The Walking Antenna
La Antena Andante
A question about the stickiness of thoughts, and why they alone seem troublesome when the rest of experience feels open. The dialogue examines whether thoughts are truly ours, and how the narrative of "doing" gets mistaken for the driver of action.
The Walking Antenna
A question about the stickiness of thoughts, and why they alone seem troublesome when the rest of experience feels open. The dialogue examines whether thoughts are truly ours, and how the narrative of "doing" gets mistaken for the driver of action.
When I look at thoughts, most of the time a thinker pops up at the same time. I know there's a gap, but it's hard to see that there are just sensations. That's where the stickiness is.
You're saying "just thoughts, just sensations," as opposed to what feels real. But what does feel real?
Everything, but thoughts feel troublesome. It feels like everything else in experience isn't troublesome. Does that make sense?
Yes, it does. But I want to get very specific about your answer. Can you describe what is troublesome?
It seems that it's thoughts, more than anything, that create this illusion of separation. It's difficult to detach. It feels easy for most of the rest of experience, but not so much for thoughts.
Beginning from no separation
Why not begin from the position that there is no separation? You're describing the illusion of separation objectively, in a way that almost sounds conceptual. I'd like to see if you can describe it experientially.
That's tricky. I guess there's an expectation that when there's a sense of me, then there's a sense of separation. But maybe that's not true.
What is the sense of me?
It's not like fear. It's hard to say. It's like a cloud.
If you're noticing it, if you can describe it, is it you?
Well, it's been a habit for so long.
Don't go to that. That's thought. I'm talking about right now, in your experience.
It's really hard to pin down, because it's not really there.
But then you hop on the mind train, believing that you believe in separation. That's just popping onto an idea, which is different. The idea that you believe in separation isn't the belief itself. What I'm pointing to is that you've seen through this illusion significantly. The illusion has many layers, but you've seen more than you're acknowledging, and you still have ideas about what it's like. Those ideas aren't truly aligned to your experience. Whenever I bring you back to your experience, out of your ideas about your experience, you see it clearly, or clearly enough for the level we're working at.
The belief about the belief
The beliefs about the belief. I don't quite get that.
This is talked about so much in this circle: the belief in separation, the belief in separation, the belief in separation. And so that itself becomes a belief. There's a whole narrative around the belief in separation, as opposed to what that belief actually is. The belief doesn't operate on a separate level. It operates when I bring you to your actual current experience. That's where separation would operate. But when I ask you specifically, you don't see the separation. There are different levels of subtlety, but at the level we're talking about, you don't describe an experience that is illusory.
No, I know that. But then what's the difference?
That's why, at this stage, you need to be more refined. It becomes more subtle.
I sense that. So I've been trying to meditate on thoughts, on the substance of thought, and that's a really difficult part.
What is the trouble? A minute ago you said there was trouble. What is it?
The stickiness of thoughts.
Perfect. Now tell me exactly: what is the stickiness of thoughts, in your experience right now?
It's not there right now.
Then from memory, how is it?
It's getting caught. There's a sense of thought patterns being reflective of trauma, maybe addiction.
Ideas about the ideas
So it's the idea about the ideas. There are thoughts appearing, and then there are ideas around those thoughts having meaning. If I have thoughts about this and that, then I look at the pattern of thinking, and then I have an interpretation: "Oh, that must mean there's something like addiction," and so on.
Maybe. I don't hold it too tightly, but recently I have a sense that it's a load of validation thoughts, a load of thoughts that make me get a dopamine hit, all that kind of thing.
All of that is relatively possible. The patterns of thought do reflect aspects of the psyche and past things to work through. That's valid. But right now I want to focus on seeing more clearly the relationship with thoughts, with thoughts themselves, with the mind itself. The moment thoughts appear, one attributes meaning to them, and also attributes ownership: "These are my thoughts, they're reflective of me in some way."
Now, what if what you are is a walking antenna, a radio receiving thoughts from all kinds of places? Some are more personally tailored, some come from the person next to you, some from the collective society. It's all just an ocean of thought coming and going like waves. Can you prove to me that this isn't the case? What evidence is there that thoughts are really yours, had by you, reflective of you, versus this other hypothesis: that they arise from somewhere you cannot locate? Thought by thought, individually, you cannot know where it originated.
No. It's assumed, for sure.
It's assumed. That's the belief. Because with that belief, when a thought appears that says "I believe in separation," that becomes meaningful and important, because it's my thought and it's saying something about me.
Most of the thoughts are relevant to the old story of "me," though.
And if you live in society, I guarantee that a lot of the thoughts you're having come from other minds.
Wouldn't that be more obvious? I wouldn't think that.
It's not obvious. It only becomes obvious when you have a significant, almost scientific event that proves it. For example, telepathy. To modern science, that's an impossibility, but these are situations that have happened to me.
That has happened to me as well, with my dad in particular. I would pick up his thoughts. But that's really obvious.
Yes. Now extrapolate that to any thought. Any thought that appears, there's no evidence that it's yours, or that it has any meaning or value about you. It's like the television is on, the radio is on, and it goes with you wherever you go. It's a receiver of not just what's happening in your body-mind, but also what's happening in everything around you. If you walk into a stadium for one of those very aggressive football teams, you're going to have a very specific kind of thought pattern that isn't normal to you.
What about thoughts like "I'm looking forward to getting that thing I just purchased"?
My point is: what if none of them are about you?
When you say "you," who do you mean?
The thought about food
You could have a thought referring to a want, like "I want to eat something." That thought refers to the body-mind. But you could reach for food without the thought. The thought appearing creates the sense that there's an entity here who had the thought about food and is therefore going to grasp it. All of that could be an impersonal reflection on what's happening, and completely unnecessary. Not only unnecessary, but ignorable, because it isn't meaningful.
The interpretation becomes: the thought is the driver of the decision and of the grasping of food. What I'm getting at is that no thoughts are meaningful in the sense of having any truth about you, and they aren't necessarily arising from the body-mind either.
Is it helpful to explore where they arise in experience?
Not really, because you already see this. They arise and they fade. They arise out of nowhere. They are empty. An image comes and goes, a sound, a color, a shape. Look at the thought itself. "I want food, I'm going to get food." It seems there's something meaningful there, and that the narrative is the reason the movement toward food happens. But if you look at the thought, it's only a kaleidoscope of images, imagined sensations, and sounds.
Do we need the narrative?
We know that animals don't have rational thought. Do they need an inner dialogue in order to eat? So why would we need that inner dialogue in order to eat? Why does it seem like the thought is the driver, so important?
It's just an old habit, so it feels like it comes secondly.
It is a habit, but it's not that we ever needed the thought. The habit is to bring the tool of the mind and apply it where it isn't useful. When problems need to be worked out, the complexity of rational thought is useful. But then there's the imagination of "I, I, I doing something," and the habit becomes: everything happening now is a commentary, and the commentary is the driver of the action. It gets flipped upside down.
The action is like walking. Even when we learn to walk, there's no thought in the sense of narrative. There's obviously active mind development, but a toddler isn't thinking "right foot forward, left foot forward." Similarly, there can be a reaching for a glass of water without the narrative "I want water, I will reach." From the experience of reaching for and drinking the water, it's happening on its own, and there's the sensation of doing. It's both. There's no need for a narrative. What happens is the narrative appears and is then believed to be the driver, as if I have to have an inner dialogue in order to make a choice, and as if the inner dialogue is the choice.
The fear of letting go
This came up in the meditation. When I inquired about letting go of thoughts altogether, there was definitely a sense of fear. Something scared me: "How will anything get done?" But it's obvious that this really obvious stuff gets done without them. There's an underlying fear there.
That's the sense of control. It's a self-fulfilling loop. I believe myself to be something that I'm not, but the creation of the narrative creates the thought of the narrative, and the thought-narrative creates the sense of an entity, the imagined entity. It's the image "me" in the mind. That's different from, say, reaching to sip tea right now: there's the experience of the reaching, and the sense of doing. Both are present at the same time. It's happening spontaneously, effortlessly, as nature, as the universe, and there's a sense of doing simultaneously, but no narrative or comment.
Is that any different from any other movement in experience?
No, it's not. I use it as an example because with something that simple, you can really test the false beliefs. You can test: do I really have to have an inner narrative in order for that to happen? By testing it and seeing it in your experience, you'll find the commentary is after the fact, or on the fly, and is then assumed to be the thing creating the movement. That's what's upside down. What we are is doing, but not through a process of narrative thinking.
Doing and non-doing
I want to return to the doing, and also the non-doing. It's happening spontaneously, and at the same time there is the sense of doing. That cannot be pulled apart. When it's put into language, there needs to be the paradox of doing and non-doing simultaneously.
That doesn't quite land. Is there another way of saying it?
I'm trying to avoid creating more beliefs around this. One might then expect to have no sensation of doing when we speak about non-doing, or about action happening spontaneously. What I'm pointing to is the narrative: "I will now go get food," then you go and get it, and then the assumption that the narrative created the action, that it's an important narrative, and that this habit creates the ongoing imagination of the subject and the thinking about that image.
So where is the doing in it?
Doing is happening.
The doing is the non-doing?
That's what I'm pointing to. It's both. It's happening. What I'm trying to dispel is a series of beliefs that aren't actually about separation. If you describe your experience, you don't describe it from the veil of separation, not entirely. But there's still a belief in the mechanics of functioning, and it's helpful to see that assumption.
I'll explore further.
You're welcome. I know what I'm pointing to is a bit complex, but it's really about the remaining beliefs regarding what the mind is, what thoughts are.
I like what you said about the red ball that floats around. Just like that.
It's a mirage. It's a reflection. We can obviously engage in dialogue; there's usefulness for thought in problem solving. The conceptual mind is really good for all kinds of problem solving. But in moment-to-moment daily living, ninety-five percent of thinking is irrelevant reflection, and not necessarily yours. It's mixed with a great deal of the thought-space of society.
Thank you very much.