This saved my sanity. And maybe my life.
In my work with people, sometimes themes appear, and recently it’s been “stopping thinking.”
Flashbacks of my own run-on thinking arose when I saw people either breaking down crying or nonstop speaking, without stopping for a gasp for air.
And I remembered the shocking discovery that I could just …stop.
I stopped crying… and later discovered that
I can stop thinking.
All human beings can.
I didn’t know that I could, so I wondered if they knew.
So I said stop.
The response was… Huh? Whaa?
And a somewhat surprised, stunned silence arose as the action of crying stopped and the storm subsided.
It may have been the first time they heard that they could stop. And experienced it. They did it!
Some people might think it’s strange to tell someone they can stop crying, or that it’s inconsiderate, or rude or uncaring—but it couldn’t be more the opposite.
Compassion is relating to the pain of suffering, and the wish that someone not suffer.
If you can help someone to stop thinking, hurting, and suffering then wouldn’t you want to?
Of course, they had to trust me, and follow my instructions. And they did.
I recall as a child and young adult the thought and belief that I couldn’t stop crying, that I just had to “get it out.”
These memories were triggered when working with the most serious cases, people in so much pain that they became suicidal.
Every sufferer made the same errors:
…thinking that crying and suffering were necessary—or worse, that it gave them relief.
They believed that they had to “get it all out.”
In reality that never happened.
The next day and sometimes the same day, they started suffering all over again.
You would think that if it were true that they just “had to get it out” that once they did, and got it all out, it would stop once and for all.
But it didn’t. All this idea and practice does is to get you good at suffering, good at shutting out the real world, and good at suffering the mind.
It’s that very idea that actually perpetuates suffering—locking you in with no way out, so long as that idea is held as true by you.
I did feel better after crying—but that didn’t mean I had to cry to feel better
It also feels good to stop banging your thumb with a hammer. But that doesn’t mean you had to bang it.
It means crying is stressful and no fun, and so it’s better not to.
And that also doesn’t mean to suppress a wave of crying energy that is already here.
It means to be present to what is in the moment, without perpetuating more of it.
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Tayor said it takes 90 seconds for an emotional impulse to run it’s course through your body.
Whatever feeling or energy is here will pass, given 90 seconds, if left alone.
If not repeated.
If not fed more fuel.
And of course, if you continue to do this, it will hang around a lot longer, and can even get worse, in what I call the degeneration of thinking-feeling.
Being present
So what does “being present to what is” in the moment mean?
“What is” in the moment includes both what appears and is felt in the mind, AND the reality of what you are actually seeing, hearing, and touching, smelling, and tasting.
Reality is the door to a different experience and other possibilities than suffering the contents currently playing in the mind.
To be present to “what is” is to be aware of everything, with nothing excluded.
But this is not what we do when suffering. Instead, we shut down the real world, we turn away from it and appear to eliminate it and all of our other options in the moment.
We swap thinking for reality
And think we have to think it. We think that somewhere in that thinking we’ll find the solution so we can stop suffering.
When the solution IS to stop thinking, because thinking the mind as if it’s real—is to suffer.
Pain is your friend
The pain caused by living in the unreal mind, like physical pain when touching a hot stove, is trying to wake you up, to get you to stop doing that.
Bad thought-feelings are like arrows; once launched, they have energy and movement, a direction, and a slowing speed.
These arrows have a rope attached, such that their speed and direction can be altered.
They will, in due course, drop and stop, provided you don’t keep picking them back up and shooting them again.
But we do. Most people spend most of their day unconsciously thinking, and don’t know it.
That’s by definition the meaning of unconscious—to be not knowing. Not aware.
Awareness of thinking
What I suggest for crying is the best advice I got from a monk, after my father died of suicide.
And that was to practice open-eyed crying.
To stay awake and aware of reality, to stay in sense contact, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting—even as the tears flowed.
That is in contrast to what we usually do, which is crumple down into a tight ball, closing our eyes and shutting the real world out, exchanging it as fully as possible with the suffering, contracted, and limited world of the mind.
That hurts—it’s brutal. And it perpetuates contraction, suffering, and the unconscious helpless idea that “I have no choice.”
The first time I practiced open-eyed crying was strange indeed.
Sitting straight up, letting out a wail, eyes welled up while looking out at a watery world just beyond a wall of water. Tears streaming down my face.
I was very conscious that I was crying, and recognized the whole time that there was something not crying… and there was an alternative…
I didn’t have to ‘do thinking’
I didn’t have to look at the ugly images in my mind, I didn’t have to listen to the brutal thoughts in my head, or watch the painful videos there.
I saw that the real world was not painful at all. I saw the option to pay attention to it—and to not suffer the mind.
Grounding in the senses can keep you present and open to more than just the mind.
This is how and why suffering is optional. It’s because the mind, the source of suffering, is optional.
The contraction which leads to unconscious elimination of almost all of reality is optional.
What we experience depends on what we are touching with our power of attention (and what we’re doing with our other four powers).
How and why is it we can just stop crying, and even thinking?
Because it is a thing we are doing. It takes effort to do these things, and when the effort stops, the activity stops. And then the experience stops.
Our natural state is effortless. And so when we stop putting that thinking effort in, the storm passes, and we return to our natural peaceful state.
It doesn’t take effort; it takes lack of effort.
We always (think) we need to put in effort; effort to stop hurting, and effort to feel good. And this effort we put in is thinking.
How to correct this backward idea and stop ‘doing thinking’?
People want guideposts of where they are, what they are doing right or wrong, and to know “where they are” on the spiritual path, and what they should be doing next.
The great sage Ramana Maharshi gave clear and simple instructions.
On Thursday’s webinar, this problem of “not knowing where I am on the path,” arose.
The question reminded me of the only thing I heard Ramana say on the topic.
I searched for the exact quote while on the webinar but the conversation moved in another direction.
And I never shared the quote, so here it is…
“The degree of freedom from unwanted thoughts and the degree of concentration on a single thought are the measures to gauge spiritual progress.”
– Ramana Maharshi
When you concentrate on “stop” you are developing your power to be still.
Exercise your freedom from thought
You are exercising your freedom from thought.
This is in effect what mantras do, fill the mind with one thing, such that nothing else can enter.
Ultimately, we want an open and aware mind which is not cluttered with movies in the mind but is available to what is in the moment, every moment.
Not thinking the Movie in the Mind™
This means to remain open, not contracted into one particular movie, which we can play and replay in the mind. So, not playing the mind at all.
Only from there are you available to the discovery of who and what you actually are.
Because you are not a character in your movies in the mind; your mental self-image is not yourself.
The natural way to be is NOT constantly thinking—and yet this is the common experience of most people.
The mind is not meant for that. It’s a tool to be picked up and used when needed, then put back down.
It’s tiring and stressful to be constantly thinking. Constantly thinking, we lose touch with reality.
We become so thoroughly accustomed to thinking the mind that we can become unfamiliar with the real world.
Thoughts are not things, not the real
Then we can be disturbed when mind does stop, and we notice, for the first time, that we just took an action without a thought—wondering how that is possible.
Having mistaken ourselves for thought, we can even freak out when we realize thought stopped, as we in the next moment wonder (think) “Where did I go?”
Well of course, you were here—that’s how you know mind stopped.
You were just not here as (if you are) the mind.
You have never been here as the mind.
Mind has been here with you.
It’s only because the mind has been here, simultaneously, with your constant presence, running nearly nonstop—that you confused yourself, what you are, with thought and thinking.
Why the world is suffering
Modern new-age spiritual guidance, coaching, and psychology are all operating on the level of content or stories of mind, and so are about engaging the mind, and thinking.
They are not pointing to your capacity to wake up altogether from streaming and dreaming the mind.
This is why society is suffering rising stress, anxiety, drug use, depression, and suicide rates.
This is why I’ve devoted my life to this work, to reverse that trend.
For the sanity, happiness, and maybe even survival, of humanity.
Will you do your part? Because dreaming is contagious, and so is waking up.
Your very awake presence has an effect in the moment. You are needed to help make a difference.
Bonus!—you get to feel good, and maybe even realize who and what you actually are.
Cindy
PS—Next time I’ll discuss how and why there’s no such thing as “unwanted thoughts,” and what that means.
What can you do to wake yourself up and become a light for others?