You are not the thinker

True freedom is the realization that you are not the thinker. We all think too much, and we don’t feel enough. We all listen to podcasts and audio books. We watch or listen to the news. We talk about current events and other daily issues with the people in our lives and rarely do we stop to realize that we all just need to do is simply get out of our own way. The answers are all around us.

Ego, dogma, mis and dis information are deadly to the overall growth and ascension of the human species. We all think from this place way too much. It’s time to wipe away all the mess that gets created when we think that we are the thinker.

We tend to reflect about what we have been told. Whether we hear about it from a church, or a school, or perhaps during a public lecture we may have attended, or even the talking heads from the news or podcasts we frequent. We usually garner new information from someone else and rarely follow up ourselves to delve deeper and find our own perspectives through our own research of a topic or concept. Although, there are some who do take time to do further investigation into interests rather than simply listening, agreeing, and conceding to an opinion that we then accept as our own.

This morning during a cup of tea there was a knock on the front door. It was a younger couple who wanted to discuss religion as they, and a handful of others from their group, meandered their way through our neighborhood. The young man asked, as the door opened, if he might ask a question.

“May I ask you who you go to when you are in a time despair and need to ask someone for assistance?” The young man queried.

“I go to my close friends. My spouse.”

“Have you ever asked Jesus or reach for the bible? Might I read you a verse in the bible that discusses this?”

“No. I don’t believe that we see things quite the same way. You see, I find my solace and my spirituality in something that was not dictated to me. Not something that was told to me by someone else. Not the bible which was written and edited by different men over thousands of years. My church is nature. My god lies within myself and the nature of all things. Not through the dogmas of other people telling me what to think or feel. I feel things myself. As we take this time as an example, religion and the dogmas of them, are the reason we are in so much war and destruction between Palestine and Israel. I think we have a fundamentally different approach to our spirituality.”

There was a bit more of an exchange, but the two canvassers soon left to head to their next address.

My wife mentioned that she respected what they were doing and that she respected the dedication to their beliefs but are on disparate sides of the tracks.

I responded with, “I think people would better benefit if they spent that time challenging their beliefs. You did that for them there. It’s just whether they stop to think about that or not. Beliefs should be challenged rather than accepting the dogma or the party line. If you challenge your belief and open yourself up to whatever answers subsequently then show up for you your religion and spirituality will be much better served for you no matter the outcome.

We tend to be a product of our environment. If you were born in the United States, there is a big chance you are of a Christian faith. If you were born in Ireland, Greece or Russia, there is a big chance that you are catholic. If you were born in India, you are probably Hindu. If you are from Thailand, China, or Bali perhaps you are Buddhist. If you were born in the Middle East, you would tend to be Muslim. If you were born in…You get the idea. There are over 3000 gods worshiped throughout our global history.

We all tend to think that our way is THE way, however, that dogma that belief structure that most of us subsequently cling to for the rest of our lives is simply due to proximity and the place we were born on this planet. The idea that “My god is better and more real than your god!” is what has created more death on this planet than anything else.

To all of us money is the most prominent and most adhered to God in the history of the world. The dogma of money and capitalism is a god everyone believes in across the globe. That is outside of any Amazonian or micronesian island tribes that have yet to be disturbed by our modern way of life. The god we call money has certainly created more death than any other religion.

The travesty of what is happening with Palestine and Israel most would say is based on a religious deity dilemma. And for some it is. For the bigger systems at play though, I say, it is due to the exercise of the military industrial complex and oil. Or rather money and the control of it. So, again, we reach the god of money. We must reach higher as a species. If we don’t it might soon escalate to a nuclear situation that could end most of humanity. We sit on the edge of the abyss.

“The moment you start watching the thinker a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought and that though is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all the things that truly matter – beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace – arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken.” ~ Eckhart Tolle

Many years ago I spent a handful of years working with the multi-Grammy winning, Rock and roll Hall of Fame inductee, Carlos Santana. There was a time in the recording studio when he was working out another amazing guitar solo, but Carlos wasn’t quite getting the results he was looking for. The rest of the band, whom were also house hold names in the world of music, had completed their tracks and Carlos was recording his parts over the other recorded tracks. A production process called overdubbing. He brought in the other musicians that day to “play along” with him in the studio while he was laying down his tracks to give him the feel of them being played “live”. Something wasn’t working.

He called them all into the control room to have a listen. Carlos was deep in thought as he listened back to the song. He asked the studio engineer to stop the tape. He turned to everyone in the sound booth and said, “What I want to do is that we all envision a lotus flower opening up to the morning sun. There is a small drop of dew that is hanging at the edge of the pedal. The drop of dew begins to fall off the pedal. There is a small motion of relief as the flower reacts to the weight of the dew leaving its pedal.”

The band all smile and nod all knowing that their tracks are already complete. This type of conversation is not something out of the ordinary for these players as that many have spent years working with the likes of Miles Davis as well. The use of visualization is what is behind much of some of the world’s greatest music and the artists that make it.

The band went in to the studio. Carlos recorded a solo that would become another platinum selling and Grammy winning song. When the band came back into the control room there were high-fives all around. The smile on Carlos’ face was priceless. He sat down on the couch next to me at the back of the room. As he leaned over me to another person who was sitting on the couch asking “what the hell just happened?” Carlos replied, “It was just a matter of creating something that would get us out out our own way.”

The energy of the universe moves through us constantly. Neutrinos, protons, electrons, atoms, anti-matter and dark matter are flowing through us always. The universal energy that guides us is always available to us if we can just get out of our own way. This is what George Lucas meant when Obi Wan Kanobi would say to Luke “Use the Force, Luke!” It guides us. We just need to get out of our own way.