less think then you smart

"Thought reveals alternatives. It was not meant to solve problems or decide things." - Zulaikha Mahmud

I have two perspectives for you:
1) you are not as smart as you think you are.
2) you are smarter than you realize. Ready?

This morning, while sitting on my porch, I reached to brush away a minute piece of fluff when it suddenly flew. It was an almost invisibly small pure white flying insect. This creature has a digestive system, legs, wings, eyes, other senses, a brain, and it can reproduce. Consider that next time you think of how great your iPhone is. But let's focus on the brain. How many neurons might it have? A few thousand at most? Clearly it does not engage in a thought process. This is a CPU that processes sensory input and runs pre-defined programs that find food and mates, and protect it from harm, whether a sudden downpour or a malicious child. It can learn.

No Story

If so few neurons can govern all of that, we have to pause and consider the nature of what we call "thought". After all, we have about 100 million times as many neurons, yet there is still sarcasm, gangs, obesity and genocidal war. We are not so far up the scale as we imagine. I would say that if we were even capable of being farther along in development, we would be. Nothing is holding back the tiny white moth, and nothing is holding us back either! A big brain does not make us smart. It might not even give us the capacity to understand ourselves, and without that, the cause is lost. We might as well accept that we are - largely - automata, carrying out programs. (and reading blogs and sites about Nonduality) (Filling out Tax forms... Designing tax forms...) (Shhhh, you'll ruin the story)

If this is the case, we have to deeply reflect on what day to day life is about. OK, I guess you are done with that now, so let's continue.

My idea is that neurons alone are not the thought-makers. The entire body has neurons and cells that produce and respond to neurotransmitters and hormones. The whole thing is one giant "second favorite organ". It is all response, all the time. Even while asleep, it is doing stuff, and managing without our "help" just fine, thank you! So expand your view of what constitutes awareness, response, planning or at least perspective. Reduce your worship of discursive thought within your mind. It is not so very important, or even useful.

Which brings us back to my porch. Last night I was watching the movie "God's Not Dead" with some friends and talking about it. The inevitable idea dominating all such discussions, of which I have learned not to blurt out my perspective, is: God is Over There and we are Over Here. There is a separateness that is not even worthy of noting. No one says: I am not God! (or, I Am God! except the Mystics) (mmm hmm) (and it would be redundant, as I Am and God are the same word) Why is this the unquestioned assumption? The entire basis of Religion and the despair of non-believers is due to that idea. It is just a thought. If we threw it out and started over with what we can observe, every person on Earth would see life differently, and it might just prevent all the above noted problems. So let's lead up to it with a more basic idea: I am my porch. My porch is me.

Love Me, Love My Porch

On the face of it, this is completely indisputable. The porch does not ever "happen" for me without "me" being there. I never get a text message from the porch about how the wind has overturned the plastic chairs or whatever. But the same is true for the porch: I don't exist except for it. (Ignore the use of "it" as the common term for "inanimate object".) The porch sits there all day, with wind blowing across it, just as the wind blows over my skin when I sit there. Sun shines on it. Rain falls, exactly as it patters on me before I head inside. In short, there is no real difference. The same things happen. Why do I think that I am different from the porch? If I was anesthetized to unconsciousness and lying out there, we would all agree that it is the same. So, I and the porch are one. I am not saying the porch has thoughts, any more than my ear has thoughts. I am just saying that a meaningful distinction would be hard to put in words. The tiny white moth is on the porch. It is on me. It is flying in search of food. It is resting...

So let us take one giant leap for mankind and say, as our Preceptor did: God and I are one. Can't be otherwise, right? "What more IS there than the universe, Spock?" Exactly. And what is it made of? God had nothing else to make it out of than God's Self. As Rumi said, "There is no reality but God. There is only God." Maybe we can all hold that thought once in a while and see what happens as a result. But I doubt it.