Drop This Thought

"Take no thought for tomorrow." ~Jesus, Matthew 6:34

For those who are addicted to thinking, here is a one-moment meditation: Drop This Thought.

The practice is unbelievably simple, so don't believe in it. Don't even do it.

Dropping this thought doesn't mean trying not to think. Trying to not-think is a form of repression that wastes our energy, because thinking is inevitable. But what we can effortlessly drop is our clinging to ideas. As soon as an idea or image arises in the mind, no resistance is required. Just drop it. Not-clinging requires no effort.

In fact, dropping a thought increases energy. When I drop this thought, the energy bound up in thinking dissolves its form and expands into pure awareness, which is the sparkling joy of boundless possibility.

The moment I drop this thought, an explosion of transparency fills the inner and outer sky, blessing every atom in my body and resonating into the stars.

Drop thought, drop affirmation, drop belief. What can be formed in the mind is only an idea, and an idea can never bring us one step closer to Being. A thought of happiness is not happiness. A thought of God is not God. The image of Jesus in your mind is not what Jesus IS. Crucify the image.

When you pray, drop the name and form of God. When you meditate, drop the mantra. The very letting go of the mantra is like sowing a seed in dark loam. The seed has to be dropped in order to sprout power. The mantra only bears fruit when it dissolves into silence.

Truth is never the outcome of thinking. We cannot construct an argument, a chain of thoughts, that will end with, "Eureka! I found the truth, now everything will be OK!" Truth is a wave of space in the heart, not a particle of thought in the head. So drop this thought and taste the emptiness of your true nature.

Although we have been addicted to thinking for many lifetimes, thought is not our true nature. One authentic taste of the pure awareness beyond thought awakens a new destiny.

This is not just some "Eastern" teaching. In the Bible, awareness beyond thought is called "the peace which passeth understanding." In the Sermon on the mount, Jesus tells his disciples again and again to "take no thought."

We have left the Information Age. This is the Age of Awareness. We are in recovery from our thinking addiction. Humans all over the earth are now discovering the redemptive power of thought-free awareness. Like the finest wine, sip this awareness in short moments of awakening. With time, it will pervade all your perceptions, and remain sparkling through dreams and deep sleep. "I sleep, but my heart is awake." (Song of Songs 5:2)

Fall into the well between words. One breath of this clarity is baptism. Bathe in the blessing that has no image, no concept, no ideology. This blessing is nameless because it is the very silence from which words arise.

The well between thoughts is ananda, bliss. Why not come down from the ever-circling mind and alight upon the clarity of your heart, like a swan settling on a still lake?

This is a living stillness, not a state of inertia. When I drop thought, there is a sparkling surge of awareness, an awakening of space itself. And because the space is unobstructed by any conceptual form, it keeps increasing. The ever-expanding quality of pure awareness is what makes this space dynamically blissful.

The early Christian mystic, St. Gregory of Nyssa, called it epictesis: "ceaseless expansion into God." Greek philosophers had removed God from human experience, putting the Divine on a static idealized pedestal of Absolute Being. But St. Gregory describes the real taste, the wild flavor of mystical experience: the Divine is not stagnant, but ever silently exploding in wildering widening spirals of ecstasy.

The Sanskrit term for this dynamism within the Godhead is spanda, from which we derive the English word "expand." Spanda is the pulsation within the depth of silence that creates the universe. Quantum physics now describes spanda as "fluctuation in the vacuum." All material particles arise from these fluctuations, and so-called "matter" actually consists of abstract wave-energy: waves of pure mathematical intelligence in the emptiness of the void.

Such pulsing clarity cannot remain a secret inside us. We long to share that bliss which is the effortless nature of mere Existence. And this motivates us to give joy to others. How does our bliss influence the subtle strata of energy around us?

The awakened radiance of thought-free awareness overflows through our senses, energizing our environment. For consciousness, sensation and environment are a single continuum, one field of energy in different degrees of density.

To drop this thought illuminates my senses. Now I can see-hear-taste-touch more clearly, with more luminous energy. This burst of awareness in me reverberates throughout the field of space, cleansing and healing the world.

"Drop this thought" is such an innocent practice that we need not spoil it by turning it into a "technique." Nor do we need to give this effortless practice any duration through time. For the attempt to sustain the practice, as a practice, destroys its innocence and wastes energy.

I can imbibe short moments of "drop this thought" throughout the day, without clinging to the experience. Such moments of ecstatic non-doing are excellent meditations for those of us whose minds are fickle and incapable of stilling themselves. Which means all of us!

Brevity is the soul of practice. Drop this thought now and take a sip of eternity. Then go back to work.

What happens in that instant of dropping thought? "I" dissolve. Nothing is so refreshing as the dissolution of the do-er.

Some speak of instant karma, but what we need is instant grace. Grace is not a state of duration, maintained by concentration, affirmation, or mindfulness. Trying to hold on to Grace is just another thought. Drop it. Grace is only possible as surprise.

Let yourself be surprised by Grace, moment by moment, all day long, and even in the darkest night.