There is a collection of thoughts we have. We stand at the centre of these egotistical thoughts, like a figure within a swirling sphere. Our narratives spin around us, winding us tighter and tighter, constricting in on our free space more and more.
These lines get so numerous that the giant world we saw as a child gets reduced to just a few small spaces for our soul to try to squeak through. At its worst it’s like we’re inside a ball of string trying to see our way out. The more ‘I’ and ‘me’ thoughts we have, the more lines wrap around us.
Fortunately for us, this barrier is ephemeral. As noted right from the start of this piece, these are only a collection of various courses of thought. Some we use often and those lines are thick and more habitual than the thinner lines that form our less crippling insecurities. But all are only thoughts. They only exist thanks to our willingness to create them.
We need to spin our mental wand to wrap that ball of limitations around us. The spinning is the act of thinking, the result is made of the threads formed by the words we choose. If we focus on the present and therefore stop spinning, the binding of our spirit stops as well.
The longer we remain present, the more the lines unravel and thin. As this happens we become increasingly aware of how much we had been limiting ourselves with our thinking, and we suddenly burst forward.
Those massive strokes of insight that everyone wishes for, are those times where the whole ball of limitations explodes into nothing at once. But for most people, it’s a more patient, thread by thread process.
No matter how we become clear, our limiting thoughts will always re-congeal, as is their nature. This is the yin and yang tension between our ego and soul.
They are the right and left legs that walk our journey. This is why our day to day enlightenment is a practice and not a state. It’s not somewhere we got to, it’s the act of moving/living without limiting thoughts.
Once we have witnessed our ability to dissolve the momentum and ultimate existence of our limitations, we cannot un-know that.
There may be times where we may not enact this ability in our lives despite intellectually knowing how. But we can never lose the skill. It is the fundamental one that exists as our basis. It creates our reality. Our life emerges based on what we choose to think about.
Knowing that, today, let’s all stay aware of our thinking. And let’s watch for those spinning, binding thoughts that limit us. And let’s take the energy away from creating them. No matter how deserving we think we are, just let them go –as an experiment.
If we do, we will soon learn that our suffering is not contained in the events or issues we are thinking about. Our suffering is literally made of those thoughts. But once we take the energy away from those self-limitations, we awaken the strongest and clearest part of us.
No one will ever always be present because to have a path we need a not-path too. But by learning to stop our spinning, we can learn to drastically reduce our limitations. And that can change our lives.
Our limitations come in many forms. Watch for them today and then steal their energy. With that done, our natural strength will make itself known. And it can create our day without the barriers imposed by our limiting thoughts.
peace. s
A serious childhood brain injury lead Scott to spend his entire life meditating on the concepts of thought, consciousness, reality and identity. It made others as strange to him as he was to them. When he realized people were confused by their own over-thinking, Scott began teaching others to understand reality. He is currently CBC Radio Active’s Wellness Columnist, as well as a writer, speaker and mindfulness instructor based in Edmonton, AB where he still finds it strange to write about himself in the third person.