Hierarchies
Robert, I got so tired of thinking of my thoughts as programmed, robotic, that I had to lose my thoughts to empty my mind to be present. The other day, driving I found myself in thought when I smelled leaves burning and remembered something happy and immediately chased it what I had learned in both western and eastern religions that thoughts are unnecessary.
I told myself just let it flit through and then thought, this is total bs. Thoughts are not bad. The mind is an amazing instrument that can tap past experience and memories and with something as simple as a smell remember in detail and event and bring an emotion. That the mind is an absolute wonder. It allows us to tune in to life, appreciate it, understand it, constantly learning and evolving to what is happening in the present. So this idea that the way to be enlightened is to put the mind to rest. I don't get that.
Yes we can let thoughts run amok, regurgitate conspiracies and be manic. But mental illness, conditioning, nurturing or lack there of, plays a big roll in what we are thinking. It looks to me if we put our resources into encouragement, support, education, and early childhood development we would have healthier thoughts. I mean hell anything that is living is enlightened. It's awake. It's aware. It's not the chosen few. It's just life. It's everything. It's acceptance.
We used to be told that if we did good deeds with a pure heart we would have a star in our crown. Then in Satsang the totality of waking up was the understanding that we are already awake. Good and fine if there wasn't an unsaid hierarchy of people who got it and people who didn't. I don't see how that is any different than the concept of being 'born again'.
As I see it, here is this body plus thoughts, feelings, perceptions, plus awareness of all that. Other than that, I see no "myself” to attain or improve anything. Now is what we are. In the next instant, anything might arise—something the “myself” of this instant cannot even imagine—so how can it be said that the mind is “put to rest?”
There are natural hierarchies to be sure. The lion is not called the king of the jungle for nothing. That particular feline manifestation sits atop the heap naturally. Comparing Neil deGrasse Tyson and Deepak Chopra one sees wit, knowledge, and natural intelligence on the one hand, and a simulacrum on the other.
I think there is a natural hierarchy of “people who get it and people who don’t,” but the question comes down to what one means by “IT.” That’s not such an easy matter, is it?
The river of perceptions, feelings, and thoughts just keeps flowing, and awareness never steps into the same river twice.