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 of 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. (This is why following the breath is such a super power.)

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!

I hope this is of use to you in some way, and I will be back again soon to experiment with other ways of sharing it. So many shining blessings to you today.