Reposted from an email by Sunny Sharma July 17th, 2023:
During your meditation practice, you must entirely lose all interest in the content of thoughts – even the thought “Isn’t this avoiding thoughts?”
Even this is a thought, and your interest in this concern binds you to remaining identified at the “level” of thinking.
So during moments of practice, turn away entirely. You must relax away from all personal concerns.
Yes, in a way you are ignoring thoughts, or better put, you are just turning away; not giving them attention.
But you are not ignoring anything real.
Thoughts, and what what they have to say have NO reality. It is all concepts.
Start to realize that concepts have no reality. They are all empty scenarios.
Thoughts are only descriptions and projections ABOUT life. They do not know life. They can never touch the actual direct experience.
For example, the word “glass” is not a glass. It is only an empty label which is used to describe or point to the experience that we call “glass.”
So, see that thoughts are all empty. And right now they are happening totally compulsively. In this way they keep you in this dream conceptual reality, one step removed from the truth.
They keep you in ideas ABOUT life, in a distorted view of reality – far from what actually is.
This is the cause of all fear, anxiety, restlessness, etc.
In your meditation practice, when you turn away from thoughts and bring attention to sensation or awareness itself, you are actually learning to face reality, AS IT IS – Free from all conceptualization. Free from all story.
And this is what enables clarity to shine forth!
This is what allows wisdom to arise. This is what allows you to become subtler and subtler in your perception and understanding of what you truly are.
Make sense? 🙂
Reposted from an email by Sunny Sharma July 17th, 2023.
The cause of all fears is not believing thoughts are real. Rather, it is believing that you are a separate-limited entity.
In the absence of such a belief, in the absence of any beliefs about what you are, thoughts take on an innocuous form and are no longer disturbing.
Turn your attention to what you believe yourself to be. If anything arises, ask yourself what is the evidence of this belief.
You will find no valid evidence.
Upon this repeated inquiry, you will find the belief in separation weakening and arising less and less. It is upon the thinning out of all beliefs about what you are that consciousness shines without any veil.