nithig
3-24-11, 3:44pm
I suppose the Greeks made thinking fashionable. After all they had the greatest intellectual society the world had know. Im not sure what happened during the dark ages but thinking was really revived by the Renaissance and then later by the science which emerged in the 17c. Somehow the prejudice sunk into western civilisation that thinking was the highest faculty, that those with 'big brains' were better than the rest of us.
We inherited that prejudice and perhaps like me you went through years & years of accumulating 'stuff' (long quotes of poetry, chemistry formulae, the names of rivers & capitals ... and all that). We were told that development of the mind was the best thing we could do & so we did out best.... we trained the mind (or so we believed).
For what? Where did all that education get you? (& I'm not referring to careers etc)
It turns out that we were sold a furphy ... the mind isn't our greatest asset. In fact it's not even our friend. The mind is a brick wall & somehow we have to get around it if we want to discover the numinous; if we want to realise our one-ness with the All.
Thus we're programmed to think, even after we realise that this won't get us anywhere.
We'll never solve 'life' by thought, will never contact Spirit with thought, will never gain the answers to those spiritual questions we carry.
Isn't that, in a way, quite funny. We can't help being thinking creatures while at the same time knowing that this activity is, in spiritual terms, a waste of time. Gradually it daws on us what the Orientals have been saying; what the vision of Enoch was saying ..... It is in silence & stillness that the All arises. It is when the lake is calm without wind that it reflects the moon. And to beat it all we finally discover that the natural state of mind is stillness, quiet, calm & when it is quiescent then it can reflect reality.
I forget which poet called mind "the ignuus fatuus" (the empty fire) but he wasn't wrong,
but try not to think too much about it!
We inherited that prejudice and perhaps like me you went through years & years of accumulating 'stuff' (long quotes of poetry, chemistry formulae, the names of rivers & capitals ... and all that). We were told that development of the mind was the best thing we could do & so we did out best.... we trained the mind (or so we believed).
For what? Where did all that education get you? (& I'm not referring to careers etc)
It turns out that we were sold a furphy ... the mind isn't our greatest asset. In fact it's not even our friend. The mind is a brick wall & somehow we have to get around it if we want to discover the numinous; if we want to realise our one-ness with the All.
Thus we're programmed to think, even after we realise that this won't get us anywhere.
We'll never solve 'life' by thought, will never contact Spirit with thought, will never gain the answers to those spiritual questions we carry.
Isn't that, in a way, quite funny. We can't help being thinking creatures while at the same time knowing that this activity is, in spiritual terms, a waste of time. Gradually it daws on us what the Orientals have been saying; what the vision of Enoch was saying ..... It is in silence & stillness that the All arises. It is when the lake is calm without wind that it reflects the moon. And to beat it all we finally discover that the natural state of mind is stillness, quiet, calm & when it is quiescent then it can reflect reality.
I forget which poet called mind "the ignuus fatuus" (the empty fire) but he wasn't wrong,
but try not to think too much about it!