Anáma-Rúpam- Where Life and Spirit Intersect as Self though Awareness, Self-Realization, and Enlightenment - Illuminations - On Thinking

“Listen not to my words for in them you will only find knowledge. Listen rather to your reaction to what is said. In that, you will find realization born from awareness.” Anáma-Rúpam. Ω

On Thinking

I know that when I intellectualize, I never actualize in expression that, which is experienced as awareness of being [Self]. I can now tell when I am merely using intellect to guide my efforts rather than being guiding my intellect guiding my efforts. I hold little import of my intellect without being.

We are taught to think; e.g., think before you act, think before you speak, etc. Certainly, thinking is a process of the mind whereby reason and rationale are possible. From thinking, one can imagine several scenarios and possible outcomes and consequences. Must we identify or analyze the types of thinking? Suffice it to conceptualize all thinking to processes of the mind. Insofar as the mind is an element of the body and the body matter, thinking is also of matter. Our conditioning controls our thinking as much as our behavior. We, our identified mind, are conditioned in every possible way insofar as we are enculturated, socialized, nationalized, engendered, identified, and separated.

We attempt to give form to concepts such as culture, society, politics, righteousness, good, and gender by embodying such forms relative to our conditioned definitions and expectations. In such cases wherein our thoughts are predisposing us to behavior inconsistent and incongruent with our preformed definitions and expectation, we attempt to control behavior aligning it with such definitions and expectations thereby relieving anxiety experienced as cognitive dissonance. In all cases, we are using thought to form and experience our reality. Is thought a necessary condition for us to experience reality or to be aware of our own existence? Insofar as thoughts emerge, we shall be subject to conditioning. Inasmuch, reality as we create it, in thought, is one of conditioning. This conditioned reality, born from mind related activities or mindful activity, is derived from, understood with, and thus experienced by thought. Reality, the Divine Condition, born from awareness has no activity, no mind, no thought, and is infinitely free. The use of intellect in and of itself binds us to conditioning resident in the mind. Such binds are a prison as there is no freedom from such conditioned thinking. Awareness reflects a state wherein there is no reliance upon mindful activities; thus, no action exists, no change is necessary for no conditionings prompt evaluation. As such, awareness frees us and reflects experience, which can be fully and completely experienced without regard to concepts of mind; e.g., subject, object, I, other, self, and time.

Only from being, does one exist. Yet, being is the most difficult state to reach for we sacrifice the present to live in the past and the future. Inasmuch as the past and the future do not exist, in living there, we ourselves do not exist.

To examine how we experience the present, we must explore how we rely upon the past and the future. Relative to the mind, the past, history, memories, and experience only exist in the mind and therefore remain byproducts of mindful activities; e.g. implicit action in the form of thinking. As such, we must acknowledge that we rely on thought to re-experience memory; e.g., what happened, how we felt about it, our evaluation, among other self-related perspectives. Insofar as we derive identity, needs, our wants, and thus ourselves from our personal history, our experiences, our past, the image we create of and for ourselves in the present is a derivative of the past. In this form, we rely on memories to form our current experience of the past and present; otherwise, we would not yet know how to experience the present as a mindful activity; e.g., do I agree, is this good, and am I enjoying this. Once past, we habitually re-experience experience with the mind; consequentially, the actual experience ceases to exist. In its place is a representation. That is, recall of any memory becomes an experience of a memory as new thought of a memory of experience of old thought. Thus, it is impossible to experience an experience relying on the mind and consequently thought. Attempting to do so only achieves an experience of a memory of an experience.

Insofar as we have personality comprising desires, goals, objectives, and wants, we will always use thought to analyze the present relative to the past in consideration of such personality. As these desires always reflect the future, not the present, and insofar as future states of desire reflect imagination, we are distorting our present experience with both a representation of the past and an imagined future. Hence, we are not experiencing the present, this instant, fully and truly. We are not in a complete state of being. We are reduced to representations and images, ego.

Must we have thought to be fully aware of an experience as we experience it, live it? Look within. Sit in silence without activity, do not think, do not answer or ask any questions, do not want, and do not use the mind at all. In that instant, there is stillness. Do you have awareness? You must insofar as you exist. However, we become accustomed to associating ourselves with our mind and thus thought such that our awareness of Self is reduced to self as mind in ego. We confuse thought for awareness and thus we subjugate awareness lacking the mind with activities of the mind. Consequently, we accept self as ego rather than Self as full and complete awareness wherein no form or name exists.

Nevertheless, in an experience of complete and full stillness, do we not still exist and thus experience. In that stillness, what memory is created? What activity of the mind is captured? None. Therefore, in memory, there is no form until the mind attempts to overlay what was actually experienced with mindful activities such as how the experience was experienced with the mind; e.g., serenity, peaceful, etc. Subsequently, we form attachments resulting from the mindful evaluation of our experience and create desires for a future experiences. In this way, we are using the past and future again to distort the present.

Must we mindfully describe and understand such experience or all experience? Can experience exist outside of such mindful activities such as thought? Such experience is difficult to describe for in its description we are attempting to put form and name to something that does not have form or name. Attempts to do so are tricks of the mind, thus ego, to associate Self as self in mind only; i.e., we think, therefore we are. Nay, in complete awareness not of mind, we are, therefore we exist. We must learn to distinguish the difference between awareness and thought. Awareness begetting Intuition and creativity does not spring from thought. They appear instantly and totally between thoughts and in stillness. Does not over thinking undermine such creative and intuitive processes? Similarly, thinking undermines total awareness. Byintellectualizing such things, we reduce their substance, their formlessness, our experience to mere thoughts. I may intuitively become aware of a presence in the room. Such awareness is reduced to implicit action as thought in mind to direct further explicit action wherein I may look around expecting to find another presence. Thought is a function of the mind attempting to intellectualize awareness. However, it is in the stillness of awareness that we find our truest Self. One that is separate from the mind, thus thought, thus attachment, thus wants, thus conditioning, thus identity, thus form. Once we have dispensed with the past and the future, we find no basis to distinguish the present from any other segment of time. Thus, time ceases to exist in a complete state of awareness. Once we have dispensed with these artificial and imagined aspects of self, we dispense with self thereby supplanting self for Self. Anáma-Rúpam. Ω