Monday, May 26, 2014

Cultivating an Alertness to Life Without Thinking


Greetings Sadhakas,

This week in class we will be exploring cultivating an alertness to life without thinking.

Reason is like an officer when the King appears. The officer then loses his power and hides himself. Reason is the shadow cast by God; God is the sun.

                                      – Jalaluddin Rumi

Thinking, however useful it may be at times, is not the highest human faculty; it is only a stage in development. If, for example, in the throes of evolution we had stopped with instinct, saying, "This is the highest possible mode of knowing," our human future would have been stunted: I would not be seated here writing these words, nor would you be reading them.

Like instinct, reason is only a way station. When friends and I go to San Francisco to see a play, we sometimes stop halfway along to stretch our legs. But we don't get so involved in stretching legs that we forget to go on to the theater. Thought is a useful but temporary stopping station; it should not be considered a permanent solution to the problems of living. Just as we were able to rise above instinct and to develop reason, we must one day pass beyond discursive thinking and enter into a higher mode of knowing.

We cannot solve the problems of the mind with the mind. We cannot solve our problems by thinking about them, analyzing them, talking about them. In meditation, we often simply leave personal problems behind - we move out of the neighborhood where they live.

Words to Live By: Inspiration for Every Day – Eknath Easwaran

The homework is to use your Yoga practices to encourage a state of being, or an alertness to life without thinking.

Blessings,

paul cheek
Rushing Water Yoga
417 NE Birch St., Camas, WA 98607
360.834.5994
www.rushingwateryoga.com
info@rushingwateryoga.com

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