtle reframe: what we call "external" exists only in imagination.
The External Is Already Imagined
A student shares a growing sense of trust and detachment from future outcomes, and the teacher offers a subtle reframe: what we call "external" exists only in imagination.
I have something to share on this topic, because I love the theme of trust. I feel like it's something I've really been intending to cultivate, and it's genuinely emerging within my experience. Over the last month, I've been focusing on being in the presence and taking the advice you gave me about feeling myself as the space. Just from doing that, a natural detachment is arising in me, particularly around future outcomes and some of the things I thought I wanted and needed. I just don't care in the same way I used to anymore.
I think it's because I've been focusing on this understanding that nothing external has what you need. It's always just a detour away from yourself. It feels really beautiful. There has always been this space in my heart, since I was a child, that has longed to trust. A big part of that has been letting go of attachments, or finding them naturally letting go. At least from where I'm speaking now, it feels really good.
That's beautiful. I would suggest one small thing. It's just a slight reframe. When you said "what's external," look to see if you're referring to something that exists only in thought. Where is the external you're referring to?
The external would be a certain outcome.
The outcome is imagined
And that outcome is the imagination of something.
Are you saying that the imagination is happening in this moment? I guess so. What I'm noticing is that I no longer want to engage with the future the way I used to, thinking that when some future moment arrives, then I will have fulfillment. That doesn't make sense, because it's always temporary.
I agree, and everything you're saying is beautiful. I'm just suggesting that you look more subtly at what you mean by "external," and see if it's actually just what's imagined, what's in thought.
Thought as a creative tool
When you see it that way, it becomes simply the creative tool of thought and imagination: sometimes useful, sometimes not. The so-called external doesn't actually exist as such. I know that's a way of speaking, and I could use that language myself because it can be useful for communicating something. But in this context, and the way you said it, I wanted to refine the point. What you're calling "external" is actually in your internal imagination.
Yes. Because I'm associating thought with an outcome. I'm even creating an outcome through that.
When thought is mistaken for reality
Exactly. It's the imagination of the future, the imagination of something going a certain way, which extends into the imagination of people over there, things over there. Then all the busyness of thinking around that. So time, future, past, places, and spaces all exist in imagination. That is not to say imagination should be thrown out. It's not all problematic. The problem arises when thought is no longer seen as thought, no longer seen as imagination, and is instead taken to be reality.
Yes.