Attribution

Important note: All the posts on this blog were written by Bob Harwood (AKA 'zendancer') on the forum spiritualteachers.proboards.com. I have merely reposted a collection of them in blog format for the convenience of seekers. Some very small mods were made on occasion to make posts readable outside of the forum setting they were made in.

Most organisms function without thought.

An amoeba is intelligent even though it has no brain. It is only one cell, yet it eats food, excretes waste, moves away from dangers, etc. "Higher" forms of life likewise function without thought (as far as we know). Humans, and a few other evolutionarily-advanced forms of life, utilize imagination--thoughts, which is like having a personal computer and graphics generator wired into the organism. Imagination is extremely powerful and allows us to simulate the world around us through mental models, but most people get attached to their thoughts, and that is where the trouble lies. They believe that their thoughts are true. Because they never question the validity of their thoughts, they are jerked around by their thoughts like helpless puppets. The path of non-duality leads to freedom from thought--the ability to think without being attached to what is thought. Some of us call this "non-abidance in mind."

The most powerful unquestioned thought for most people is "I am a separate entity, a person; I have an identity, a name, and a personal story." None of this is true. It is all an illusion. The truth cannot be imagined; anything that can be imagined is not the truth. If you go far enough on the path of Self-discovery, you will discover (and I am here using words only to POINT to what you will discover) that who and what you ARE is infinite and whole. In Christian terms there is only God, and you are one-with THAT. Who you THNK you are is not who you are. You are not a human being; you are what sees human beings.