In the World but Not of It: New Teachings from Jesus on Embodying the Divine by Lake Gina

Author:Lake, Gina [Lake, Gina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endless Satsang Foundation
Published: 2016-04-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

Clearing the Clouds

Disidentifying with Thought

To return to our earlier cloud analogy, clearing the clouds doesn’t necessarily require that the thoughts in the thought-stream be cleared away. Thoughts can and may remain in the thought-stream without causing significant obstruction to Presence as long as they aren’t strongly identified with. The degree of identification with thought is what’s key, not so much the number of thoughts.

Nevertheless, the number of thoughts in the thought-stream diminishes as belief in them does. The less attention given to a thought, the less it is fed. Eventually it weakens and stops arising altogether. Then the process of clearing accelerates, since the fewer thoughts there are, the easier it is to disidentify with them because more Presence is available to see through them. Once a lot of Presence is available, it would take either a barrage of thoughts or an upsurge of feelings to squeeze out Presence.

Identification is a measure of how much you believe a thought. For instance, if you had the thought “I want a pink elephant,” you probably wouldn’t identify with it because it’s so unbelievable. The reason thoughts like that don’t generally arise in the first place is because they wouldn’t be believed. The thoughts in your thought-stream are ones you believe to some extent, or they wouldn’t arise.

Identification is a process of taking on certain beliefs as your own, as belonging to the imaginary you . These beliefs, in turn, create and maintain this false, imaginary self. Your particular beliefs produce feelings, desires, and drives, which result in actions that shape and maintain a particular identity. The more strongly you believe a thought or desire, the more power it has to shape your life.

The problem with your thoughts, beliefs, and egoic desires is that the false self they create is a self that suffers. To disidentify with your thoughts and stop suffering, the truth about your thoughts has to be seen. Once you see how they cause suffering and only pretend to be useful, you can begin to let go of them. When it comes to thoughts, seeing is not believing. In other words, seeing the truth about your thoughts leads to not believing them.

Let’s take a look at how the thought “I” causes suffering, since this is the core thought. All suffering starts with belief in “I.” The “I,” or false self, is the only thing that has desires, preferences, dreams, and fears. (It’s funny how a thought can have thoughts!) Presence, your true self, has none of these. Its only “desire” is to experience life fully, to drink it in, all of it, even what the false self refuses to embrace.

So “I” is the generator of suffering. Desires, fears, preferences, and all other manner of thoughts set this “I” up against the world, against life. Without this resistance to life, to however life happens to be showing up, there would be just life, just this, and just this would be okay. Even saying that, is inaccurate, since “okay” is a judgment.

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