Why Your Mind Can’t Stop Thinking GF Live 4-13-24

When we’ve seen that we can’t "prove" ourselves in this world without having first compared ourselves to it -- and that this endless comparison is the unseen root of conflict -- then we will also know why we find no peace in winning the approval of others, and why no possession frees us from fear.

Transcript

So our topic for study today is something that all of us should have a great interest in,

Which is essentially,

Why is it that my mind won't stop thinking?

Now most of the time it's not an issue for us because we're identified with the movement of these thoughts,

But there are times when it's pretty evident that something has taken us over.

We're not alone with our concern and if you look at the lives of any of the past illumined men and women,

The masters you'll see,

They all spoke in one degree or another about this problem.

What man taking thought can add a cubit to his stature.

Take no thought for tomorrow because sufficient under the day is the evil thereof.

So all of these virtually endless commentaries about the process and the pain in a mind that won't shut down.

So let's get into it a little bit.

We're talking,

Aren't we,

About in the end how do we bring about this quietness that we all want in our mind and why do we want this quietness?

I should say when we want it,

Why do we want it?

We know the idea of a lake,

A reflection.

The quieter the waters,

The more pure the reflection.

The whole idea in the Eastern traditions of polishing the mirror,

Removing the film from it so that the reflection is pure.

It has to do with this relationship between the observer and the observed,

Between what we see outside of ourselves and,

God willing,

The gradual realization that what we see outside of ourselves is actually a reflection of our own soul.

We see attributes,

Qualities,

Characters in the world around us that are representations that remind us that are in fact reflections and that stir within us the knowledge of the things that we see.

This is why a quiet mind is important.

Let's get into the material.

So here's two sisters.

They've grown up together,

They've worked together,

They both succeeded together,

But at a certain point there became a divergence and the one sister who continued to believe that she would be completed or otherwise satisfied by the things that she was acquiring in the world pursuing,

She went off and continued to do so.

And the other sister decided that those things that the two of them had thought,

Been conditioned really to believe would make them whole,

Wasn't really doing the job.

So the other sister,

She moved off-grid,

Went someplace into the hills of Montana and built for herself a nice place up there.

And when,

After a year or so,

They hadn't been in much contact,

The one sister in the city,

The one sister still very much in thought,

Reaches out and says,

I'd like to come visit you.

Great,

Love to have you here.

I have an extra bedroom.

So we'll call the one sister Sally,

Who lives in the city,

And the other city will call,

The other sister will call her Rebecca,

Who has gone off-grid.

They get together in Rebecca's home in Montana.

So about two days into the journey,

Sarah comes to Rebecca and says,

I have to cut my trip short.

Why?

I told you we don't have internet.

I told you there's no TV here.

So she said,

I know,

I know.

I just,

For some reason,

I just can't sleep.

Rebecca's kind of surprised me.

You can't sleep?

What's wrong?

This is the most beautiful place in the world to rest deeply.

I don't understand.

Why can't you sleep?

And Sarah looks at her and says,

It's so quiet,

I just can't fall asleep.

Now,

I trust,

Sorry,

I have to find out what's going on with my chair.

Can you see the contradiction?

It's so quiet,

I can't sleep.

What does that mean,

If you can't see it?

I mean,

Ideally,

We want quiet to be able to go to sleep.

So what's the issue?

Here's the bottom line.

Without all of the noises,

City,

Vibration,

Background,

TV,

Radio,

Phone,

Without all of that going on,

Sarah was subject to actually experiencing her own mind.

The fact that when she is involved in the world,

And all of that activity is going on in the mind,

There's no recognition of this insistence of thinking,

Because she is aligned with it,

She is identified with it.

And if she's not identified with it,

Then there's so many distractions,

That each time something grabs her attention,

She moves in thought to try to figure out what it is and what to do about what has stolen her attention.

And without all of those distractions,

Her own mind is painful.

I guess I want to pause here for a split second.

Because so much of our work as men and women who want to know something about the divine,

It really requires moving from point A to point B,

It really requires stepping out of our own life,

Even if it's just for a moment.

And even if it's because someone has said something,

Suggested something that we would ordinarily never even consider.

For instance,

Most of us would never consider,

Why is my own mind painful?

How can my own mind be painful?

And it is.

Let's bring up the special key lesson,

Kate.

And then we'll get into this idea of what's going on with this endless struggle with a mind that won't shut up.

Who's talking?

What's it talking about?

And more importantly,

Who is it talking to?

Here's the key lesson.

Please don't pause for a moment.

Read along with me.

The mind asleep to itself doesn't realize that it has created the problem that it can't stop trying to resolve.

And that the more it struggles to try and think through a solution to its self-induced conflict,

The greater grows its struggle to escape that suffering.

Let's take this apart for a moment.

The mind asleep to itself doesn't realize it created the problem it can't stop trying to escape.

Now let's try to resolve.

Let's stop there for a minute.

What does that mean?

The mind asleep doesn't know it created the problem it can't stop trying to resolve.

What does that mean?

The minute that you and I,

In some iteration of some conflict in us,

What is the thing that our mind does?

Doesn't it start to think about what it needs to do?

What it needs to change?

What has to become in order for it to escape the conflict it's in?

That's what the mind does.

It meets the disturbance in itself by trying to imagine what not only it needs to do to bring an end to that pain,

That conflict,

But how it is to go about achieving that state of becoming free.

So in essence,

If you're following me,

It means the mind,

When it is disturbed,

Comes up with an image,

An idea.

And the image and the idea cannot be separated from the identity,

From the self,

The sense of self that has imagined it.

So here is myself,

I'm disturbed,

And I don't want to be.

And so that consciousness pictures what it requires in order to get past the pain it's in.

And the minute that the mind imagines it something for itself,

It is identified with it.

It is dependent and attached upon the image that it has made for itself in order to escape the pain it's in over what?

Over the last image,

The last idea,

The last notion it had,

What is required to change itself.

So it imagines a time to come with a relationship that it will finally realize.

And then when that time to come is realized,

And then some condition comes along and challenges it,

As it always does,

The mind has to go back into the same struggle.

And the more it struggles to try to think through the solution to the next conflict it's in,

The greater grows its struggle to escape that suffering.

Can you see this with me before we go on?

We're going to come to a startling,

Not conclusion.

We're going to come to a startling discovery.

That's what all of this is for.

It isn't so that you listen to me and then,

Or any other teacher,

Whatever their nature may be.

It's so that we can see something.

It's so that we can bring into this mind that isn't aware of how.

It is a problem making machine so that it can be a problem solving machine.

It doesn't recognize that because all of that noise is going on underground.

And it's underground because we are separated from its activity through our identification with every image that mind makes in order to escape its own activity.

So we don't realize that our thinking is the source of conflict.

Not practical thinking,

Please.

That our thinking is never realized as the continuation of conflict because the mind keeps coming up with ways in which to escape the conflict it produced by first imagining a time when it was going to escape itself.

When it would finally liberate itself from what?

From the conflict it feels because whatever it became identified with is now the source of its pain because it's been challenged.

So thought just goes on and on and on.

And we don't need to complicate it.

Do you have a meeting that you have to go to at work?

Is there a family situation?

Problem with a brother or sister?

With your health?

Something about the world upsets you?

We don't see that like some strange dark kaleidoscope thought forever being stimulated by some condition either outside of itself or triggered by a reaction to its own concern.

Or triggered by a reaction to its own consideration.

Will be,

And this is important,

Will be picked up by its own thinking.

And then believing that it is the one that is active,

Meaning I'm the one who's thinking this through,

Fails to see.

I'm not the one who picked up this thought.

Please see it for yourself.

Would you ever walk over and pick up a deadly spider or a venomous snake?

Would you wrap your hand around a vine that has thorns on it?

And the answer is of course I wouldn't.

And I wouldn't because I can see that these things are harmful to myself.

But I cannot see that it is harmful for me to pick up a thought that has fear in it.

I can't see it.

I can't see that it's dangerous to pick up a thought that's filled with anxiety for fear of some outcome imagined in a time to come.

I can't see it.

Why?

Because in the moment where I reach and pick up that thought and enter into that stream of associations connected with that thought,

I don't see my relationship and the suffering inherent in picking it up.

Because the moment I pick it up,

I feel the pain and then the nature and pain points to a problem outside of itself and says,

Here's the prize.

Here's the solution.

Just go and do this.

Become that.

Get there.

Rush.

And when you finally get all of this handled,

The pain will go away.

And most of us live in a constant state of unseen agitation because without knowing it,

We are all the time,

Virtually all the time,

Identified with this unconscious process of thought trying to resolve the conflict inherent in the mind doing that thinking.

Now,

Let's make a little transition here.

You'll understand why I'm doing this.

The mind properly working can see the limitations of the body.

Now,

I want to be clear.

The mind not working properly will judge the limitations of the body.

Imagine one part of the body judging another part.

The mind can see the body limitations.

You get older,

Stuff starts not working so well.

Stuff starts not working so well.

The body has limitations that it didn't have five years,

10 years,

15 years ago.

Mind can see body limitations.

There are times when emotions can see the limitation of the mind.

For instance,

A person's out walking and suddenly they turn the corner.

Here's this beautiful valley or a mountain.

And for a split second,

The emotional parts are connected,

The observer and the observer singularity.

And in a split second,

The emotion,

The peace recognizes the mind is the limitation here.

It wants to keep thinking about something,

But here I am looking at something that has unity,

Divinity in itself.

Mind sometimes can be recognized as a limitation by higher parts of our emotion.

And there are times when the mind can see the limitation of emotion as well.

Have you ever noticed sometimes you get angry or upset or afraid?

The mind for a moment anyway,

Recognizes,

You know what,

This negative state is not going to produce anything good for me.

This resistance I'm feeling to the situation,

The mind can recognize this is a dead end.

So the mind from time to time can see the limitation of emotion.

But here's the question we have to ask ourselves relative to everything we've just looked at.

Can the mind see its own limitation?

Can this thinking mind see its own limitation unless there is another order of intelligence that isn't the mind at all,

That isn't the thinking mind at all?

Because if you're following me,

The only hope that we have as aspirants is to realize that we're not going to think our way into freedom.

We're not going to think our way into security.

We're not going to think our way into some benevolent relationships with a divine partner.

The mind itself has something within it that is capable of recognizing through a new kind of awareness that is never present in thought itself,

That thinking has a limitation.

And not only does thinking have a limitation with regards to creating the relationships that we want that are holy,

But that there's something else going on inside of this process of thought and our identification with it,

Because thought by itself isn't a problem.

We can see that.

I have a thought about a milkshake.

Don't ask me why.

The thought about a milkshake is not a problem.

But if the thought about a milkshake runs into this idea that you can't have a milkshake because you put on weight or because you're lactose intolerant and yet I want the milk,

Then thought becomes a problem.

But thought becomes a problem because of our identification with the quality of that thought,

What it represents.

Thought isn't a problem without identification.

Can there be thought without identity,

Without something making a sense of self?

I hope you're following me because we can see that suffering,

This mind that won't stop going on and on,

Suffering as the consequence between things as we think they are and then the way we think they should be.

I think I should be able to eat anything,

But life says you can't.

I'm in conflict with my own desire.

How can I be in conflict with my own desire?

If you're following me,

This is an endless struggle.

Here's the way things are,

And here's the way I want them to be.

The way things are,

I have to get up and go to work.

I don't want to.

So I'm laying in bed and my mind is trying to think about how I can stretch out the time on the mattress,

Where I can get a job where I don't have to go someplace,

Failing to see that my whole life,

There is this opposition between what is real,

What I must do and what I must have versus what I don't want and I don't want to go through.

And I don't understand anything about this relationship that I'm intended to have,

Where thought serves the natural practical process.

I need to put a casserole on,

I need to soak the beans for two hours before I put them in the pot.

There's no pain in that.

I don't have to think it through a thousand times,

But when it comes to what I need to do with a friend or a family member,

Because I want to cook up a better relationship,

I go to bed.

My mind is thinking about it.

My mind continues it at night.

I wake up in the morning.

I'm not aware of the fact that I didn't rest because my mind was never quiet.

And then,

And then it goes on until something triggers another latent image,

Latent image,

Another sense of identification with something.

And the next thing I know,

I'm thinking about that.

Let me make a transition here.

Why am I trying to think through how to bring an end to my pain?

Obvious,

Because I believe that I can think through to a solution to bring an end to that suffering.

So now let's look at this idea together for a moment.

Can you see that when you,

When I have some kind of moment where I'm thinking about something I'm afraid of,

I'm worried about something,

I have an obligation,

I don't know if I'm going to make it,

People are depending on me,

Or I think they are,

And I need to uphold my responsibility.

All of these thoughts,

Can you see that when we have any form of worry,

Doubt,

Anxiety,

Can you see that these thoughts,

That this kind of thinking is painful?

Can you see that?

I'm asking,

Please let me know.

I'm thinking about what you did yesterday.

Is that painful?

Think about how I failed 30 years ago.

Is that painful?

I'm thinking about who I need to become in order to get away from who I don't want to be anymore.

Is that painful?

It is.

Thinking about these things is painful.

But can we step back far enough,

Just for a moment,

To see that what is all of our thinking along these lines,

If not trying to resolve something that disturbed us,

So that all of our thinking,

All of it,

Rises up as something that is disturbing us.

Rises up as some form of initial resistance to a condition that we see as being painful.

And that all of the commensurate thought is to somehow or other bring an end to the conflict that we have with life that seems to produce these challenges to these ideas about ourselves,

About our life,

So that all of our thinking is trying endlessly to try and find a way to get rid of the pain that this mind is in,

Because it first became identified with some condition,

Circumstance,

Or relationship.

If you're following me,

As stunning as it is,

And really the point of this talk,

Is that apart from practical thinking,

Apart from thought that's necessary to make beans,

To figure out a plan to get from point A to B,

Apart from practical thought,

Thinking is painful.

We don't see it.

We don't see it because when we're thinking,

Our mind's eye is on the object that it believes when it acquires or achieves it,

It will escape the pain that is produced because of the first object that it became identified with,

The first image.

And we keep trying to bring an end to that pain by thinking through to another end.

A time when.

So let's look at this together.

I asked,

How are we ever going to be free?

Not how are we going to subjugate,

How are we going to push down thought,

How are we going to think beautiful thoughts.

How am I,

As a man,

As a woman,

How am I ever going to bring an end to this endless chain of associated thoughts and feelings that appear to support and sustain an unseen body,

A consciousness that is never seen.

A consciousness that is never not in conflict with the moment that for whatever reason seems to challenge who and what it thinks it is.

I'm not saying there aren't times when things are copacetic.

Of course they are.

But who wants a life that is copacetic two thirds of the time,

Or even 70.

Who wants that?

If at the drop of a hat,

Something changes,

Something is asked of me,

Something moves through me,

And at the drop of that hat,

Suddenly I can't stop thinking.

And the thing I'm trying to show you is,

And then I'm asking you to see,

Which you may or may not want to,

I get it.

Because I don't know who I am without taking thought.

Thought is the sensation.

It is the set of wheels unendingly rolling along,

That the friction between myself and the world that these wheels are trying to roll through and over and acquire and get to some place,

That's constant.

It's constant.

But I don't know it's constant because I'm never still enough to see how constant that thought is.

Forever trying,

You know the expression to push a square peg through a round hole.

What are all of these emotions?

Where does this anger come from?

Doesn't the anger come out of the fact that somehow or other a moment has come along?

It isn't the way that I wanted it to be.

And my anger proves to me that what I am and what I have come into that moment with,

That's what's valid.

And that what's invalid is what you said and what you did and how it went.

That's what's invalid.

So the anger is born out of resistance reaching a certain peak.

And the only reason that the resistance reaches peak after peak after peak after peak is because the mind asleep to itself never stops churning,

Trying to prove to itself that what's happening around it shouldn't be happening.

So that the struggle,

The conflict is between the certainty that belongs to an unconscious mind identified with the content of itself and the fact that something isn't agreeing with it.

There's no negative state without resistance.

And if there's no negative state without resistance,

Then that means that there would be no thinking about how to get away from that negative state unless there were something that I was resisting.

And I don't know how long that goes on for.

I'm speaking to you.

How long will I take thought?

Believing that taking thought is going to rescue me from the torment of my own thinking.

I asked,

How is it possible?

Can the mind,

Can the mind ever see its own limitation?

We know that other parts of ourselves can see the limitation in other parts of ourselves.

But how,

How can this mind,

How can this thinker come to an end unless something already present,

The light that dwells in the darkness,

The intelligence that dwells in the self-ignorance,

Unless there's something that can see what I'm describing,

Because I can't bring an end to thinking by thinking.

We want to bring an end to thinking by meditation.

You can't bring an end to thinking by meditation,

Because the purpose of meditation is seemingly to bring an end to the pain of thought.

So how can meditation,

Which becomes an ambition,

A motive to get rid of thought,

How can it do anything other than resist,

Be a form of resistance that seems intelligent and spiritual,

When in the truth is,

It is a form of ignorance,

Because I believe somehow or other I can subdue thought.

You can't subdue thought.

You're never going to make fear go away by imagining a time to come when you'll be fearless,

Because the very imagining and identifying with that time to come is in fact the action of fear,

The action of fear,

And you will meet that fear when the condition that you've imagined is challenged again.

And please don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I was interviewed yesterday,

A Zoom interview for some kind of podcast,

And he asked me,

What about meditation?

I said,

You know,

I said,

When is a flower a flower?

Is the flower in the bud?

Yes.

Well,

When the flower opens,

Is that a flower?

Yes.

How about when the flower opens its petals?

Is that a flower?

Yes.

How about when the petals fall off of the flower?

Is that still?

Yes.

Meaning that these things are all stages.

Our problem is that we get hung up on a stage.

And when I say stage,

I don't just mean a portion of time.

I mean,

The stage in which I see myself as someone who is this or that,

Failing to see that I became this or that in order to escape the this or that from before.

And so I'm always running from this to that,

That to this.

And I don't recognize that the distance between these images will never be resolved by the mind that created them.

And if the distance between the images,

Meaning I've yet to become this,

I've yet to escape that,

If that can never be overcome by the mind that created it,

Now you understand what all of this thinking is about.

It's a mind trying to reach an end to its own thinking by thinking about how to get to that end.

And when you see that,

And it isn't all at once,

You couldn't take it.

I heard this a thousand years ago.

If you saw everything at once,

You would faint.

You would just literally die if you saw it all at once.

By the grace of God,

We don't see it all at once,

Even though we need to see everything at once in scale.

So what would be a way to work with what I've described to you?

Well,

For one thing,

It would be to recognize how every time there's even the smallest disturbance,

Our spiritual retreat is to go into thought,

Hoping that in our thinking we can come up with something that will save us from the disturbance.

But the only place that thought can look,

The retreat of thought is the past.

But we don't see that everything that we retreat into is the past because the mind that retreats into it does so by imagining a time in the future when it won't be suffering from that conflict anymore.

And this is what has to be seen.

So that it is all at once,

But it's gradual.

You catch yourself starting to worry about something.

And rather than allow the thought about the problem to produce a person who's going to transcend it through acquiring or doing or rushing,

You've recognized the futility of trying to retreat into thought in order to escape the thing that's wrecking you in that moment,

Which is your own thinking.

You see it.

And for a split second,

As best you can,

Instead of allowing that image and identity to take over the moment,

You become quiet in that moment,

And you experience the thinking.

You experience the whole of that moment in which thought starts to race around.

We never catch thought at the starting line,

Do we?

It's always somewhere way the hell down that marathon where someone's handing us a cup of water and telling us,

Go on,

Go on,

You could do it.

No,

We want to gradually have the attention and the willingness to realize that thought endlessly tries to affirm the future it's imagined.

And in the affirmation of the time to come,

It,

As imagined,

Produces constantly the present moment in which the pain is there because the future has been challenged,

And quote,

By identity,

By some circumstance.

No,

I want to be at the starting line.

I want to see it when it starts to run.

I want to see it when that fear calls up what it says it must do in order to escape the fear that was produced by its own activity.

This is what we want,

And this is what we're given as human beings.

Unlike other creatures,

We have the capacity to be aware of our own thinking.

The deer outside my window,

Even as I'm speaking,

The turkeys,

They don't have any capacity to be aware of what their nature is impelling them to do,

Compelling them to do.

They have no such capacity.

They are simply a natural machine reacting naturally.

We are a natural machine who presently,

Because of our wrong relationship with imagination,

Are incorrectly acting.

But we can be aware of that so that to end this,

It is through a process of negation.

What man taking thought can add a cubit to his statue?

What was Christ saying?

He was saying,

Look,

You're not going to get rid of this anxiety by thinking about it.

So that the solution to the suffering isn't through affirming who you have to be,

What you have to do.

It's in the negation of the present relationship you have with your own mind.

It is the negation of that relationship with this incessant thinking.

Sufficient under the day is the evil thereof,

Meaning there's enough temptation in the day without taking thought.

Because the minute I start to take thought,

The only reason I'm taking thought is because I've been tempted to get away from something,

To acquire something else,

To get rid of the torment.

And believe me when I tell you that any man or woman who speaks of the things with which I speak to you about,

Who tells you otherwise is a liar,

And they want your money,

Or they want your soul.

They want your adulation.

I tell you that this is difficult.

But we are properly prepared to meet that difficulty as we become increasingly aware of how difficult it is to remain as we have been,

Thinking along the same lines we always think along,

Hoping to acquire or achieve something that's not a part of that line.

You start with pain,

You end with pain.

You start with fear,

You end with fear.

You start with anxiety,

You end with anxiety.

You start with rushing,

You end with rushing.

Because it's part of a continuum of an unconscious nature trying to escape the experience of itself through trying to remedialize,

What would be the word,

Through trying to reconfigure the content of itself.

It can't do it.

It can't do it.

Don't be afraid.

Don't be afraid to see your own thinking.

You are not the thinker.

You are not the thought.

The more clear that becomes to you because of your willingness to observe the thinker and the thought,

This unconscious stream,

The more you observe it,

The more you are released from your identification with it.

And the more you're released from your identification with this thinking man,

This thinking woman,

This endless constant pounding,

The more you realize it cannot bring you the peace it promises,

The nearer you are to surrendering it,

Giving it up,

Realizing something has to be sacrificed.

I always thought it was something I imagined.

No,

It isn't what has to be imagined to be sacrificed.

It is this imaginary nature that has to be sacrificed and it can be done.

See you tomorrow,

I hope.

I'll be talking about this in greater depth.

I speak on Wednesdays,

Saturdays here,

And then Sundays for free,

Nothing to join.

If you want to explore these things,

Come along on this journey.

You're welcome to come along.

Bye.

Reviews

This was informative and pleasant to hear. Thank you so much teacher