THE IMPORTANCE OF EXAMINING VS. BELIEVING YOUR THOUGHTS
“It’s important to get a handle on your thinking process because it’s the belief in the thoughts themselves, and the action of the thinking process itself, that is the cause of the illusion. It’s the cause of why we believe that the self is more than just an idea. We don’t examine the thoughts as they come up, we automatically believe them.”
-Chris “Buddhist Sympathizer”
MICHAEL: The sense of a “me” (to whom the thought seems to refer to) is created out of thin air every time a thought is believed.
Have you ever come back to a spiritual teacher and suddenly heard them in a new, deeper, more profound way?
I heard Vernon Howard several years ago but he didn’t knock me over (because I understood so little of what he was actually saying). However, now? Now I find his teaching to be one of the most direct and compassionate, because he doesn’t BS around one iota.
You are not what you think you are, you are not the imposter self that you currently take yourself to be. What’s more, you are in love with your imposter self and thus your suffering continues right up to this very moment!
That until you are 100% clear that YOU are the problem, no one else, the suffering will continue. Only when you admit you are totally helpless and clueless and can do nothing whatsoever via your own power… when you at long last give it up totally and completely, that is the first step towards real freedom. “I can of mine own self do nothing.” -John 5:30
Michael Jeffreys
p.s. Below is a youtube link to one of Vernon’s many amazing and life changing talks, Lose Helplessness And Find Real Power.
“Your thoughts do not belong to you at all.” -Vernon Howard
Whatever thought says you are, you truly aren’t. You are much, much greater. Whatever thought says someone else is, they’re truly not. They’re much, much greater. Whatever thought says is happening, truly isn’t.
It’s much, much greater.
This was the question I asked at the beginning of last Wednesday night’s West LA weekly Satsang.
“What is a THOUGHT?”
The mere sincere asking of this question brought a stillness over the room. This is because when asked from a place of genuine curiosity and having no pre-conceived answer, it stops the mind dead in its tracks. Why? Because it suddenly hits you that you don’t really know what a THOUGHT is!!? Yet, we are told the brain produces as many as 60-70 thousand per day… doesn’t it strike you as more than a bit strange to believe something that you don’t know what it actually is??
THOUGHTS have nothing to offer you. They are impotent. Imagine if you had been pushing a big red button on a wall all your life and then one day I took you on the other side of the wall and you saw just two loose wires hanging in the air. The button was never connected to anything!! Once you clearly saw this, how much longer would you continue to push the button? In fact, how much longer would you be even interested in thinking about pushing the button?? You wouldn’t. It would lose your interest.
Once you lose interest in your thoughts, what’s left??
Michael Jeffreys
“Even the slightest thought immerses a man in sorrow; when devoid of all thoughts he enjoys imperishable bliss.” –Yoga Vasishta Sara
Michael Jeffreys 