Thought Space:

A Ten Minute Recollection of All & Everything

The head is the realm of thought-forms.

I put it that way because thoughts do have a form. On the physical level, thoughts are nothing more than a few synchronised neuronal impulses, but in the field of internal perception, we usually sense the form as being larger or smaller, lighter or darker, nearer or further away, and so on.

Reflect on it for a moment: you must admit that your own intimate thought-possibilities loom larger in your mind that those of people you don’t even know, and it is easy to verify that thoughts of the party tonight are bigger and brighter than those of getting our of bed and going to work tomorrow morning.

There are many obvious examples of your inner regard of thoughts as forms, whether you are normally conscious of it or not.

For the purpose of the Thought Space practice, we consign thought-forms to be as objects in space, rotating around the luminous Pearl of Pure Potential Awareness in the centre of the brain, as in our solar system. This image is designed to cultivate preference away from compulsive thinking.

When we look into a clear night sky, our eyes are naturally drawn to the twinkling of the stars. Regardless of the fact that these tiny points of light make up but an infinitesimal part of the night sky as compared with the space that surrounds and supports them, the twinkling nevertheless attracts our eyes.

This is similar to the atomic illusion of solidity. Physicists have now concluded that if a simplified model of the atom were compared in size to our largest athletic stadium, the entire mass could be represented by a grain of sand (the neutron) at the centre of the playing field, with another grain of sand (the electron) traveling at unimaginable speeds at the radius of the back bleachers, thus creating a “shell” of illusory “form.”

Once again, the overwhelming predominance of space is conjured up as the illusion of solidity through movement.

And so it is with thoughts. Their perpetual “twinkling” movement proves such a seductive attraction to ordinary awareness that whole schools of philosophy have been built on the premise of these little twinklings as the basis of being. Consider the classic: “I think, therefore I am.”

As with the paradigm of the universe and the atom, the Thought Spaces represent the Immensity of Mind as compared with the minute twinklings of transient electrical impulses. Moreover, the act of contracting awareness into attention, which then becomes attached to these thought-twinklings requires and effort, and leaks energy away from our full potential.

Random thinking depletes more energy than we are willing to acknowledge. The problem is that this is more or less the compulsive pattern in today’s society, with not even a consideration being given to choice. This is a HUGE issue, in that we seem almost totally unaware of the imbalance that compulsive mental activity creates.

The first priority of all authentic meditation is to redress this imbalance. This is done through methods that exercise the choice-making ability in a way that liberates us from the ingrained habit of compulsive thinking, and provides intervals of stillness in the mind. Only in this way can fundamental sanity return. This is the primary objective of the practice of Thought Space.

We begin the practice with the Pearl (or “Bubble”) of Pure Potential Awareness forming in the lower belly and being guided up through the Central Channel of the torso to the centre of the brain.

The Pearl represents Primordial Awareness. In the potential state it is brilliant, contained, and relaxed. Gradually Potential Awareness shifts to Pure and Aware Perception. “Pure and Aware” in this context means passivity; a total absence of grasping and clinging. It is with this quality of “witness” consciousness that we gently turn our passive attention to the image of various thought-forms that could be occupying our attention right now. However, attention energy remains contained within the Pearl.

We simply observe the thoughts in the metaphor of planetary bodies revolving around us, with various speeds, trajectories, sizes, shapes, and luminosities. We allow them to rotate in their own paths as a veritable solar system of our potential mental here-and-now.

Consistent with this metaphor, notice that it is our choice to share the luminosity of consciousness-attention (as central sun) that causes thoughts-as-planets to appear in the first place! While maintaining a panoramic perspective of this swirling, rotating system as we may repeat to ourselves, “Release Choice/ Release Preference.” Continuing in the state of contained and passive attention, we refuse to choose any thought over any other, thereby eliminating all preference. There is no response, nor do we restrain ourselves from responding. –There is just the Witnessing.

In this state, you will notice that the task-oriented intellect will often get “hooked” by a thought as it floats by. Preference has intruded. Often this “being hooked” can go on for some time, with the risk of getting sucked into a vortex of associations, a “train of thought.”

The problem is that once we’re on the train, we forget it’s just a train, and it becomes our perceived reality. The train gathers momentum without our Witness noticing, and meanwhile we’re demoted from conductors to passengers. Once we’re passengers, we are set up for victimhood; bogged down in the associative swamp of belief systems, our potency becomes depleted and we remain unresolved. This is the thin end of the wedge of karma and the origin of compulsive motivation. As the wedge sinks in, the map and the territory blur at the edges and the well-trodden widest path leads us unquestionably on.

--For patterns of behavior to evolve, thought patterns must first move up to a new octave of balance. This shift cannot be accomplished through struggle and control; it can only be accomplished through a practice which gradually enables us to release choice and preference.

Once the Pearl is firmly established in detached Witnessing, there is a suggestion of expanding the attention to include noticing all the present thoughts of all the people in the world; a veritable galaxy of thought-forms.

Finally, we shift the attention one more time to the veritable Universe of thought-forms: all the thoughts that ever were and ever will be.

As we continually release choice and preference, the attention shifts to the vast emptiness of Space between, around, and connecting all these thought-forms. Then, finally, our radiant Pearl dissolves.

Space absorbs the radiant pure awareness, becoming saturated with the brilliance. This is the act of “dissolve & absorb.”

The next act is “absorb and dissolve,” as the primordial Space-awareness gradually re-absorbs all thought forms, as they dissolve and suspend into the limitless radiance effortlessly.

All thought-potential is evenly distributed throughout this field, as is a colloidal solution. All life on earth depends on the colloidal behavior of nutrients in water, whereby the nutrients dissolve and suspend evenly, as with protoplasm.

Thus, this is a natural actualisation to move into. --When the dissolution and suspension of thoughts is complete, the practice and the practitioner are no longer relevant. There is panoramic awareness of all-radiant, self-luminous Space only—vast and always everywhere.

As a Vedic seer once exclaimed:

“What is here is elsewhere. What is not here is nowhere.”