Thinking the Practice….

There is a difference between thinking and listening to the letters that arise from a vibration. This is true whether the vibration is yours or you are empathizing with someone else’s. Letting whatever comes up come up from your vibration does not mean imposing letters or images on that vibration.

This is a literal practice. The letters arise from the vibration. The images arise from the vibration. This takes a long time to get to. You have to first be willing to just be with the vibration and let the vibration be merely a pleasant or unpleasant vibration; let the vibration be what it is. Gradually, the letters and images will arise if you are steady in your practice.

Your honest answer can take two forms: the honest answer from your head, and one that arises from your vibration. When we decide what is right and good, we will tend to listen to the answer in our head and deny what comes from our vibrations. Doing this causes a great disconnect, and we never get free.

Depending on where we are listening, we may believe we are authentic when we are in our heads. In this case, we are actually listening to our system, and therefore may not be acting appropriately. At the very least, we will not feel authentic to others, though we believe we are.

What tends to happen is: we have a feeling. We don’t like it, we deny it. We stuff it. Instead of feeling, we think feeling thoughts. We impose letters that make a story that has nothing to do with what we actually feel. And because of the amazing system that we create with our letters, we determine the way to behave: the activity that looks appropriate in our system. We don’t want to give that story up. We think it’s normal. We think it’s real. And so we fight to sustain it.

Our thinking is what imprisons us. We don’t know this, and we actually believe we are practicing. Until we are willing to stop thinking the practice and begin to feel whatever we are feeling, true sādhana is not even an option. And feeling does not mean swimming in our emotions; it means being willing to be, and actually being, with our vibrations of the moment. When we are thinking the practice, we are imagining our lives, not living them.

As long as we remain within our fantasy story, everything will seem to make sense. But it only makes sense in our heads. If we see everything in terms of our fantasy story, we will never see anything clearly. When does any scripture say that imagining the life we prefer is going to free us? Never.

Part of that fantasy story is the manufacturing of self-esteem, which is really just the shrunken self’s idea of itself. Self-esteem is a thought construct that agrees with a group of thought constructs. Good self-esteem is a thought construct that we like, and low self-esteem is one we don’t like. We are still just thinking. So many people believe that spiritual practice is reaching good self-esteem, when in truth it is letting go of all the letters that go into self-esteem.

There is good reason why all traditions and scriptures tell us to let go of our thinking. And yet we do not listen. We believe our thinking is good thinking. Until we are willing to just be with our experience, whatever it is, moment to moment, and let whatever comes up from that experience come up, we will only be practicing an idea that keeps us in our heads. The scriptures exhort us to let go of our thoughts in order for Love to arise and inform our lives. We should heed that instruction.