Some thoughts about thinking, part I

 

June 18.

One has to immerse oneself quite deeply in what one thinks, remaining aware of the thought while being inserted into it, in order to appreciate the nature of thinking and the struggle that arises from it.

Whether we’re aware of it or not, we spend most of our day immersed in thought of several different orders. It acquires its impulse from emotion; and the associations consequently function in a structured prosecution of emotional inflections. There’s an automatic and mechanical nature to this process; once the ball starts rolling, it gathers speed and momentum as though it were rolling downhill. The end result of this process is a powerful reinforcement of the emotional inflection.

These emotional inflections have strength of low, middling, or powerful nature. Generally speaking the more selfish they are, the more power they exert. This determines the duration of the associations, which might be likened to ripples in a pond after a stone is thrown in. Little stones create small ripples; big stones create big ripples and even waves, and so on. If a person’s inner life is constructed so that associations of this kind have a very strong self-reinforcing durability, we call it obsessiveness or compulsiveness. Obsessiveness, in this analysis, relates to the duration of the wave phenomena; and compulsiveness relates to their magnitude.

This is what is called thinking; and although its structure, which relies for the most part on a logic — usually perverse — of one kind or another imparts a certain air of agency, autonomy, and validity to it, it isn’t actual thinking, but rather accidental thinking. Accidental thinking is always lived in the service of self and selfishness. This kind of thinking dominates almost everything human beings do.

When thinking is externalized and provoked by curiosity about the outside world and its nature, independent of the personal gain that can be realized, it’s a somewhat higher order of thought. This type of thinking promotes questioning and inquiry; and questioning, which shares a root with quest, a search, invokes the action of seeing: that is, an attempt to perceive more clearly. Mechanical thinking doesn’t want to think more clearly; it merely wants to reinforce the self; and any clarity that does not serve that is discarded at once.

So you can see there are two different wishes at work here. If you look carefully at your own inner life, you may be surprised at how much of what you think is “inner work” of one kind or another is actually mechanical thinking. Mechanical thinking is a ubiquitous force and it adopts everything one encounters into its structure and actions. Thinking that comes from the wish is already quite different.

So then we have this second kind of thought which comes from the wish. The impulse is less contaminated with self. The second kind of thought, because it is superior, can become an observer of the first kind of thought because it locates its root within the essence, the “I,” of the individual.

Once this part becomes more active, it’s possible to allow mechanical thinking to take place quite actively and yet not be identified with it. This is an interesting proposition, because one begins to see that there isn’t always just one thought process taking place in Being at a given time; and the various types of thought processes are not of necessity mutually exclusive of one another. That belief is engendered by the experience we take away from mechanical thinking, which pushes everything else aside in order to serve itself. 

Furthermore, thought processes are hierarchical. The thought that comes from wish has a higher rate of vibration and is of a finer substance than mechanical thought.

The third kind of thought to be discussed here is of a still higher nature; and it doesn’t function in the same observable realm as the other two kinds of thought. 

On behalf of our search for inward relationship,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola magazine.