Free Flowing Thought

 Most of the time, when the process of thought arises, there is a kind of attempt to catch the thoughts. We are often encouraged to do so due to the exhortation of "focus", thus picturing the mind to be a kind of light-beam that selectively focuses on one item or the other, without seeing the totality of our experience. Surely, however, we must realize that the mind has more miraculous powers than simply focusing. For instance, if we needed to do a double take to catch every thought that came to mind, we would never process anything a person was saying. The mind itself, we must trust, is an enormous field of understanding that is able to smoothly process and absorb a great deal of information, without the self having to be overly conscious about it and intervene all the time to catch those thoughts all the time.

   When I find myself confused about a conversation whose subject I know little about, I try this experiment: imagine that your mind is a giant radar that extends across the horizon. This radar dish is capable of receiving a whole lot of information, so much so that it is practically saturated with rich information bouncing off its surface, from sensory to feeling, to cognitive and reflective. All this knowledge is immediately available in this present moment, as long as we have the confidence to affirm our own ability to receive and illuminate that information. If we are able to just slightly expand our field of awareness to beyond a narrow focus on the self or the immediate thought, we suddenly realize how rich our experiences are, and how thoughts are constantly flowing freely within us. There is no "blockage", here, only the way the mind contracts around some specific or particular thought. This certainly can create an optimistic view because we are no longer identifying with these thoughts that we "miss" or "don't completely fathom". This would be like missing crumbs in the middle of a spectacular feast.

The mind is not "our thoughts"; it is only host to thoughts, and therefore is not limited to any specific thoughts. When we stop focusing or taking these arising thoughts to be ourselves, then our approach is more like a kind of river of thoughts that keeps flowing and flowing without cease--and we needn't worry by trying to grasp one of those thought configurations to be the true self, because the true mind is always beyond all thoughts.