3 Powerful Benefits of Waking From the Dream of Thought
Thoughts are fantasies, not dreams.
It lasted only a minute before the dream devoured me once again. It happened last night, as I meditated:
I woke up.
It snuck up on me — in one sudden moment, I was pure awareness and completely without thought. It was the most profound experience in recent memory.
Imagine being dead drunk, taking a pill, and getting instantly sober. Consider the sudden difference in clarity you’d feel snapping out of drunken haziness into clear sobriety. Think of that first clear moment afterward — the clarity, calmness, and focus you’d experience in that instant. Now, remove any distracting thoughts.
That’s what it was like.
From Clouds to Clear Sky
I settled in for the daily meditation from the Waking Up app. But I was distracted as I sat. My mind buzzed with thoughts, my body with sensations. I was in a cloud of distraction, struggling not to struggle with it.
But after a few minutes of concentration, the sky cleared. I experienced what Sam Harris and Jack Kornfield describe as ‘thought cessation’ — a gap in the chain of thought, revealing pure awareness. And while this wasn’t ‘enlightenment’ (whatever that is)…
