Outshining Thoughts!
Yall. I have been on a wild ride these past months. A more accurate way to say it might be I have stepped off a particular kind of ride. Or god/nature has gently removed me from a particular kind of ride. It certainly does not feel like I have elected this, because I couldn’t have even imagined it was possible!
It’s not possible to describe what it feels like. Serenity is a word that can point to it, but it’s much more alive feeling than that. Not identifying with my thoughts might be a buddhist way of saying it, but that sounds boring or dry and this is more fascinating than anything else that has happened so far in my life.
Everything is the same (as in my life circumstances are the same) and nothing is the same (as in my inner experience of life is vastly different). I’ve been experimenting with ways of sharing it, because I have such a joyful desire to share it - I want to give it as much as possible (although it is not mine)! Mostly I’ve been trying to describe it in a context - for example - getting a contrast MRI on my hip, or waiting for my kids to get from the car to the house.
The shocker for me is how frequent this open, serene feeling arises. I feel as if I am nothing and therefore everything, or everything and therefore nothing. I feel transparent, like everything runs through me, nothing gets stuck. If something does get stuck, immediately I notice, because it is a contrast to my recent frequent sense of life, and I think: Oh! Here you are! Sacred disturbance, you’re here to show me where there is opacity, and how to bring light to it to unwind it into transparency.
The action in these instances is a paradox because it’s a kind of nonaction. Or not the action I would have thought. The action is an energy, which I’ll summarize in the thought: “you can be here as long as you need to. Fear arising about your child, and his future for example - it can stay as long as is necessary. Nothing at all needs to be done about it.” Something like that. And the more fully and truly I welcome it, with no strings, no timeline, the more quickly I watch it unfurl back into air, back into wherever energy goes… (these kinds of sentences really require ellipses.)
In every instance when one of these emotions like fear arises as I’m describing, if there is an outward action that can be taken which would contribute to the situation, I will take it. But a very different kind of energy is behind it.
There’s a lifetime of writing that could happen about this, at the same time that no words capture it, but one small step at a time for now! The main point of sharing all of the above is to share the best phrase I’ve heard for how we might practice this further. It inspires me and I wanted to share it with you in case it inspires you.
I’ve been vibing with Eckhart Tolle lately. He has been teaching for 30 years and has so much free teaching on youtube, etc. Recommend. Especially his book The Power of Now.
The phrase I heard him say was “outshining thoughts.” This makes me want to burst it’s so good. Because for years I’ve been trying to get thoughts to stop, from ideas that I heard or interpreted through learning to meditate, efforting, some idea that I needed to achieve a certain state with my mind, that it should be able to focus, that it should stop having such painful thoughts, that I should should should etc etc etc.
To me outshining thoughts describes the truth of it so well, to catch the vibe of what the “goal” is, for lack of a better word.
All of the thoughts are there. In the miracle of this serene season I’m in, none of the thoughts I thought needed to go away, have gone away. But the volume, or the spatial ratio they take up has shifted. When I notice them I think, oh, there you are! You’re a little thought! Like noticing a rolly polly instead of a tiger. My “negative” thoughts appear like rolly pollies, which obviously I need to do nothing about except say hello. I keep being shocked at how many of them I used to think were tigers, and now I see I dressed them up like that, gave them more power than they actually had or needed.
So the sensation that I used to get more infrequently, only when I looked at a sunset, or big old trees, is the sensation through which I outshine my thoughts. It’s not really “I” by the way but let’s not make it too complicated. I connect to that place where I remember the beauty, and breathe it in. Feel the fullness of it. No analysis, no problem solving, no problems. Just pause it. And in the pause of that mind habit, the shining gets to take up more space.
I’m not trying to get any thoughts to go away. I’m not trying to get them to stop, to get away from them. I’m outshining them through turning my attention toward the shining. The feeling of shining. The vastness of shining. Who knows what it is that is shining hahahaha, but that is the gerund of awakening, for me, today: outshining!
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The last thing I want to touch on (for now) is doubt. For as long as I have been trying to meditate, or find more peace, or have a spiritual life, a life filled with life, I have doubted. I have doubted that that is possible. I have doubted especially that that is possible for people who don’t live in monastic cultures, for people who are moms, for people who live in 2026 in the usa, for people who live in a world which manufactures plastic flowers and or bombs, etc. I have doubted that it is even a thing that happens to anyone. So if and when I have experienced peace, my mind has always said, you have no idea when this will end, and it will probably end. Thereby taking me out of the peace hahahahaha. I’m laughing because our minds are ridiculous often, but it has been so painful at times, the dry deadening energy of doubt. Maybe you relate.
If and when doubt arises again, hopefully I will remember to read this to remind myself that it needs to be welcomed. The paradox is, if it has any chance of leaving, it must be welcomed wholly.
Right now I feel no doubt that awakening is possible, because I feel awake to the miracle beyond words that is life here and now. I have been gifted this experience where I can see the vast difference between how the world looks when I am “awake” and when I am not, which clarifies to me that it’s an internal process. It is shaped through external experiences, and there really isn’t a binary of internal and external. But what I mean by an internal process is it can only be found in oneself, in myself, (which is not really myself).
This is why so much spiritual writing is so annoying! Hahahahaha. I promise I am trying to not be difficult. Even the shortest word we have - “I” - is a summarizing and reduction so great it’s hard to get past it to continue on with the content of the writing.
Let me try again: right now I don’t feel any doubt that we’re here to awaken. I don’t know how to define what it means to awaken, but the feeling of it as I understand it in this moment is reality appears as a miracle instead of a problem. This does not mean that there are not actions to take! This does not mean there are not feelings to be felt! There are, while we are alive, actions to take and feelings to feel. But through the feelings and the actions, there is awakening. For this moment let’s try the definition of awakening as: full access to acceptance. Acceptance transforms everything before one’s eyes. There is no greater magic trick than acceptance. It makes problems disappear, and the ones that don’t disappear, it makes it clear what action is available to take.
If you’ve read this far, I appreciate your patience with the circular nature of this writing!
I am not sure if it’s possible to transfer any of this, to share it. But I attempt to, with big humility, with love. I would like to beam my lack of doubt to you. Awakening is available, but only ever in this exact moment, right here right now. May we find each other here and there!