THE NATURE OF THOUGHT

We tend to believe that there is a difference between thought and the phenomenal world. There is not. When we get very, very quiet and listen, we can see this clearly. Thought and
things and events and any movement at all consist of the same field of energy. From the tiniest little gurgling in the gut to storm clouds gathering on the horizon, to the bird landing
on a pond. This is counterintuitive. We do live in this undifferentiated world as newborns, but very
soon, as we learn to distinguish between the various sensory inputs, we take great joy in “discovering” their apparently separate nature, and indeed, OUR separateness from them.
We are birthing a sense of individual self – and it is right that we should take joy in that, because it is our ability to discern what is us from what is not, and to see clear differences
between things in the world we are forming, which enables us to navigate this world of appearances successfully.
At some point in our life, however, we may get a glimpse of something which “breaks through” this ironclad belief in the separateness of things. How that happens for each of us
is unique, and what each of us makes of it may be even more different. We may find distractions to ignore that glimpse, we may become entranced with it, we may strengthen
our “beliefs” to either encompass it or refute it, but there is one thing we cannot do if we
take an honest look at ourselves, and that is to deny that it happened.
What we saw, or felt, has been called many things – I call it Silence, or Vastness, or Nothing
mostly – and we react strongly to it because it presents us with irrefutable evidence that the Separateness belief we have so carefully constructed – indeed, our very notion of Self, is
just that: a belief. This may scare us into trying to shore up our construction, but the funny thing is, once we have seen beyond our notion of Self, that vision gnaws at us. It changes us
in unpredictable ways. And we have absolutely no way to grasp its significance or encapsulate it in a safe and knowable package. We are stymied. And though we may fight
against it as if in a struggle to survive, part of us way down deep inside knows that it’s good news. And part of us already has not survived.