Thursday,
September 7, 2017
Before I retired back in 2015 I
used to teach a course called “Creativity for Artists, Writers and Musicians”
in the Fine Arts department of my college. The course was quite popular, and it
was designed to be a transformative experience for the students who took it.
Many still write me to let me know how much influence it has had on their
ongoing lives. I thought it might be good for me to include some of its
materials in my regular reflections, since that material was designed to foster
spiritual development as well as creative and artistic development. This is the
first installment.
One of the very first concepts I
introduced in the course was a simple sentence that I wrote on the blackboard
without explanation:
You are not your thoughts.
This also happens to be one of
the first things we learn when we begin to practice meditation. We sit in
stillness and simply observe what develops as we try to bring our minds to
silence while focusing on our breathing.
A continual stream of varied
thoughts passes through our minds, and for once we choose to simply let them
pass like a train passing through a station. As we observe the thoughts but
don’t get involved in following them wherever they take us, we discover a
certain freedom—the freedom to choose whether or not to entertain them or to be
dragged here and there by the content of the thoughts. In doing this, we
discover that it is true: we are not our thoughts. We are the thinkers of the
thoughts, and we can indeed allow them to pass through us.
More thoughts will follow, as if
there were a tape recorder running in our heads which can’t be turned off. Or
can it? Even momentarily. Just bring your attention back to your breath.
Silence is so important for us,
so that we can get free of the dominating force that overwhelms us and brings
us to places where we would often prefer not to go. In the silence, we can rest
and experience freedom from the noise of the world, and from the noise of our
own minds.
Proverbs 11:12 “an intelligent person remains silent”
Aim for that intelligence.
God bless you!
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