Posted by Damos on May 11, 2005, at 22:04:51
In reply to Re: and the key to my depression as well » sunny10, posted by alexandra_k on May 10, 2005, at 18:26:39
From the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. He says it so much better than I can. Tried repeatedly and just got gibberish.
Descartes believed he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: 'I think, therefore I am'. He had in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being & identity with thinking. The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone, lives in a state of apparent separateness, an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflict, a world that reflects the ever-increasing fragmentation of the mind. Enlightenment is a state of wholeness, of being "at one" & therefore at peace. At one with life in its manifest aspect, the world, as well as with your deepest self & life unmanifested - at one with Being. Enlightenment is not only the end of suffering and continuous conflict within & without, but also the end of the dreadful enslavement to incessant thinking. What an incedible liberation this is!
Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgements, & definitions that block all true relationship. It comes between you & yourself, between you & your fellow man & woman, between you & nature, between you & God. It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you & a totally separate "other". You then forget the essential fact that, underneath the level of physical appearances & separate froms, you are one with all that is. By "forget", I mean that you can no longer feel this oneness as self-evident reality. You may believe it to be true, but you no longer know it to be true. A belief may be comforting. Only through your own experience, however, does it become liberating.
Thinking has become a disease. Disease happens when things get out of balance. For example, there is nothing wrong with cells dividing and multiplying in the body, but when this process continues in disregard of the total organism, cells proliferate and we have disease.
The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly - you usually don't use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken over.
Just because you can solve a crossword puzzle or build an atom bimb doesn't mean that you use your mind. Just as a dog loves to chew bones, the mind loves to get its teeth into problems. That's why it does crossword puzzles & bulids atom bombs. You have no interest in either Let me ask you this: can you be free of your mind whenever you want to? Have you found the "off" button?
You practice mindfullness meditation Alex as do I, and what are we striving for? No mind. In those moments we achieve this, do we cease to exist? I am not thinking, therefore I am not. Just a question.
poster:Damos
thread:494272
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20050503/msgs/496676.html