Cause of a Compulsive Mind

Cause of a Compulsive Mind
  
I was reading an excerpt from "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle, the German spiritual teacher, this morning and something he said really struck me.
 
"The greatest obstacle to experiencing this reality is identification with your mind, which causes thought to become compulsive. Not being able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don't realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being."
 
What struck me about this is his wording of "which causes thought to become compulsive". This is interesting. We are causing thought to become compulsive. Thought is not compulsive by its nature.
 
In principle, if we want to use something smoothly and efficiently, we would be best guided to use it as it's designed or to know its nature and follow that nature in its use.
 
So, what is the nature of thought? I'm not sure many people have ever considered the nature of thought. Many people fight against it or glorify it or overuse it, but what is the actual nature of what we are feeling trapped by?
 
If understood better, wouldn't we then not "cause thought to become compulsive"?
 
Thinking is the capacity humans have to take unformed ethereal energy and to form it into ideas, words, images, and other mental activity. That unformed energy is Thought energy. It's not a thing with substance or even anything we can feel until we interact with it and form it into thinking.
 
All types of thinking and thought are insubstantial and dissolve as soon as our attention or focus goes elsewhere. Yes, even that really annoying or panicky type of thinking that looks so solid.
 
Most people have had the experience of being worried about something and ruminating on it around and around in their mind, and then you get a phone call that your loved one is in the hospital or has had an accident. Where did that compulsive worry go? Gone. In a flash.
 
I remember years ago, sitting in my office on a slow client day, being anxious about the fact that it was a slow client day. I couldn't seem to focus on any tasks that I might do to help new clients find me because of the worry that it was "slow". Ha! I was giving the thinking importance, and so, of course, my focus stayed there. It was "important". Then I got a phone call from my sister in Merrickville. She never calls me on a weekday during the day! Turned out my Dad had an accident and had broken his neck. He was in the hospital now, having surgery to stabilize the vertebrae. Instantly, I had no more compulsive thoughts about a slow client day. Gone. In a flash.
 
Now, thankfully, you don't need to have an emergency phone call in order to drop or dissolve thinking or to shift your focus. In fact, that thinking never really "existed" in the first place.
 
By nature, Thought is insubstantial and always flowing, and our thinking begins to dissipate the second our focus comes off it.
 
Eckhart Tolle said in the above quote that the greatest reason we don't experience unconditioned reality or peace of mind is that we identify with the mind. I would say it's that we think that our thinking in the moment is worth our focus. In the moment you see that it's not worth your attention, it's gone. Often quite dramatically gone.
 
We are not the thinking, but we do give it our focus. We don't have to. It's your choice.
 
In my example with my Dad, who is fine now by the way :), the only reason I was ruminating and "unable" to shift my focus is that I was unknowingly giving weight to the "slow client day" topic. I was, in essence, "telling" my mind that this was worth my focus and needed to be looked at.
 
Once a person knows that this is part of how our mind works, they get better and better at noticing when they are unwittingly giving their attention and focus to something they don't want to. Then we automatically shift away from it.
 
And then life begins to actually happen.
 
When we realize that our thinking of the moment is not more important than being present in the moment with life, everything changes. Delightfully.
 
We wake up to life from our nature of calm and peacefulness. It's a whole different world outside of thinking.
 
If you'd like to hear from some of my transformative coaching clients about their experience with being present with life away from their thinking and how easy it can be, check out my new website http://www.lifeyouralivelife.com where we've added a bunch of their stories and quotes about the impact this shift has had on their lives.
 
This week's experiment, if you are up for it, is to see what happens for you when you take importance off what you are thinking about and place it on being present now. If you're wondering how to do that, just know that you do it all the time. The "how to do it" for you will pop up in your mind if you give it a moment or two.

With Love, 

Sara Joy