We might be better off if we didn't think.
Personally, I find that the less I think about things, the more they seem to flow.
An essential part of this is giving up, more and more, the whole notion about how life is supposed to look this way or that way. When we're willing for it to go however it wants to go, something is released inside.
Ponder it, if you like: What would your life be like if you simply didn't have any thoughts?
Often we imagine that our life would simply fall apart. But that doesn't seem to be the case. There seems to be something much more intelligent than our rational mind at work, but it's not pushy at all. If we want to run our lives with our own ideas about things, we can do that.
(Well, actually we can't, because we're not in control of anything and never were running the show even when we thought we were. And that's not even to mention that we don't actually exist as the separate beings we think we are. But all that's another story.)
In the dimension where we appear to be separate beings that appear to be making decisions, we can run our lives with our stories and beliefs and thoughts. And we do; that's normally what we do.
But life can happen another way. Each of us, every now and then, gets a glimpse of what life can be like without thought. Suddenly a sunset happens to catch our eye and we're speechless for a moment. Or something so horrible or so beautiful happens that we're momentarily stunned out of our stories.
Then the moment exists just as itself, with nothing added, nothing taken away and no judgments about what it is or should be. This realm of action-without-thought is the realm of our inner guidance, discussed elsewhere in these articles. It is also the realm accessed through a deepening silence inside.
The Buddha advised us to slow down. As we do so, we notice the bare moment more and more. We notice our experience as just what it is, neither good nor bad—just its own suchness. And in that very suchness, mundane and ordinary as dirt, resides the glimpse of divinity.
—jim sloman, fall 2000 for May 9
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