So this morning I was reading some of the audio taped dialogues on the AFT and came across this one - It Is Either Silly Or Sensible. Richard suggests a little ‘thought exercise’ which I actually gave a go and found it very interesting, (relevant bit copied below) :
"Would you like to? It is fun! You start off with an original thought – you may be silent for a while and a thought pops into your head – and you take particular notice of what that thought is. Put a mental circle around it, or some stars or something, to lock that original thought securely. Then just let your thought wander … you wander with your thoughts … following them through to wherever they go. You will go off into a side branch … and that will branch off into another side branch … and into another and another … and so on. Then you are completely lost. This is the normal way of thinking.
Your thoughts meander. Learn to catch yourself meandering; let the meandering go on and after a period of time – three or four minutes – take note. Think to yourself: ‘Wow, where am I at? Where did I start in all this?’ Then you come back to that original thought that you marked and locked in securely. You start with that thought again. Once more, let your thought proceed … this time you will meander off in another direction … and off along another branch … and another … and so on. Once again catch yourself after a while; you may say: ‘Oh, that is interesting, I went off into a side-track there!’ Come back to your original thought that you put a circle around and you will find that it has progressed a little – before you started to meander for the second time you proceeded a short way. So you put a ring around that and – it is so lovely to do this – and then eventually you will be able to follow a thought right through to its very end. And when you do get to the end, some magic can happen. It is so wonderful to do this! You can spend an hour or two doing this; following a thought, meandering, coming back, wandering again, coming back … and so forth"
I remember reading that page a long time ago and I didn’t really bother to try this properly but today I gave it a good go just like Richard suggests and it did lead to something pretty magical!
I followed a thought through its path and watched it meander and a few things became clear. First of all the meandering is this brain making sense of the world, it is considering new data, pursuing new lines of enquiry, re-assessing already existing information etc and this happens completely of its own accord, it is the way thought naturally operates, ‘I’ am not required for this at all.
Secondly and this is related to the first point ‘I’ am actually a spanner in the works. I could see as the thought meandered that it would eventually bump into a part of ‘me’, it would inevitably trigger an emotion which would then set off secondary emotional responses etc.
It is quite funny really because ‘I’ so passionately feel in charge of this life and yet from this experiment I can see actually it is the other way around. This brain is marvellously capable of processing information all of its own accord, the ‘me’ who feels in control of this process is actually the thing stopping it from running smoothly!
This little experiment has left me contemplating a big question, “what am I still here for?”. I have read Richard mention this before and I have understood it to an extent, that ‘I’ am not necessary. But to see it so clearly that even the complex thought processes happen of their own accord has caused a big shift in seeing for me.
I would be interested to see if anyone gives this a go and their findings.