an abundance of good thoughts. It is equally true that pollution of your mind by negative or bad thoughts results in a poisoned mind and body. Yet what is overlooked is that, at the core, there is always peaceful, unmoving awareness. What you overlook is that who you truly are is already at peace. Winning and losing have nothing to do with the truth of who you are.
The balancing and re-balancing and re-forming and re-inventing of what you call "me" is only a thought, with another thought processed on top of that, and then another thought. The thoughts of who you are come from two powers of mind: the power of remembering the past and the power of projecting into the future. Thoughts of past and future create the present thought of who you are.
As thoughts arise, you have a choice. Your mind can either follow the thoughts or be still, letting them arise without touching them. My invitation is to stop: to not build thought upon thought, to not fantasize or replay old events. The choice is for the mind to be still, and in that choice is the possibility of recognizing what is always still, whether there are thoughts or no thoughts.
The moment of recognizing what cannot be thought is the moment of recognizing who you are. It is a moment of the mind's surrender to silence. The only obstacle to realizing the truth of who you are is thinking who you are. It is really that simple.
The huge suffering of personal identification is centered around what does not even exist. The story of who you are does not actually exist. Personal identification begins with a thought, a thought that gathers power because it is bowed to and practiced daily. Then other thoughts are collected to support it, to augment it, and to attempt to perfect it.
Who you are thought to be is imagined, fabricated from a string of thoughts, a mind-generated character. When who you are thought to be is examined fully, it is discovered to be nothing.
Personal identification has to do with a "me" — a body, an ego getting what it wants. Maybe the body wants more food, more shelter, or more clothing. Maybe the ego wants more power, more status, more recognition, more enlightenment. Anyone can look in their life and see how this drive for more, if it is out of balance, can keep them from recognizing the perfect joy and fulfillment of simply existing. Even without ever having more of anything, if this moment is fully met, in this moment there is more than enough of the bliss of
being. But as long as there is an attachment to the story of an individual who needs to get more and keep more, the absolute fulfillment that is always present as the truth of our being will be overlooked.
In the past, it was a great rarity when someone stepped forth to speak of what is eternal, of what cannot be lost, of what is already the truth of who we are. And in general, those who have spoken of this have been misunderstood. The way that most people heard them was based on the hope: "If I get what this great being is saying, then I will have what this great being has, and it can never be taken away from me." Then all energy was directed toward trying to get something or trying to figure something out. I invite you to do neither. I invite you to simply investigate directly within yourself to see what is already immortal, already presently here, already the truth of who you are.
This article appeared in the Nov/Dec 2005 issue of the Sacred Pathways Magazine and has been reproduced here with the permission of that magazine.