(From Silent Retreat, May 2018)
In your process of introspection, it’s natural that you pass through the body of the mind and it’s also natural that you would like to get rid of the mind or to pacify yourself from the pain of thinking.
If we approach the mind from the perspective of the Earth Bodies, we want to kick, to do something about it and make some kind of effort. This, however, leads to more thoughts and more restlessness. The suggested approach here is to go into the feminine, where you’re observing and contemplating what you’re thinking and that you don’t need to intervene. You recognize that what you’re thinking is just a normal part of the process of evacuation. It’s like when you’re in purgation and you get a strong cramp and then, naturally, the bowels eliminate.
There’s an organ within you designed to evacuate thinking belonging to the one that’s not real. This is the cleansing of silence, where you acknowledge that what you’re thinking now is the thought of the energy field that you have created. If you feel an increase in thoughts, it’s good news. It means that your retreat is working, and the love of the soul bodies is showing you how this person, who doesn’t exist, thinks.
The first place of contemplation is that what you’re thinking has never belonged to you. At the same time, defend your mind. You don’t want to fight with your mind. You just want to clean the mind from the possession of that persona, that thought, “I can think.” These are thoughts that belong to linear time, to the transformational aspect, to your little preoccupations.
This is a passage and you need to go through it. It’s your impeccability that will allow you to go through it without being touched. Impeccability means that you know that it’s there but you don’t engage in what’s not real. Any thought is not real. You’re not thinking those thoughts; it’s your persona that’s thinking those thoughts.
If there’s anything that you want to take from this satsang, let it be this: “Any thought that I have is the thought that my persona is thinking. Any feeling that I am feeling is the feeling that my persona is feeling. Any sensation in my body is the sensation that this persona is feeling, is sensing.”
With this simple awareness, you can allow your thoughts to be. Thoughts can be in the form of opinions, assessing, adjusting, etc. Any thought. You might have an opinion that the food is good or not good. You may have an opinion of the bed. Whatever. There’s not one thought that’s innocent. All thoughts belong to the person that you have had a love affair with.
You will see that the thought has a quality. Usually, it’s something that arises and doesn’t finish. For example, let’s say that you’re thinking how the bed is uncomfortable, but you don’t really finish that thought and don’t do any action on it, you don’t investigate. You just have an opinion. In another state, you may be thinking.
A common misperception is that with enlightenment, you don’t think. No, I still think, but it’s not in the same matter. It’s more of a spontaneous knowing and an acute engagement with what’s around. It’s the awareness that anything that’s thinking comes from linking with other persons, even dreams.
I experience this often when Matthew is very engaged in building and I start thinking and dreaming about hammers and workshops. These are clearly not my dreams! Another example is that when I spend time with plants in the garden and I touch them, the medicine, the spirit of the plant comes. There’s knowing, but it’s not thinking. I have information but am not thinking about it. So there’s a huge difference between the type of thought that the invented persona has and the actual potential of the mind to serve you as a filter of information and to announce something. It’s more about announcing than about logic. It announces things to me.
The announcement is the thought of the heart that Matthew was talking about earlier. That’s what the choice is: to relate to the heart, to that deep knowing. The invitation doesn’t happen that often. The persona is always thinking, always going and always having a sequence. Without this sequence, it loses momentum and loses the sense that “I am alive.”
That’s why the obsession with thinking, continuous thinking, is necessary for the persona to exist. That’s why when we stop and limit the senses – the food, the smells, the silence, what we see — the persona freaks out. “I can’t say what I think!” Everything gets bottled in. But I reassure you, those are not your thoughts.
The way that they will go away, and I repeat, is to not touch them. Be aware that they’re there, but don’t touch them. There’s nothing there to solve and nothing valid there to investigate. It’s a totally natural cleansing process.
The art of learning to clean oneself from the mind is of great importance for the seeker. In this satsang, this has to be very well understood, otherwise, you can use retreats to sustain the addiction of confronting and controlling. In every retreat, you will meet your mind and in every retreat, you will go away feeling victorious, but you’ll always be working from the same place. You’re not free.
See the mind as a totality and not only as thoughts. What you’re thinking has a gesture, a position, a perception, a body sensation, a feeling. It’s the totality of a persona, an energy field fully using the natural resources to exist, like a photocopy that thinks that it’s the original self. This photocopy doesn’t have a light of its own and it uses your light to be animated. Do you understand this awareness? It’s a vampire. It depletes and uses your prana, and through time, humanity has seen the decay of longevity.
In the old Vedic texts, the average lifespan was 200 years. Now, it’s probably 80 years because you’re pumped with medicines that keep you alive for two years in the hospital.
Who is using this life energy? It’s the persona that you have invented. When you realize that you’re really a hostage of this force, you create your first awareness towards freedom. Once you realize that you are in prison, something can be done. When you don’t realize that you are in prison, there’s nothing that can be done. You feel good. As I said yesterday: you can use the practices to feel balanced and content, but you’re still not free.
It requires great relaxation and awareness not to fight with the mind, not to give it the importance that it doesn’t have. At the same time, notice that there’s 10-20% of you at this moment that has silence. Yes? A little tiny bit? Even if it’s only 1% of you, recognize that the silence has always been there because it’s your nature. Let it expand and live.
Don’t try to save yourself. “My God, this is unbearable!”. Yes, it’s unbearable. Wait, be still, be quiet, have patience. This is what silent retreats are for. “I will wait, I will stay and I won’t run away and I won’t try to save myself. I will stay. I can hold the operation.”
Right? It’s like if you go to the dentist, get frozen and when the dentist starts to work, you say, “I’m out of here!” No. You’re in it. You have to sit in the chair and be still.
The good news is that anything that you’re thinking, anything that’s unsettling you, will be gone. It will be your choice if you want to maintain your love affair with it in another way. In reality, silence is the deepest cleanser ever.
I have witnessed the power of choice. In retreat, I have seen a person drop things, changing, verbalizing to me that they have changed. Two minutes after the retreat, the same persona comes forward again! The retreat has not made an impact whatsoever, because they have not made a choice. The same love affair continues!
And yes, it’s not easy. It’s a kind of like a divorce, where you’re dropping someone and you don’t know who will be your next lover. You will never know, as infinity will never present you with a definition.
Have you ever been dumped or gone through a divorce, where you say, “Oh no, I will never find somebody like this person ever again. That was it. I will never love the same way again.” The apprehension of deflating when we drop the persona will be there. There will be the anxiety of not knowing if you are still lovable to the Divine because you have never experienced it.
Instead, you prefer to have a dysfunctional relationship with your persona and sometimes, it’s a functional relationship. Sometimes, you get along so well with your persona that you live with it and spiritually find some kind of adjustment. It doesn’t need to be unpleasant all the time. It’s more dangerous when it’s pleasant. You adapt, but you don’t see any problem because you are in complacency (as someone I know).
Do you follow me on this passage this morning? You’re fine. There’s no problem with you because you’re thinking because you’re not thinking. Your persona is thinking and you have the chance to see it in its maximum activity. We will be doing practices to support that, not to make smooth but be dispassionate about it. It will give you a different scope of understanding.