Saturday, January 22, 2011

Evolution and the thinking mind.

Plants don’t think
and they don’t trot around as the animals do.

Animals and plants have no language.
Animals can communicate with sounds and gestures
but they don’t know how to philosophize,
make plans and crack jokes.

Without your thinking mind
you would have been some kind of thin-haired ape.

Language and the thinking mind is a precious gift
or an evolutionary invention
depending on how you look at it.
The thinking mind makes us human
but it is also driving us crazy.
There is so much suffering and despair in the world
because of mean thoughts and idiotic ideas.

The Buddhists say that the mind can calm down
only after many years of intense meditation practice.
(more than eight hours a day).
It is possible to end the suffering, yes,
but you have to put your back to it.

Eckhart Tolle believes that more and more people
will experience a spontaneous spiritual awakening
and that this awakening is another natural step in the evolution.
All the stupid and terrible thoughts that drag you down
will miraculously disappear overnight when you wake up
and you don’t have to do anything about it.

I believe that we can’t get rid of our stupid thoughts
no matter how much we try
and I am skeptic about the spontaneous spiritual awakening.
This happens obviously to some people
but to me it is just a concept.

What we can do, I have found,
is that we can learn how to deal with thoughts and ideas.
My experience is that things improve
when we discover that thoughts are just thoughts
and ideas are just ideas -not truths.
This is just a thought.
This is just an idea.
This is not the truth.

It is like when you wake up in the morning
and realize that the dream was just a dream.

You have to keep this in mind all day long.
When a thought pops up
and when you notice that you hold on to an idea
remember that they are just thoughts
fantasies, dreams.

This discovery makes life so much easier.