Transcending Thought

Do you ever day dream? Ever catch yourself lost in the thinking mind without a clue as to what’s going on around you? Our minds are wonderful tools that help us with logic, evaluation, and memory. We wouldn’t want to be without this most useful tool.

So who, exactly, is in charge of your mental activity? Does your mind go on and on, frequently out of control? Who started that train of thought, while you stare into space, totally lost to your surroundings, to the present moment. It most likely was your ego, who loves to run your life. Ego has an important job to do with all of us. It separates us from the One Intelligence, everywhere present around us and as us. It does its job very well.

Ego uses a bag of tricks—resentment, guilt, jealousy, anger, hate, judgment and on and on. These are necessary at first. They serve as protection from being hurt. Ego makes us feel better when we put someone else down. Interestingly, we have to wake up to this separation before we can realize the oneness that we all are. Humanity is one energy, expressing as diverse forms. But we are all made of the same star stuff, just as is everything in all creation.

Ego can be a great servant, but only when we’re awake to its behavior and decide that we want to be in charge of our own lives. Ego is what runs our life when we’re not present. When we are fully present in the moment, awareness expands. We notice our breath, our feet on the floor, the temperature, the person or flower of tree that is present with us. Thinking actually stops. There is peace; a feeling of love and gratitude flows through us. We experience being a silent presence in a breathing body. We can watch any thought that wants to come in. Just noticing it, being neither for nor against that thought, and our whole being fills with healing energy. Our immune system is strengthened.

Whenever ego starts a train of though in the mind without our being aware of it, we are taken out of the present moment and are elsewhere. We pay for these moments, as our bodies change without our noticing. Thinking tenses subtle muscles and is noticeable in the body by a trained Lomi bodywork practitioner.

Staring, a common occurrence while not present in the moment, actually weakens eye muscles and vision deteriorates. There is no such thing as a person that sees clearly at all distances who stares. Everyone who stares needs corrective lenses of some kind. This is because eyes are aimed at something in front of you, but your mind is elsewhere. This is a body-mind split and creates much stress.

Eckhart Tolle, who wrote The Power of Now, says in his Stillness Speaks, “The next step in human evolution is to transcend thought. This is now our urgent task. It doesn’t mean not to think anymore, but simply not to be completely identified with thought, possessed by thought.”

For more information on this topic, Stillness Speaks has many new ideas for you.