An inquiry on thoughts is always challenging. We are not used to watch them. I, myself, still have difficulties in doing exercises and practices related to mind and thoughts.
When I begin to observe the mind, I find out a chaotic inner world full of thoughts, concepts, images and emotions. There are an endless cycle of interpretations, speculations and inner discussions. The thoughts follow one after another, keeping me bounded to the power of the feelings and emotions that they evoke.
I can see that there is a drive pulling me out of the task of writing this essay. I can easily find a motive to stop doing it; drink water, look at something in the internet, etc., and even remember that I have another important thing to do. Difficulties are not pleasurable and they are avoided, and this is a habit.
It seems that what is habitual reinforces itself, in the same way that water flowing through deep grooves on earth. How can I do to not be pulled by the habitual chain of thoughts? I saw that if I bring space and its allowing quality, little by little, I can “see†the oppressive quality connected by habitual thoughts, something like a heavy cargo train, and let it go
By gently bringing awareness, intention and interest to look and let go what is heavy and fixed, I can divert myself from the habitual tendencies of the mind of being trapped in the feelings and emotions and let knowledge comes in.
When I am more open and relaxed, allowing more space in my experience, I can see that what was difficult became easy, what was lost is found, what was without a solution can be accommodated and accepted. The train becomes transparent.
Investigating the range of our past experience and the domain of our present possibilities, we are led to new beginnings. … We do not need to insist on answers; instead, we can allow knowledge to disclose itself in the very process of analysis. LOK 282
Eliana,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about the heaviness of thoughts and how we don’t have to accept it as inevitable.
Sometimes I find that the only remedy is to get up and do something. That’s what I’m doing now, after feeling discouraged for a few days. Then I can be grateful that there is a world waiting for me to engage. And part of that world is to have had the good fortune to have encountered knowledge left by wiser people . . .
Michael
I resonated with this Eliana.
I often feel thought-strings become heavy like trains, moving along the same tracks, coming out of dark tunnels from this direction and that… and often returning again carrying new freight along the same old tracks… but relaxed attention to that freight yard of traffic and content does open up allowing a lighter perspective.