A bird does not sing because it has an answer.
It sings because it has a song.
Chinese proverb
I used to feel that a moment free from thought had no particular value. I used to feel that thinking was a better way to spend time than not thinking. I used to wallpaper every moment with a million ruminations.
Thinking felt productive, like it was getting me somewhere, finding answers, figuring life out. A blank mind, free of thought, was a wasted moment. It was zoning out, vegging out, goofing off, being frivolous. Thought was the vehicle to wisdom, understanding, and insight.
I was bound and determined to think-my-way to happiness.
And every thought took me away from the realm of no-thought that is happiness itself.
It has also been a surprise to discover that alert no-thought is actually more intelligent than thought. The space of no-thought is the source of any intelligence that shows up in thought. The no-thought that is "upstream" of thought is the source of creativity and wisdom.
While thought can be a beautiful and powerful tool, a lot of thought is unnecessary and destructive. Who doesn't have a merciless voice of internalized self-criticism? Or, even worse, a secret voice of thought that whispers hopes of personal specialness? Self-hatred and narcissism are two sides of a coin that have one thing in common: me, me, me. Which is the point of the bulk of thought: to conjure and perpetuate this huge fiction of separate me-hood. Thought builds up an imagined sense of me that must be constantly maintained and expanded. It is exhausting. It is a parasite draining life energy.
The me-image is fragile and flimsy and insecure by nature, as any image is a frail and evanescent thing. An image (especially the self-image) has a bottomless craving for attention, for without attention, where is the image? Poof! It is gone that easily.
These days there is a treasuring of the space of no-thought, whether thoughts are present or not. In the morning when consciousness opens its eyes on a new day, it savors the glint of silence between thoughts. So many of the thoughts that arise are recognized as unimportant, or as luring conscious attention towards hooking into some new drama of suffering, stirring up a new pot of pain. Sometimes the unnecessary suffering cooked up by thought-stories is caught early on and the drama is side-stepped, nipped in the bud. Other times I'm swept into the waking dream of thought lock-stock-and-barrel and ride out the storm. Either way, all the while the space of no-thought gleams with fathomless presence. Attention opens from the thoughts to the space of awareness in which the thoughts occur. Such freedom here now in this space!
~
Gratitude for photo of Mourning Dove available at this link:
http://www.bird-friends.com/pics/MourningDove/MourningDove3LR.jpg
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