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Dharma Gleaningsbycynthia rich
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September 12, 2015—September 20, 2015
September 12, 2015
With awakening it becomes clearer and clearer to us which thoughts are actually usable and we stop dredging up all the unusable ones.
Thoughts are tools. Why would anybody choose to live in a toolbox?
Usually we don’t know we have a choice. We aren’t even told that there is a lid that can be flung open or cracked open little by little until we have a clearing and can see the spacious sky.
How to create more cracks and then clearings in our thinking minds? Mainly of course by time spent on our cushion, but also by conscious reflection. By knowing that we already have such cracks—perhaps even clearings that we were unaware of—and by beginning to observe them, name them and honor them. By recognizing that we are thinking almost full time, that it is really tiresome, and that it is only by expanding our cracks that we can quit an exhausting and pointless job. By naming this compulsive thinking as what it is: conditioning, so that we can practice with it as we do with our other conditioning, and see that we have been conditioned to be convinced that we are wasting time when we are not thinking, while it is our incessant thinking that is wasting our lives.
September 18, 2015
Our feelings lead us to create thoughts to match our feelings, which solidifies our feelings.
Our thoughts lead us to create feelings to match our thoughts, which solidifies our thoughts.
September 19, 2015
We walk around the world encased in a burka of thought.
September 20, 2015
When we complain that we or others have become addicted 24/7 to our technological devices, what we are really seeing is the outward sign of what was already happening—we were addicted 24/7 to our thinking minds. The pressure is the same: Maybe the next message will be one I can’t afford to miss!
Meditation loosens the hold that useless thinking has on our spirits. Even when our monkey minds won’t allow us to find and develop the clearings between our thoughts, the practice can change our lives simply by helping us to question the value of all that thinking.