The Train Wreck of Thoughts

It's a hot day today but I'm feeling very relaxed here in Cyberjaya because I'm on leave again. I take leave to spend time here every other week. There are chores to do and bills to pay.  There are on-going trains of thoughts that need to slowed down before they derail.

Our thoughts have a tendency to race blindly like runaway trains. Once they are started, they are kind of unstoppable. The anger, the hatred, the anxiety and the fear--these are dangerous trains indeed. And if they continue to run like that, disaster awaits.

That is why, it is always wise to stop every now and then to take stock of things. Meditation is my way of doing a daily recalibration of the mind. Days off like this is my time to stop the engine completely for some maintenance. And blogging is my way of doing diagnostics.

Thoughts, irrespective of content, are just patterns of energy. Watch the sea. Can its surface ever be still? Certainly not, because the movement of the earth, the gravitational pull of the sun constantly churn the body of waters on the planet, causing these ceaseless tides. 

Is it any wonder that our minds are never still then? We are buffeted by people's actions and events--karmic energies that knock us about. We act and react causing ripples of effects and counter-effects. We are just the local perturbation of this vast karmic field of energy.

Understanding this and seeing this every moment in time is liberation itself. It is very difficult to separate our consciousness from its contents. Content is but an interpretation of a pattern of energy. You can look at a computer screen and choose to see pixels emitting photons of different energy levels or you can choose to see faces and people talking, car chases, bomb explosions or a medieval sword-fight. But they are all just blinking pixels, no different from decorative lights that you drape around your Christmas tree. 

Why can't we see all events as nothing more than patterns of energy? What's the advantage of having such an ability?

To be free from suffering is our primary goal. If we do not identify with these energy configurations, we do not partake in its effects--its pains and its pleasures. We call that insight. This do come about on rare occasions when we have a moment of epiphany. We simply see things as they are, without judgement or interpretation. How we live for such moments. 

The thing is, these moments of insights shouldn't be such rare events. Life can be a constant a stream of epiphanies. That will be an exalted state of grace. And I'll choose that anytime over being a train-wreck of thoughts.