Do you have to give up thoughts to live in the Now?
It’s often said that to be in the Now you need to give up thinking. However, it is the nature of mind to generate thoughts, and even trying not to think is just one more thought. The real problem is not the thoughts themselves, but rather our interest in those thoughts.
Next time any stressful thinking occurs, don’t try to stop it. Just observe the thoughts. Become interested in observation, and remove interest and investment in what the thoughts are saying. You will find that thoughts happen and observing happens. When there is no investment in the thoughts and you don’t give them any belief and you don’t follow them, they are just thoughts arising, and they cause no harm.
Difficult emotions
The same goes for feelings. We always try to squash those unpleasant feelings and emotions. But in doing this we are unwittingly reinforcing them – by opposing them we are affirming their reality. Next time difficult feelings arise, just try observing them. Note that when you tune into those feelings of anger or fear or grief, and you simply don’t follow the thoughts that arise with the feelings, the feelings are simply sensations within the body. It’s like you turn down the volume on a television and just watch the images. Now the images have no meaning and they just resolve into a play of light. The same with feelings – when you tune out the noisy thoughts that surround them, all you have is sensation, and this sensation occurs within a space of silence.
For instance, fear might feel like a certain jumpiness and coldness in the solar plexus. There might be a tightness that rises into the chest. And what’s wrong with these sensations? Nothing. They might be uncomfortable, but they are no longer threatening. Fear is quite happy to be fear as long as you don’t interfere with it. It arises and then it moves and then it falls away, and perhaps it rises again. When you do not think about it, where is the problem?
Now in this space of observing you can also become aware of any action you can take to apparently change the situation. Perhaps you can do something about the situation that makes you angry, perhaps not. Either way, when the situation and the emotion arise they are manifestations within the Now and they cannot be changed. Desiring to change something is always after the fact – it is always trying to change something that is already in the past. What happens now cannot be any other way. Wishing it were different is suffering.
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