Think Less - Understand More
Think Less, So You Can Understand More…
The sentence spewed out of my mouth during a client session with someone who has a very high IQ and has earned huge sums of money using his very intelligent brain. The trouble is that he finds it difficult to shut off his intelligent brain to allow for rest and inspiration.
He could be on vacation, in the perfect weather, in a beautiful place with a free week to do anything his heart yearns for, and the money to do whatever that yearning tells him to! He could be seated overlooking the turquoise blue ocean, drink in hand, a woman who loves him right next to him, yet he’s up in his thinking about what he did at work last week — how he could have, should have, done better and how much he despises his brain for reminding him of all his so-called shortcomings. He gets so worked up he’s ready to jump into the ocean in the hopes there is a big shark nearby to gobble him up so he doesn’t have to contend with his incessant thoughts anymore!
This may seem far-fetched but most humans do this (to whatever degree they do it) and they do it to themselves! Now don’t get me wrong — no one actually thinks against themselves, and the world, on purpose. Might as well just hit your head with a hammer.
Even though no one escapes pesky thoughts, everyone is born with freewill. We can (and do) leave some of our thoughts alone — they come and they go. There is no possible way for us to hang onto every thought — one thought takes the place of the last thought and so on, throughout every day.
So the question arises — why do some people take their thoughts less seriously than others? Are they just lucky — maybe they are born with a little escape hatch in their brain or there is more space in their head for thoughts to go in one ear and out the other and some people have thorns in their skull where thoughts stick and they can’t be released until they die of old age. I know, this sounds corny — but I hope to make the point that x-rays prove we all have very similar skulls and brains. And thoughts have no substance — they are invisible, until we speak or act on them.
In the late 80’s, I learned that there are principles that explain how we get an experience of life. As a child, I had this idea that everyone’s experience of life is beamed into them from somewhere. I felt completely helpless, that I had no say in what I experienced. When I learned a little bit about the Principles of Mind, Consciousness and Thought, it was like a lightbulb lit up for me. The more I have tested it out in the last 30+ years I have seen more and more that we are not in control of what happens out in the world, but we are in control of how we take it. I look around and I see people taking things way more seriously than I could ever imagine and others take things I think are pretty serious, with a light heart.
Understanding how we work helps guide us through difficulties in life. Understanding the human operating system is extraordinarily helpful…
Sydney Banks articulated innate health and 3 Principles in talks and books:
“Mind is the universal intelligence behind life (the source of everything) Thought is the ability to create through our thinking. Consciousness is the awareness of what we create.”
Thought is the ABILITY to think — it doesn’t care what you think
Consciousness is the ABILITY to be aware of what you think — it doesn’t care what you think
So then, why do you care so much about what you think, or what others think for that matter?
Now Mind — The Universal intelligence behind all life — that’s something to consider - realize, reflect upon, understand, become aware of. I think of it as pure Wisdom, uncontaminated by any one’s thinking.
We now know that the ability to calm ourselves is in an inherent ability to pay little or no attention to a thought that is not beneficial. We do that all day long automatically. If we paid attention to every thought we wouldn’t get anything accomplished all day!
I have found it really hard to hear what Mind/Wisdom has to offer me when I’m caught up in my personal thinking. Have you had experiences where you realized you were caught up in your frivolous thoughts and you missed something really BIG? it’s as though Mind is always speaking to us if we’d just quiet down enough to hear it. I have learned the value in quieting my personal mind (my ego) so I can hear Universal Mind (a quiet intelligence) it makes for a much more satisfying life.
I have found that in the moments I’m not caught up in my personal thinking, I’m more available for others. I’ve been working a lot with a variety of “Listening Projects” online and in a variety of countries. We talk about the value of listening to people who speak to us with nothing on our mind so we can really HEAR them! This means listening with no judgment, no criticism, no need to change their mind, or fix them. Just listen from their heart to your heart to understand what THEY are experiencing — not how it affects you — you won’t be affected by what someone else thinks (unless you think about it) since we can only, ever, experience our own thinking. But you can always love them no matter what they are thinking/experiencing.
Hence: It makes sense to rely less on what we think so we can understand at a deeper level than our own conditioned ways of thinking.
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