Stop Thinking

When taking a test, why do people always tell you to trust your first answer? When do you remember some person's name that was elusively on the tip of your tongue earlier - in the shower or before you drift off to sleep? Why do we have some our greatest creative ideas in the shower in the morning? When you are doing a crossword puzzle and get stuck on a word for an eternity, why do people suggest that you put it down for a while? And, why is it that when you pick up the puzzle a little later the letters practically jump into the boxes? The answer to all of these questions is "because that is when you are not thinking" or "you stopped thinking so much".

I have been a computer programmer and system designer for over 20 years and know all too well that the best designs or a fix to a nagging bug come to be in the shower or when throwing a ball around for 15 minutes at work.

The complete title of this piece should be "Stop Thinking and Just Know". Or, an even better title would be "Don't Think with Your Brain, Know with Your Soul". When you know that God is part of you - in your soul (what hindus call the Atma), you also know that God's infinite knowledge - or the infinite knowledge of the Universe - is also in your soul. Those moments when you are in the shower or drifting of to sleep or even driving you car, are moments when you are knowing with your soul. You are not consciously trying to think and in doing so, you brain is left out of the process. The great Yoga master Swami Sivananda put it in a very simple yet profound way, he referred to it as "knowing without thinking". Throughout time, all great creative minds have known this.

"When I am traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that ideas flow best and most abundantly." - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

So why are thinking and knowing so different?

First, thinking with your brain is not a bad thing. In our daily lives, we use our brains all of the time to do analytical thinking, to store names and dates, remember the size of our paycheck, to do basic problem solving, and to do your taxes - ugggh. The soul, on the other hand, provides answers to things that we may not have stored in our brains - no matter how many processes we draw on to attempt to connect the dots. The soul provides us with solutions that we never even would have considered with our brains. The soul gives us creative ideas and "thinking outside of the box". It is the free open door to God's infinite knowledge. The soul points out that we already had the answer, but our brains stomped right on it by over-analyzing. The soul tells us how to fix the light bulbs on the Christmas tree when just one strand goes out (true story).

Second, you need to realize that knowing with your soul is instantaneous and thinking with your brain takes time. Think of your brain as a computer that you ask a question and it does some processing - some analysis - and gives you an answer. No matter how powerful the computer is, there is still some amount of time elapsing between asking the question and having the answer. That wee bit of time, now matter how brief, is the problem. Even one millisecond allows the destructive ego to slip in and muddy the waters with its various forms of doubt and second guessing. Some people like to distill this phenomenon down to cutesy cliches like "paralysis by analysis", but these phrases do nothing to explain why this occurs.

On the topic of improvisation, the great jazz guitarist, Pat Martino, once said, "Try to learn everything you can, and then forget it." i.e. stop thinking with your brain. Great improvisation is instantaneous - from the soul. You start playing. You look up unknown minutes later not even remembering what you just played and your friend is just staring at you. One of you eventually says what the other one is thinking, "Where the hell did that come from?" That, my friends, is a beautiful moment!

When things in your day are clicking or flowing, when there are truely no problems and just solutions, you are knowing with your soul. God already has provided the answers for you. You don't "access" them. They are already there - you just have to "know" it. When you are conciously aware of this, you can readily apply it to any aspect of your life. More and more it will just happen, and you will be aware of it. You will become fearless, because you will know that all of the answers are inside of you. In your spiritual endeavors, be willing to try things you've never done before. Take it to the next level as in the hindu siddhis. Whether it be astral projection, healing, talking to Gautama or God or and Archangel (true stories), know that there are no right or wrong ways - it all can be distilled down to the exquisitely simple. There are a number of exercises you can do to accomplish this, but I will save that for another day. But, you don't need me for this. Just realize that you are already doing it. So start thinking less often and start knowing more often.