For the past several months I’ve been rereading the Skillful Means series alongside our TSK studies. Â I appreciate how these two different approaches reinforce a shared concern with living with awareness and purpose. Â This morning, on Page 42 of Mastering Successful Work, I read the following:
“When we have not trained our awareness, we cannot separate ourselves from these endlessly repeating patterns of thought. Â Without being aware of our awareness, we have no access to a reality beyond the contents of what we are thinking. Â We cannot recognize or communicate anything other than what the shifting stream of thought allows.” Â The passage then goes on to refer to how in this condition we cannot access or act upon a deeper inner knowledge.
Earlier this morning, reading the few pages we have been assigned in the past two weeks, I came up with the notion that–in addition to our thoughts and the substantial world to which they seem to point–there is a third factor: the person to whom these pages are being addressed. Â It is this person who sometimes doubts his own sanity and then counts on their being a real world in which to touch down. Â When we are most isolated, confused, moody, lost, we get up and go for a walk, wash the dishes, telling ourselves that we are thereby connecting with something more real than our own minds. Â In this context, I find the passage from MSW helpful. Â What is real is neither our thoughts nor the substantial world to which they claim to point. Â Awareness lies beyond and within the mind that is thinking and pointing, and it doesn’t vanish when we dare to question notions such as substance, nor the obsolete habits that we mindlessly repeat. Â –Michael
