Depending On No-Thing, Chapter 18, Bombarded By Thoughts
Depending On No-Thing, Chapter 18, Bombarded By Thoughts
I met Joan Tollifson for the first time on video chat after she had read The Ten Thousand Things. Subsequently, she shared with me the following words from her late teacher, Toni Packer. I'd not heard of Toni before that, but recognized instantly that Toni and I have something in common:
When there’s a moment of no sense of “me,” why not leave it alone completely, come what may? When a fearful thought or feeling arises in an instant, it can also be gone in an instant, even before it has triggered the thirty thousand chemicals throughout the body. There is just a vulnerable being exposed, alone, without knowing, without a word. Maybe it’s a moment of dying to all the impulses to know, to protect, to maintain, to continue. Not knowing is dying. And at the same time being wholly alive.
--from The Light of Discovery, forward by Joan Tollifson.
Q. Robert, I am wondering about the concept that thought “arises.” In my experience thought feels more like a constant "bombardment" within the space of consciousness.
A: If the flow of thought feels like a bombardment, you may be taking thoughts too personally. They do come and go, after all, flowing like water, not dropping like bombs. What real harm can they do?
Imagine sitting on the bank of a river on a lovely summer's day, far from the madding crowd. Your feet are bare and you’ve worked your toes into the mud. You breathe deeply, taking in the sweet air redolent with the perfume of a thousand flowers. Birds are singing. But even amidst this wonder, "myself" is still there, in your case feeling bombarded.
From that feeling of vulnerability--the lack of any means of escape from the stream of consciousness that flows uncontrollably--a new thought bubbles up about how to find a method of immunity against what feels like a bombardment. That seems logical but rarely seems to work. What does work, I have found, is understanding that “myself"--the “me” feeling bombarded—is not separate from, nor more permanent than the thoughts, feelings, and physical experiences that constitute the apparent bombardment. “Myself” is a thought, no different from the thoughts that in your case feel like a bombardment.
The apparent bombardment and the “myself” supposedly under attack, are part and parcel of the same mind, and it’s all impermanent—the thoughts, the feelings, the physical experiences—all of it. All of it is dying just as it is born--no staying power at all.
This transitoriness, this impermanence is a plain fact, but one most of us routinely elide. We prefer to feel that the world around me is always changing, but that “I” am unceasingly myself, the same as always, the fantasized changeless “witness” or “presence.” That illusion of permanence is only smoke and mirrors, but we like that illusion and allow religion, spirituality, along with other habits and customs of society, to keep the illusion fresh, because the truth--that we are dying and being reborn in every moment of our lives without ever getting anywhere but closer to personal extinction--can feel intolerable.
“Myself” consists of thoughts and feelings that are never the same from one moment to the next. Don’t take my word for it. Check it out for yourself. Noticing this ceaseless, ever-changing flow does not require years of meditation. A few moments of sincere investigation reveal it.
If one is frightened by impermanence and sees that perceptions, thoughts, and feelings have no staying power, one may rely on the physical body--which is changing too, but much more slowly than perceptions, thoughts, and feelings--as a kind of anchor to affirm one’s existence as a “person.”
In that view, “I” is a name, a physical form, and the autobiography of that form. Although the autobiography is constructed of thoughts and although we know that thoughts are impermanent, we ignore that information and imagine a permanent, persistent “myself” who has thoughts.
That tactic of splitting, of creating an artificial separation between thought and thinker is part of the lie. Thoughts are not had by “myself.” They are “myself.” Those thoughts, along with perceptions, feelings, the body, and the awareness of all that comprise one seamless happening that cannot be separated into thoughts and a “haver” of thoughts. The separate “myself” that has thoughts is a ghost in the machine, a lie.
That lie is repeated unconsciously, over and over and over again. And each reiteration adds to the creation and maintenance of a self-image. There are two self-images actually, the one I hang around my own neck but hide from others, and the one I burnish and refine to show the world.
Many of us understand that the public self-image is a lie--perhaps one we need in order to survive in this cruel world (“it’s showtime, folks”)--but far fewer see that the private self-image is no less a lie. If we have an instant of awareness without that lie—a time when, as Toni Packer put it, “There’s a moment of no sense of ‘me,’” in that moment, we are free. There is nothing to live up to, nothing to maintain, nothing to do.
In that moment, something dies, yet it is not “myself” that dies, but only the false images of myself. The ongoing aliveness will still be here, but the self-images, at least for that moment, are not. If one is fortunate, the self-images, having been subjected to that moment of being seen through as illusory, will never return in full-force, or may not return at all, and that, I am saying, is freedom.
This dying to self-images—the frames one has hung around one’s own neck—can at times feel fearful or poignantly sad, but that’s where all the beauty is too. We never really have a proper eye for ourselves, our loved ones, or this astounding world of ours until we embrace our oft-hidden understanding that none of it lasts. The “myself-image” that once felt so firm and lasting, falls apart, leaving a kind of emptiness in its wake.
We may not always remember that no detail of this aliveness lasts for more than a trice--some of us do remember, many more don’t--but we all have at least felt it, I am sure.
When Toni says, “There is just a vulnerable being exposed, alone, without knowing, without a word,” I find myself in accord entirely. That’s just how this feels. And I like the way she puts it. It’s firm but gentle—the way we best treat ourselves, I say.
So “why not leave it alone completely, come what may?” What choice does one have anyway? Either we live “exposed, alone, without knowing, without a word,” or under the spell of some hypnotic anodyne, some dogmatic “teaching.”
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