Joy of Clarity

Questioner: – Why do we have obsessive thinking and excessive thinking?

Rajee: – Actually it is true, what we normally see, what we think, the way we think, our mind functioning is basically not really at its best – in our day to day life, in normal life. But we don’t notice it because we don’t know any other way of living life.

As we start going deeper than the mind we start tasting the silence or you can say emptiness of our own Self, the spaciousness of our own Self, where we don’t have so much thinking or you can say you don’t have thinking at all actually.

So basically that taste kind of makes you sensitive towards the fact that you are thinking too much, that you are thinking obsessively and excessively, you know, like this. So this excessive thinking and obsessive thinking is more and more highlighted. You feel like ‘Why I‘m thinking so much?’

Here there are two things basically to be understood.

One is that why this obsessive and excessive thinking happens? It does not really happen because it is necessary for you to think about what you want to think. It happens because of the sense of fear and that sense of fear is because of the sense of identity we have in the mind field and we call it Myself. Like you the spaciousness of life, gets attached to that thought which creates your self image, identity. Now you are also in the mind and thinking is also happening in the mind in a way, you can say. You are not in the mind really but you are in the mind through this self image because you are attached to it, so that is why the water of the mind gets stirred up too much, because the thinker of the mind, of the thoughts, is also in the mind in the form of a thought, a persistent thought, you know, a continuous thought. And every thought changes. Actually every thought, meaning every thought that moves in the mind affects every other thought. So, it is the thinker of the mind also which is affected by thinking, and then it thinks in a different way, and then it is affected in a different way, like it becomes like a recursive loop where you keep boiling the same content, you keep purifying the same thing, like this, so this is the reason why we think obsessively and excessively.

So one way to be free from it, the best way, I would say most direct way is to drop out of it into your emptiness, into your spaciousness more and more, you know, like this. The more you stay in your emptiness, in your spaciousness, the less energy mind gets, the less energy mind gets, the less it will run. Mind is not independent, that thoughts cannot just run by themselves. There is somebody needed to drive them, to motivate them, to attend them, to look into them, like this. So that is why they kind of keep happening in us, or to us you can say. So if you stay more and more in your own spaciousness, then this obsessive and excessive thinking will get balanced by itself, it will be harmonized by itself.

Second way is, to have some clarity at the mind level, Clarity – at the mind level. And what you can do is, what I call, just sit every day and when or whenever necessary, just have a look at your mind, that ‘What is going on right now?’ and you will be able to see more neutrally, this is the mind field only, that ‘I don’t really need to think so much about everything right now, I only have to think about what is next, or what is today, or at the max what is this week maybe. Like The whole life is not on my head right now, just my one week next that I have to deal with, or certain things which are important, which will be in future of one year, two years, ten years even, but still they are important to be attended today, but not so many things.

And what I found, when you are in this nice state of clarity at the mind level, and resting in your Self and discovering also who you are, the thinking process becomes so simple actually, like it’s so simple that you don’t feel that you have thoughts. At first, I used to wonder like, ‘Where are my thoughts actually? Where they have gone?’, because I am able to think but I’m not able to notice the thoughts. This is also you notice. Like it becomes so sharp, so fast and so simple, you only think as much as you need to think, not a single extra thought. Then your mind is more, like you can say that ‘My mind is empty all the time’. Even when you are thinking your mind is empty because mind thoughts cannot move when you don’t want them to move, you know, like this, something like this you can say.

So when you have decided not to think, thoughts don’t move, and it is possible only when you are clear, when you are CLEAR about yourself and when you are clear about this mind level also, that why you need to think? This is where the value of observation of the mind comes in. Observation of the mind is not to get some spiritual fruits in the sense of some spiritual experiences or something. It was to get some clarity so that the non-essential, obsessive and compulsive thinking falls by itself, it falls by itself. It’s like this, that by nature, all the ego states have a fear, a base sense of fear, so if you are sitting right now, listening to me and if you are in your ego state you will be continuously caring so much about your sandals, for example, your shoes, other belongings, but when you are clear that it is a more valuable thing right now to attend to this talk, then what you will do is you will put your belongings in such a way that you don’t have to attend to them continuously, and like this you are now free. This kind of clarity takes place continuously at the mind field, what you should think and when. This ‘When’ is very important. You don’t have to keep thinking all the time everything.

I hope it makes it clear to you little bit.

So everybody uses thinking, everybody needs to use thinking as much as necessary but it doesn’t mean that, most of the thinking that is going on in the mind is non-essential or not necessary. When this non-essential or obsessive and excessive thinking falls away, you have so much energy in the mind, mind is so fresh and resting that when you give a command to it, that ‘Hey I have to think about it’, all the resources are employed for it and you can think much better than before actually, you know, very quickly. So before it is like 90% of your mind energy is being wasted, (and) now hundred percent of your energy is available to you with a zero wastage. Obviously you can see the miracle, like you can think miraculously now.

Mind and Presence are not two things actually, Your mind, harmonious, illuminous and joyful is nothing but presence without obsessive thinking. (Rajee giggles). This is only possible when you have become clear that ‘I’ is a thought only.

I am that I, not what I think about it. The thinker of ‘I’ is the real I, not the I-thought.

(Excerpts from talks at Candolim beach, Goa April 2018)