People often misunderstand the goal of meditation to be a thoughtless state. In the pursuit of this, they often adopt a practice in which thoughts are suppressed. There are a number of good resources to combat this misconception.
Another common misconception is that the future and past must be ignored to focus on "the now." But the truth is far more subtle.
There's an aspect of your mind -- your intellect -- that is busy interpreting the world. This is the part that infers the existence of time and space from what is otherwise just a smattering of raw experiences.
You never actually experience time. It is always perfectly now, and the existence of present memory and anticipation cause you to infer that such a thing as "time" is the cause of those things.
Similarly, you never experience a divide between yourself and the world. Listen carefully and notice that sounds happen to your consciousness. Feel and notice that bodily textures also happen to you. So do thoughts, memories, and the constellation of mental events you call "personality." The inference that there's someone "in here," behind consciousness, doing the experiencing, is an inference of the intellect.
This doesn't mean that they are wrong inferences, but you're in a much better position to evaluate their truth when you're able to deeply experience your own complicity in generating them.
It might seem tempting to try and enter a state in which the intellect has stopped projecting those assumptions, in which the burdens of time and self are transcended. But in doing so, there's a danger in overlooking the part of the mind that has never entered into those illusions in the first place.
Perhaps instead of trying to wrangle my conceptual mind into a state where it stops producing projections, I can try to notice the aspect of consciousness that precedes those projections. Maybe it is possible for the conceptual mind to keep doing what it is doing, without necessarily being involved.
Then there's no conflict between recognizing timelessness (or what is sometimes called the "emptiness of time") and being able to recall the past and imagine the future. And conversely, the burden of taking the constructs of time and self too literally may be lifted.
Another common misconception is that the future and past must be ignored to focus on "the now." But the truth is far more subtle.
There's an aspect of your mind -- your intellect -- that is busy interpreting the world. This is the part that infers the existence of time and space from what is otherwise just a smattering of raw experiences.
You never actually experience time. It is always perfectly now, and the existence of present memory and anticipation cause you to infer that such a thing as "time" is the cause of those things.
Similarly, you never experience a divide between yourself and the world. Listen carefully and notice that sounds happen to your consciousness. Feel and notice that bodily textures also happen to you. So do thoughts, memories, and the constellation of mental events you call "personality." The inference that there's someone "in here," behind consciousness, doing the experiencing, is an inference of the intellect.
This doesn't mean that they are wrong inferences, but you're in a much better position to evaluate their truth when you're able to deeply experience your own complicity in generating them.
It might seem tempting to try and enter a state in which the intellect has stopped projecting those assumptions, in which the burdens of time and self are transcended. But in doing so, there's a danger in overlooking the part of the mind that has never entered into those illusions in the first place.
Perhaps instead of trying to wrangle my conceptual mind into a state where it stops producing projections, I can try to notice the aspect of consciousness that precedes those projections. Maybe it is possible for the conceptual mind to keep doing what it is doing, without necessarily being involved.
Then there's no conflict between recognizing timelessness (or what is sometimes called the "emptiness of time") and being able to recall the past and imagine the future. And conversely, the burden of taking the constructs of time and self too literally may be lifted.
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