Maybe this has happened to you. You sit down in the morning to meditate, tuning inward, and trading the news on your phone for the news of your inner self, your silent self. And as the flower of aware presence blossoms within and without, and the mind becomes spacious and still, there is a concurrent small voice saying, ‘wait a minute, you can’t do that – you have things to do, places to go’.
It is a fascinating aspect of the art of aware presence that the mind will do anything in its power to maintain its imagined providence in consciousness. There is a lot to be learned from observing the mechanism of thought, and its reluctance to give ground to simple presence.
One invaluable realization is that thought, in and of itself, is not a problem until it is identified with. In the light of awareness, it can be seen that thought is essentially made of air. That is, thought is empty until we identify with it and personalize it.
That’s where the problems begin because thought is a wanting machine. It never stops wanting, and it drags us along with it, body and soul. Why? Is it because thought, which is image-based, is an incomplete picture of reality? But something in us yearns for completion, right? Are we not all familiar, to some degree or another, with an ever-present, subtle (or not-so-subtle) feeling of lack? Even if we get what we think we want, isn’t there always, to some degree, wanting more? Some of us, of course, are never satisfied. We are addicted to one thing or another- relationship, drugs, sex, even addicted to thinking,- in an endless quest for satisfaction and a reinforcement of the image of a personal self.
The truth is, there’s only one thing that really, truly, deeply satisfies; that is the recognition of who and what we are beyond thought. It is so ultimately simple. There is literally nothing to it. And because there is nothing to it, thought wants nothing to do with it. But, little by little, or maybe all at once, as we begin to wake up, thought begins to lose its grip on our sense of identity; the beauty and freedom of our natural state of no-self becomes more and more available and informs our life, our relationships, and actions with a naturally occurring intelligence and compassion. It is a supreme irony to discover, in a lifetime of wanting, that the end of wanting is the gateway to a love for all and everything.
