Fruit Flies & Thoughts

Thoughts are like fruit flies. Fruit flies suddenly appear. We don’t know where they came from. When we remove what attracted them, we don’t know where they go.

In removing the overripe banana, the fruit flies disappear. With thoughts, if we remove the attachment to their importance they cease their grip and fade away.

Notice that there are times when you realize thoughts are just present, like uninvited guests filling up space with unwanted and unneeded thinking.

As we Awaken we begin noticing the thoughts as irrelevant, as though outside of who I know myself to be, outside the I that I experience I am.

Be amused and say, “Oh, that’s interesting.” Not making the mind wrong, after all, it is simply doing what it does ~thinking. It has a lifetime of thoughts stored for easy access.  Learning to differentiate between our mind thinking and our thinking brings clarity. This ability is necessary in order to successfully process our issues. Learning to process our issues is crucial in expressing our human excellence and Soul Evolution. Not being attached to our thoughts and processing our issues is fundamental for clarity as a human being. Meditation is vital to learning this.

Here’s a wonderful story that beautifully explains this idea:

According to the Platform Sutra, Shen Hui asked the Sixth Patriarch: “When you sit in meditation, High Master, do you see or not see?”

The Master hit him three times with his stick and asked: “When I hit you, does it hurt or not hurt?”

“It both hurts and does not hurt.” Replied Shen Hui.

“I both see and do not see.”

“How can you both see and not see?”

The Master replied: “What I see are the waverings and wanderings of my own mind. What I do not see is the right and wrong, good and bad of other people. This is my seeing and not seeing.”

The mind will always think. How we respond to that thinking reveals our level of clarity.  Learn to witness the thoughts like clouds moving over the clear blue sky. Higher Consciousness is always present, unaffected, infinite, boundless, and abiding; clouds and thoughts are temporary.

May We All Walk in Beauty.

 

Impermanence

I have been focused on the devastating fires in Northern California. Those fires are horrific by historical standards. While the tragedies I witness from all over our planet deeply touch me, I notice this one has a unique impact because I can relate personally. I grew up and raised my family there, so I have family and friends I am concerned about and a long history I am witnessing disappear in smoke and ash.

Impermanence. I feel the loss and observe the different responses of those directly affected. I contemplate what mine would be, given the same circumstances. I pray.

Impermanence is an abstract concept ~ until it engulfs us in a reality of our personal experience.  

So even though I am 3,000 miles away, I reassess what is important to me. I notice how impermanence shows up for all of us; in loss of health, a home, a loved one, a job, a lifestyle, a history.

Impermanence can also result in new beginnings, improved attitude, increased gratitude, greater wisdom. Freedom in a manner never suspected.

So, as I think about those I know who have lost a great deal, I know they have not lost everything.  Impermanence is simply a change of form of something that always existed and always will.

I will remind myself of that next time I experience a loss. And again, I will pray.

May We All Walk in Beauty.