Transcription
Time, Thought, and Equanimity: Part Two.
In the previous video, we began discussing the connection between time, thought, and equanimity. You might want to take a look at that video if you haven't yet. We discussed the evolution of the experience of presence by practitioners. Meaning, when we first hear about presence or the now, we still hear it from a place of being the one who's never in the now, who's never present, who lives in a timeline. That's not just a belief; it's our experience. It's a visceral experience.
And then we hear about the presence or now that's available and get a little taste of it, and it feels like respite. But we're still very much experiencing ourselves as a person in time. And then, as our realization progresses, it shifts to something where we have periods of presence intermixed with periods of feeling like that person in the timeline. At this point, a type of contemplation or inquiry can be very valuable, that I described in the first video, and we're going to clarify that more in this video.
So, as we discussed, when we're sitting and we're feeling like contemplating this phenomenon of time and self and thought, it can be helpful to turn your attention to the thought field, the thought space, consciousness, and just notice whatever thought is there. If a lot of thoughts are moving through, just grab one. Grab a thought. Take a look at it. Define it if it's a vague thought, because the thoughts are coming quickly and they're kind of merging into an organic flow of mind identification. And just grab any thought. Maybe the thought says, "Well, I like sitting and contemplating this stuff, but I really gotta get out and mow the lawn." Whatever. If that's the thought, fine. Just, just pull it a little closer, right?
You could say thoughts are like movies on a screen, on the internal movie screen, in a sense. They have a visual component, they have an auditory component. You also have a physical component, but that's not so much up on the screen as you feel it in the body. So, just grab that thought. Pull it closer. Tell it you want it to be here. Give it permission to be here fully in your experience. Let it be the center of your experience. Let it be the most important thing there is. This one thought about, "Well, I like being here doing this, and it seems valuable, but I got to go out and mow the lawn, right?" I'm imagining what that will look like when I do that. The image comes of me mowing the lawn, and then the narrative follows. "Yeah, no, I really got to get out and do that. I feel a little bit of pressure to do that, right? Like I should be managing my timeline a little better." That's what the thought seems to suggest, or the feeling associated with it.
Great. So the thought is here now. For a minute, without moving our attention from the thought, we're contemplating further. Let's just keep our attention on that thought. And instead of listening to the story of it, or the narrative, or where it seems to point, let's explore the texture of the thought itself. What is it made of? Isn't that interesting? Sort of like, if you've been watching a movie in a movie theater for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, however long you've been around doing this, but you've never stopped to actually ask yourself, "What's casting the picture onto the screen? What is the nature of that light? What is the nature of those forms and colors and images?" And then you start walking up to the screen and looking closer, and you see those images start to blur out, but you can see they're made out of something, out of a certain kind of substance, a luminous substance, a radiant substance, light.
At some point, you may be curious enough to turn around and start looking into the projector, seeing what it looks like to look into the pure light. You can do this with thought. You can look at the stuff it's made out of closely enough. Where's the edge of the thought? Where's the thought turn into the substance that the thought is appearing in? I might call it consciousness, but it doesn't need a name. Just look at the edge of the thought. Keep it right there.
Now, if you're trying to do this and you find yourself continuing to think, or more thoughts seem to come, so it's hard to hold on to one thought, that's fine. Just grab the next thought. For instance, if a thought says, "Oh, well, this sounds like a great practice, but my thoughts come too fast for this to happen. I'm having a lot of thoughts." Okay, great. That's the next thought. That's the thought, "I can't do this practice right now because I have too many thoughts." If that's the thought, fine. Let's just stop with that. Let's just focus on that thought. Repeat it to yourself if you have to. Remind yourself what the thought is: "I can't contemplate thoughts right now because I have too many thoughts." And that's just one thought, isn't it? Isn't that fascinating? It seemed like more than that, didn't it? It seemed like it was spanning more time than it was actually taking up.
Thoughts have this funny way of seeming to bridge time, which suggests there is time, which makes you feel like you're in time. But if you look closely, there's just one thought. There's no bridge. There's a suggestion, and the suggestion presupposes time, so we just believe it. But when you see that, without believing the story, the bridge, "Oh, I'm here, and you know, I'm being pulled into there or into the future through thoughts," yeah, that bridge of time, you see, "Oh, that's one thought right now, one belief." Then you realize there's no bridge, and then you realize there's no time. So here you are, back again.
So let's just look at what's happening. Let's look at that thought closely, closely, closely. So that's what you do if the thoughts continue or you find yourself in the thought stream again. Just grab the nearest thought, belief, and focus your attention right on it. Zoom right into it. What is it made of? What is the thought stuff? It's kind of spacious, kind of like light. Light that can shine on an object and seemingly turn and shine on a different object. But that's an illusion of the movement on the screen. Just like in the movies, those aren't people up there, those aren't objects, times, and spaces. It's just one screen. But because of the movement, it gives the appearance of time, of events past and future. But ultimately, it's just light moving around on a screen.
Now, our thoughts are the same way. Look at the light of the thoughts. What are they made of? What is this one thought made of? And the key is to keep that one thought in focus, or at least keep your attention on it. Keep your interest on it. Can you see where it blends into its surroundings? Can you find that? Don't think about this; you gotta do it. Like your walk again, like you're walking up to the screen. Where's the light blend out into the surrounding that which seems to be making contrast so that I can see it as an image? Can I find the dividing line? Can I even find the dividing line between all of that, the image, and the surrounding as they start to blur together? And the sense of the one looking, the sense of the one looking is also made out of that light, that spaciousness. It's all one big spaciousness. And where is that happening? Here. Where could it ever happen but here? There's no alternative. This is it. This here-ness, this now-ness, is presence. You've never left it.
But keep looking. Keep contemplating the texture of thought and consciousness. Consciousness being the space right now in which you're experiencing the thought. Is it the same thought, or has another thought appeared? If another thought has appeared, that's great. Let's give it permission to be the center of our attention. Let's zoom in. Let's get closer. What is it? What is it made out of? Again, we're not trying to conceptualize this. I'm not asking for a specific answer or words in your mind. I mean, feel into it. Closer, closer, closer. It's that mist of formlessness forming into images of the mind or words in the mind. Do you see how the words can be quieter or louder? The words of thoughts, the internal narrative, your self-speak, they kind of come out of nowhere or out of this light of consciousness and fade back into it.
And again, where can this happen? Only the one place that ever did happen, right here. These images are always here. These narratives are always here. How could they be in a past or future? Where is the past and a future? Only when one of these thoughts form and suggest it. But other than that occurrence, have you ever had an evidence of a past or future? So there's just this spaciousness of awakeness, knowing, even if there's no object of knowing, that's consciousness. It can even completely stop now, remaining here without creating objects of thought. Where have you ever been but here? Where could you ever go but here?
What is time outside of forming one more thought in this space and then believing its story? What is time? It doesn't exist. It literally doesn't exist. Time, or the belief in time, and even feeling of time, requires a thought. Without a thought, there's no time. So now there is only presence. There can only be presence. To call it presence or now is completely unnecessary. Why is it unnecessary? Because there's no alternative. Even a thought is not an alternative to now, because a thought also happens now and could never happen any other time or place.
So this understanding of presence, this experiential insight, hopefully, if you followed it through, is very important. This is the ground for equanimity. It's impossible to feel peace and equanimity when we believe there's a past and a future to manage, because equanimity is the nature of presence. Equanimity means reality doesn't push or pull on itself. It can't, because there's only this. There's nothing to push or pull on, and that is deeply peaceful. So to forget that, we have to start believing thoughts, and then we have to forget that time only exists in thoughts, and then when we feel out of time, like time is spanning this moment somehow, which is impossible, from an impossible past to an impossible future, and then we feel like an agent that has to manage that past or that future, of course, that's uncomfortable because it's impossible. It'll never happen because it doesn't exist. It's a dream.
So paradoxically, when you wake up, it feels very dreamy. It feels very peaceful, very light. Presence is endless. It's the most enjoyable thing, of course, because it is just what it is. Just this.