Some Thoughts About Thinking, Part I

The Cathedral at Laon

February 8, 2020

I've noticed that folks believe that I think a lot.

The fact is that I hardly ever think at all. I just exist; and thinking comes along in this way or that, unprompted.

Thinking exists on its own. It has its own life which is independent of humanity, and it is perpetually contemplating the cosmos. Because we’re expressions of that eternal contemplation, it leaks into us – its existence is so abundant and universal that it can't help it. As a portion of God's love, it spills over into every vessel that can contain it. We ought to have a great respect for thinking, because it’s such an overwhelming and beautiful cosmological force; but more often than not, we mistake it as our own property and abuse it for our own purposes. When we do this its manifestation too often becomes destructive.

In any event, I can't speak for how others think, but only how thought manifests itself within me. Generally speaking, my mind is empty and occupied with the present moment only. By itself, it’s a weak and tiny thing. As I pointed out yesterday (February 7) what it gets up to is often wicked. If I were really watching my thought carefully, I would know this and suspect just about everything I think of, especially when it pertains to my opinion of others, the world in general, and what I want.

Yet, when the mind is empty, several advantages are conferred upon it. 

First of all, an empty mind receives thought from two directions, the natural world and the spiritual world—from God. A true emptiness within which Being resides is able to perceive which direction thought comes from. This may sound complicated, but it's actually quite simple, because natural and spiritual thought have very different flavors and can be immediately identified if there’s any presence of true mind. When we commit sin, it's almost always a result of our natural thought, which is quite literally opposed to God's presence, since by its vanity it prefers its own. 

Secondly, an empty mind has the advantage of being open to what arrives. This can prove to be a great asset; but only when what little is of me is turned towards God. When one is receptive through this emptiness, as Meister Eckhart points out, God rushes in, because there’s no other alternative. This is when true thought arrives; and with true thought, one never thinks it. It thinks itself. 

The observations here, for example, come from nowhere and arrive in Being. They haven't been fretted over or gnawed at like a bone. All of the thoughts that stem from the natural side of being have the consistent characteristic of being driven by fear, sex, desire, or some other set of lower motivational forces which create tiny, selfish obsessions that circulate viciously and occupy most of the space that would prefer to be devoted to God. 

These kinds of thoughts are all too familiar, and they are most of what we’re filled with. But true thought always has a particular characteristic which Gurdjieff mentioned, that is, his obligolnian striving to “know ever more and more about the laws of world creation and world maintenance.” (Be it known, mind you, that this is a striving simply because it is not ours, but God’s own striving to know these things.) 

Saying this is not, in and of itself, entirely true, because thought has three principal features when it is truly spiritual. The first of them is this striving to understand the cosmos – which must be undertaken with the intellectual part of all three centers, body, intellect, and feeling.

The second of these principal features is the physical appreciation of Being, which must be undertaken with the moving parts of all three centers.

The third of these principal features is the feeling-appreciation of Being, which must be taken through the emotional or feeling parts of all three centers.

This post will conclude on April 4.

May your heart be close to God, 

and God close to your heart.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.