The Ahhh Moment

I refer to ‘ahhh’ moment as the space where recognize that I am not my thoughts, even though thoughts are indeed in me.Let me give you an example of what I mean:

Let us say that you harbor some thought of anger or annoyance. You see the thought arising in you and then you start to feel guilty for having that thought.

“I really shouldn’t have this thought”, you remark, thus embellishing on the previous thought.

“But then again, maybe I am right to feel this way,” you remark, embellishing on the second previous thought.

“But I  shouldn’t feel this way…”

“Or maybe there are extenuating circumstances…”

This argument that takes place between the current and previous thought…does it really happen? Can one thought converse with another thought that is already gone? This is something I need to keep experiencing to fully understand.

Sometimes, the good way to practice this is to lift up one’s head and silently smile at all the thoughts. They are either like bubbles, or like little children who clamber for attention. The smile is not about rejecting and not about seeking either. It is just making a space to see everything arising in a spacious and mysterious mind. So, if I just see the thought for what it is, I am not going to say it’s me, but I am not going to disown that thought either. It has to come from somewhere. But ,at the same time, it is futile to try to claim or disclaim it, because that thought already passed. Its conditions already ripened. But if I keep thinking the thought is still there, a new condition arises. And who harbors these conditions anyway?

I think that if I am practicing this well, I will feel in a way that there is no thought I need attend to. But the paradox is that mind is free to respond to all the thoughts. It has that ability to approach without getting sucked into the energy of thoughts, or the little cloud trails they leave behind in their wake. In that way, mind doesn’t need to feel afraid of any thoughts. There is a confidence and faith that mind is never these thoughts at all.

If the thought is disturbing, I have to see that only habit energy makes it disturbing by giving it life. Beyond that, a thought is a kind of verbal or neurological unit. The practice is to pick the thoughts needed to liberate being from suffering. But even those thoughts don’t have a life of their own. There is no ‘better’ or ‘worse’ thought. They all have mind energy. Why not like every thought, even though they may not be needed? “Like” doesn’t mean cling in this case. It just means try to see the thoughts with equanimity and see them for what they are.