From where does the thought come?

Self-enquiry to find the space in which the world emerges

A simple but powerful self-enquiry exercise goes as follows:

Slow down and watch your thoughts rising and falling. They tend to slow down and space out a bit when watched.

Then, ask yourself, from where does the next thought come? And to what does it return?

Pay attention.

Notice that “space”, that absence, that Presence, from which it arises, and, when it is done, returns into.

What is that “space”? Experience it - don’t try to explain it.

Take your time with it.

Notice it is.

Photo by Keegan Houser on Unsplash

Now the mind returns to do what it can with the experience.

It is not nothingness. It is not complete absence. It is rather a “space” into which thoughts, your self, and the world can appear.

It is Being Itself, Knowing Itself. It has no features in itself except - there, is, without any further determination.

No boundaries are present in “it”. No limits. Just peaceful, expansive, isness.

It is always available. Simply ask “where does that thought come from?” and be aware of that space.

Of course, by the asking of this question, the separating mind falls away, and one just is this space. Is this isness, and so there is no one separate to be aware of this space.

There is just this.

But, in dualistic language we say “be aware of that space”.

Do you see now why we can say, in one sense, we are God?

For, at the core of what we are, before all sight, sound, thought, world and life, we are that aware space, that Self, in which all things arise and fall back into.

Our human life is birthed from that space. It is held in that space. It dies in that space.

And we are not separate from it.

Our finite human life is grounded in the infinite expanse of God.

But this sounds more exotic than it actually is.

It is but one simple question away.

Where did that thought emerge from? Where does it fall back into?

This.

That is the answer.

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