On a Sudden Feeling About Thinking

Suddenly it came to me tonight, that guiding my conscious action through universal flow by paying attention to my intuition and all signs actually means more than surrendering all belief in thought. It means surrendering thought itself. Too often in an attempt to listen to intuition, I end up analyzing it with thought, which is a little like listening to music with my eyes.

I came across (in the flow we call the web) this by Gina Lake on the subject:

The egoic mind has difficulty seeing the flow in events because it is usually too busy planning for some future event or ruminating about the past. The need to do something arises out of the flow and the ego takes it on as its personal mission. Using the past as a guide and other information it has gathered for how it will proceed, it creates a plan for action. It decides exactly how and when it will do it, not realizing that the flow already has a plan. The ego assumes a plan is needed and that providing it is its job.

The ego doesn’t perceive that anything worthwhile is coming out of the flow. It discounts or disregards many of the insights, solutions, and urges to act that arise from essence. It assumes that it is the only player here, and it convinces you of this too.

It even seems this way because the flow’s timing is not what the ego would like. The flow has its own timing, which is not revealed before it happens. The ego assumes it needs to take control of life because it often seems like nothing is happening, and it is very unhappy with that. Almost anything seems better than that. The ego is at odds with the natural ebb and flow of life, and it pushes and tries to make life conform to its schedule. It is impatient with life as it is.

The flow has a plan, which unlike the egoic mind’s, will bring you the life you are meant for, but you don’t know what that plan is until it is time for you to know. The good news is that you don’t need to know before you do. The egoic mind wants to, of course, because knowing helps it feel safe, but you don’t really need a plan. You just need to wait for the next step to be revealed. There is nothing you need to figure out, although the egoic mind will not be convinced of this. Your job is just to give your attention to what is and allow the flow to show you what it wants next from you.

When you are in the flow, you are a responsive instrument of essence. You respond to the urges, inspiration, and knowing that come out of the flow. For this, you need minimal thinking. Far more important than thinking is listening because it puts you in a receptive state. Listening brings you into the flow, while thinking takes you out of it.

~Gina Lake from 'Return to Essence'

This feels exactly right, and I can tell you from my current life situation how difficult is is sometimes to reign in the egoic need for Something To Happen, and especially for not knowing the Timing of the flow, yet still Trusting in it. In many ways, this is where the rubber of awakening meets the road of the dream. You can almost smell the mind burning.

Triangulating the Dream

Triangulation is a proven way of locating an unknown point. Therefore, it’s useful in spirituality, where not only is the point unknown, but can never be known with the mind.

The Hindu speak of the Ultimate as Sat-Chit-Ananda, or Being, Consciousness, Bliss. It’s not either of them, of course, nor is it just a combination of the three. But they are three pointers used to aim from different locations towards a position within their center.

In this way, I have attempted to define Conscious Dreaming for my own purposes. Many speak to the fact that life is an illusion, or a dream. When that is understood, life, or the dream, remains to be lived.

This involves Surrender, Attention, Guidance

The first pointer is Surrender. To this effect, Adyashanti calls spirituality a surrender game. To triangulate this point itself, I see three modes of surrender. There is surrendering belief in all thought. There is surrendering one’s own personality and ego, or the fact that there’s any doer. And then there is surrendering all doing itself.

The second pointer is Attention. First, listen to your intuition, your insights, your sixth sense (not your thoughts). Second, listen and look for external signs, influence, synchronicities. Lastly, be open to revelation.

The third pointer is Guidance. Some would call this action, but since there’s no doing and no doer, I prefer to use this expression. First, act as if you’re acting, while going with the flow. And second and third, to quote Van Morrison, don’t push the river, but don’t pull any punches.

The Paradox of Doing

We pride ourselves on free will. But that’s an illusion like all illusion.

A tree grows in the direction of the sun and veers with wind and snow and a thousand other deflections.

Add a million thoughts to the brew, and there we are.

But nothing is random; everything is part of the overall pattern.

So there is nothing to do but surrender. Any other so-called doing only causes friction, suffering. And even that is part of the overall pattern.

Then we play our parts the best we can. We pay attention to intuition and influence, insight and signs, and guide our movements accordingly, knowing full well there’s nothing else we can do. In fact, there’s absolutely nothing we can do.

And so we do it. No regrets and no attachment: it’s all part of the the pattern after all.

The Art of Lucid Dreaming

There is an art to living that many point to. This summary is the result of months of query into the second dreaming that follows an initial waking, and to my mind, this is an important conclusion of sorts. Or rather a new beginning. The key elements are the following:

1. Surrender
After understanding that all is consciousness, surrender happens. Such surrender is the same as letting go the ego. But there are years and years of conditioning here, and the ego will still come and go, like a wayward thought arising in the mind. Simply not believing it is the active side of surrender.

2. Attention
Things happen in the manifest world in which we dream that invite our attention. Without, there are influences and signs (even synchronicities). Within, there are insights and intuitions (even clairvoyances). All of these are simply the foretellings of consciousness, ripples around the waves. Pay them attention. Or not.

3. Guidance
We appear to do within the dream. Like a canoe streaming in the rapids, we can attend to the insight and signs, guide our movement (this is where thought becomes our tool and not some mighty poor internal substitute for attention), and facilitate the journey. Or we can ignore them and suffer a rough ride. One way or the other, we are heading downstream the dream.

Surrender. Attention. Guidance. These are the three primary practices of lucid dreaming. Use them well when you find yourself outside the monastery, ashram, or cave.