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Showing posts from August 21, 2013

On Working with Thoughts

As many of us begin our meditation practice and spiritual journeys, we may start out with an agenda of silencing our thoughts, muting all our inner chatter, if only for a little peace and quiet. Naturally, such an attempt fails, as thoughts are an inevitable product of language and communication skills; indeed, they provide us with key tools that insure our survival, both individually and as a species. Without thoughts, our moment by moment experience would be overwhelming, confusing and impossible to learn from or share with others. And so thoughts are a necessary function of the mind, and its not surprising that they continue to jabber away, creating a distracting stream of content during those moments we've set a side for tranquility. This, of course, can lead to periods of frustration and disappointment for the new practitioner. Yet such a reaction is a needless detour on the path, as eliminating thoughts is not only impossible, its far removed from the goal of spiritual en