Tired

I’m sick and tired…no, that’s not what I mean to say…come on, William, engage the brain…ah, yes, here it is, I’m tired sick.

Literally.

It’s around 03:30 (AM, for those of you not accustomed pilot-speak-24-hour time) and I’ve got my eight-month old baby cradled in my arms as I ponder this (I didn’t have the opportunity to type this out until well after daybreak.)

My throat is swelling and sore. My nose is stuffy.

And I’m tired. So, so tired.

I haven’t slept properly in…well, in eight months—since little Teddy was born.

So it’s not a one or two night deal. We’re talking accumulated fatigue here. Big time.

It’s terribly difficult to run every day. Let me be a little more honest here: I run every day in my dreams. In reality, I run several times a week, if, and only if, I’m not too exhausted to run (which is most of the time). So I don’t run several times a week. I run whenever. 

Sometimes.

Rarely.

Okay, hardly ever.

I feel like my body is falling apart.

My wife runs, though. (Don’t ask me how she does it.) In fact, she runs just about every day. As religiously as I practice the piano.

My mind tells me if I run, I’ll drop dead of a heart attack or something.

But I digress.

What I’m saying here is that I’m tired. Too tired to do many things.

Including, I tell myself, making the decision to be present. 

“I can’t do that. I don’t have the energy. I just can’t.”

I tell myself this, but I know I’m lying, so I say, “Okay, let’s do this.” And sometimes—about as frequently as I run, unfortunately—I actually do.

This is what I’ve discovered: If I’m really, really tired, which I usually am, it’s actually easier. Sounds nuts, right?

I mean it takes a lot of energy to be present—to observe thought like one would a distant cloud, without identifying with it, right? At least, that’s what I used to believe.

But Adyashanti says just the opposite: according to him, it takes tremendous energy for the ego to perpetuate itself through thought. That hasn’t been my experience, but I prefer thinking Adyashanti’s way. Why believe some thought that makes life harder?

It might be easier to be present when the body is exhausted, because I’m too damned tired to even think much. So the stream of thoughts is just trickling in, rather than flooding my mind.

While it may be easier to be present when I’m deeply fatigued, the clarity I experience is little more than a powerful awareness of my physical exhaustion.

It’s still presence though, and so there goes my excuse, “I’m too tired to be present and practice mindful awareness.”

Death

I remember asking my father what happens when you die.  I was six.

My father had a ready answer: "Nothing, William. When you die, it's all over."

I didn't like his reply, so hoping for something more cheerful, I asked,
"But will I be able to see?"

"No."

I remember at the time I was asking this question, I was imagining myself in a coffin filled with pitch black darkness. I persisted, "Will I be able to hear?"

Again, he said,  "No."

Frustrated now, I asked, "How long will it last?"

And the grim answer came, "Forever."

I could not wrap my mind around this "forever" concept. It was impossible, no matter how hard I tried.

My father was an atheist. Some years ago, I asked him what made him a believer. That confused him. He reminded me that he was not a believer, he was an atheist.

An atheist is one who believes there is no God. The key word, here is "believes."

He believes there is no God. Believing is not thinking objectively. There's no proof to belief. Belief by definition is acceptance of something without proof.

There's no way to prove or disprove the existence of God. Similarly, there's no way to prove what happens when you die. (Near-death experiences are not the real thing, and as far as I'm concerned, while interesting, they don't provide proof of anything.)

The question of death and the question of God are impossible questions (a term, I believe, coined by J. Krisnamurti); questions which cannot be answered with thought.

In any case, when people provide an "objective" answer or a conclusion to impossible questions, they are believing a lie.

Put simply, no thought or group of thoughts--indeed, no words--can ever be absolute truth.

Time is generated though thought. Thought can be a tool in the practical world, but it also provides such a limited perspective on reality, one can almost call it a lie.

Death is not limited by space or time; nor, presumably, is God. Therefore thought, which exists in time, can never answer the questions about that which transcends time.

A better, more honest answer to the question I asked when I was six would have been, "I don't know." Or, if he did know, "I cannot tell you in words. You'll have to experience it for yourself, but you'll never get a real answer by thinking about it."

Another approach is to think about impossible questions intensely, with tremendous energy and focus. That singularity of focus might lead to a very temporary obliteration of thought. Thought which is actually the only thing that stands between the illusion of "you" and the direct experience of truth. It's a really exhausting approach, however.

I find it easier to let thought be, without feeding it or giving it attention. Without believing it. It can be a shockingly unremarkable experience, because the mind tends to have expectations. It is still possible to let go of thought while having expectations, so long as you let go of them as well. Don't believe your thoughts and expectations--don't follow them anywhere. Don't fight them. Let them be. Let them go.

In that letting go lies the answer (in the form of experience, not words) to impossible questions such as, "what is death?"

The experience itself is death—death of the thought-born ego.

And it is this ego, this illusion of individuality and personality, this illusion of separateness, that we fear we will lose when we die.

Perpetual Thought and Letting Go

Letting Go.

Of What?

Thought...actually, identification with thought. I'm not really sure it's possible to let go of thought entirely in the waking state of consciousness.

It seems there's a continuous flow of thought from the moment we wake up in the morning to the moment we fall asleep at night (unless you're like me and you have an 8-month old baby, in which case you fall asleep whenever you can, night or day.)

Have you ever wondered why the thoughts never stop?

I have. Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am." I see that as thought creating the "I" in "I am." In other words, thought generates the ego. The separateness. The transitory individuality we cling on to for dear life.

Without thought then, it follows there is no "I" or ego. And the ego is all about survival. Survival is basic programing for all life forms. Humans are unique in that they have word-based thoughts. These thoughts reinforce the separateness of the ego illusion.

So in order to survive, the ego must perpetuate thought.

That is why, for as long as we're awake, we're plagued by an endless stream of thoughts.

It may or may not be possible to slow down that stream, or even live in the waking state without thought (at least thought as we know it), but I am not experiencing that right now, so I'll leave that question for now and talk, instead, about what I know.

Let's assume, that like me, you have thoughts all the time. If you accept this, then it isn't a bad thing, or a good thing for that matter, it just is.

The problem doesn't lie in the existence of thought, it lies in the identification with thought.

Letting go, then, would entail observing a thought without following it. Without feeding it. Without believing it or judging it.

This doesn't not apply to practical thought, of course, otherwise we could not function in day-to-day life. It applies to psychological thought (a topic for another blog).