Relationship With Thought

That state of consciousness that is not caught in the compulsive state of mind, compulsive thinking, that state of consciousness which is outside of compulsive thinking, that is the state of awakening. That is the state of enlightenment. That’s why they call it pure consciousness. It’s just pure. It’s  just pure perception. Pure awareness. No compulsive labeling. To most human beings we have to label everything. Everything is good or bad or beautiful or ugly or everyone is right or wrong or safe or not safe.

Everything in the dream state of consciousness is compulsively labeled. We know what should and shouldn’t be happening. We know what should and shouldn’t have happen. It’s all the sort of compulsive nature of thinking. And the simplest way to talk about awakening is one wakes up from that. And as soon as we wake up from that, what we realize, not intellectually realize, our whole being realizes….there’s no truth in it. There’s no truth in that compulsive nature of thought.

There’s no truth in ones thoughts about themselves, or others, or the world, or anything else. It doesn’t mean you can’t think. You can still think. It doesn’t mean a thought never comes through your brain. Thoughts can still come through your brain, but it means that your sense of reality of what is true is no longer derived from the compulsive movement of thought. And then there is pure perception, pure consciousness. There is no interpretation. This is what unconditioned is.

Unconditioned in a practical way, in a way that relates on a human level just means not translating, not judging, not getting caught in the minds matrix, because the mind is always translating experience, and so the pure state of consciousness is when we’re perceiving from outside of that whole movement. Whether that movement is happening or not doesn’t much matter. 

~by Adyashanti

Squelch the Little Label Maker In Your Mind

It’s amazing to uncover that you can spend an entire lifetime and never know yourself at all, but rather only know a perception of yourself. A projected self image (ego) which virtually has nothing to do with who and what you are. Likewise people pass in and out of our lives every day. We talk to them, we eat lunch with them, we go to work with them and most of what we know and think about them are merely thoughts and perceptions.

"They are like that", "she is this way," "He’s a republican," "She’s a liberal." Label after label, we cast them upon those around us and remain blind to the very people before our eyes. In turn, almost everyone else is also walking around with perceptions of themselves and with perceptions about you and I, that are nothing more than fiction.

It’s like we’re all in virtual bumper cars bouncing off each other without ever truly making contact. The endless stream of labels and perceptions we cast upon each other, perpetually keeps us immersed in a world of delusion in regards to our relationship with the universe around us and to the common bond we all share.

The next time you find yourself at odds with somebody, try and squelch the little label maker in your mind and just see the person as they are. In silence we can uncover: that the differences just don't exist. They were never really there to begin with.

Our thoughts and perceptions are made of nothing. They have no substance at all other than the life we breathe into them. If you look long enough at those around you and let the labels fall away back into the nothingness from which they came, eventually you may find yourself here in this moment, looking straight back upon yourself through their eyes.

As we learn to listen and watch without labeling one another, our common thread shines through and through.

~Written by Russell Satori