My room o’sanctuary calls. Like tendrils grabbing my attention in the mist. Time to meditate.
Stepping onto the dark bamboo floor, I enter the room. Desert mauve walls, daytime blue ceiling, a yoga mat in the center of the room, and my meditation mat in a quiet corner. Three vinyasa sequences break through my stiff body and enliven the breath. I sit on a small pillow lengthening my posture, eyes closing on the exhale.
Meditation begins on the inhale. My day of work. Thoughts, not keyboards. Awareness instead of politics, yet memories of work surface. Why? Follow the breath, not thoughts.
Leave thoughts be. Don’t bother them and they won’t bother me. We’re human, we think. Let thoughts flow. In they come and out they go with the breath, the fear, the death.
Meditation isn’t about silencing thought, it’s about separating from thought, from the physical world, from anything not you. Breath and practice decoupled my senses. Last year, the itch on my ear broke meditation. Now, the itch is a feeling, separate from me.
Thoughts swirl; I observe. If I can separate, then are my thoughts… not me? I’m separate from my thoughts.
Here I am. I found myself. My self. My body rests in the room o’sanctuary, yet I’m here. Me. And my thoughts. Are thoughts, mine? Whose are they?
A thought snaps past me. Yellow, lime flashes gone. Don’t climb aboard. Let it flow on its way. Another and another assault obedience, entice slavery. ‘Follow.’
From where do thoughts emerge? They dare entrance, ownership over me. I am here, thoughts are here, and we’re separate.
Reaching for the depth I trace a thought back to its origin. Where did you come from? Show me your secret lair.
A thought swirls into form and launches, trajectory. Unencumbered by other thoughts around it or me. None of us divert or obey.
Picking a thought from the pool, I climb aboard tracing its path back, back, back, to another thought? A tangent? You came from another thought?
Traveling the web toward the source, other thoughts bullet pass me. Where did you come from? I stay with this one thought disregarding its progress, focusing on its start.
A thought of deceit flashes a smile in my direction, as it rounds the bend and explodes into the distance. Not fast enough. I rocket toward it, toward our society, the Caged Jungle. Bars and strings, puppets and the mundane.
I stare at it, through it, and dive toward its beginning. Show yourself. Pressure builds in my head, meditation slips. A glimmer, a flash, a thought. Many thoughts. These aren’t only mine.
Stay with the breath. Inhale clean air. Hold it. Let it sooth the throat and swim the lungs. I recognize some thoughts as mine, that one there. Others are foreign. How did they get here?
I’m not my thoughts. I’m certainly not other peoples’ thoughts. A cavern’s mouth opens, I enter. My thoughts pulse, other peoples’ thoughts pulse, I observe. We all reside in comfort, agony, torment, joy.
How often do I recount other peoples’ thoughts? They bounce around and gain control. How often do I follow? How often do they construct my world?
I repeat other peoples’ words far too often. We learn from examples. Parents, family, friends, foes, teachers, social media, music, movies, government, religion. People we love, fear, admire, loathe. How many thoughts are mine? How many songs do I sing? How many originate from me?
We travel the earth with our thoughts and other peoples’ thoughts. Much like the world comprised of people, our brains comprised of thought. From love to fear, it’s all in there.
If I build a world of love, will another person build a world of fear? Will my help fall victim to another’s duplicity? Will I walk into a trap? Yeah, maybe.
How often were my actions, merely reactions? How often did I toil in other peoples’ prisons?
I’m not alone in this world, and my thoughts aren’t alone in my head. Searching for the root of thought, I exhaled fear, inhaled love, and discovered other peoples’ thoughts.
If we can separate ourselves from thoughts, then we’re not our thoughts or other peoples’ thoughts. We don’t need to follow them. And not just in meditation.
Thought is why life exists and our effort constructs the world following thought. We build the world based on other peoples’ thoughts in addition to our own.
Every influence grabs our attention, takes up residence in our brains. Let abusive relationships fade. Let people who drag you down race out of existence. Surround yourself with people who act and think the way you want to act and think. Those who surround us, influence us. We repeat their words in our heads, their thoughts contribute to our filters and decision-making.
My effort builds a world based on love and fear. But I’m separate from my thoughts and others’ thoughts. Who am I? The builder? Stay with the breath, with life. Separate construction from purpose. How do I make decisions in a sea of thought?
Does it matter whose thought I follow, mine or someone else’s if the thought derives from Love? Only ego binds construction to my thoughts alone. A thought is neither me nor anyone else.
Decisions based on Love with the Confidence to carry through vs decisions based on Fear with Pride to camouflage the ego. Decision-making comes down to Love and Fear, as it always has, regardless the individual. Pick the thoughts to follow, and those to let go.