I’m sure you’ve noticed that the mind can be more or less noisy when you meditate. Although a quiet mind is considered ideal for meditation, it is not required. Michael Langford’s awareness-watching-awareness practice instructions say:
If you seem to be having a lot of thoughts, ignore them and turn your attention away from the thoughts and towards awareness observing awareness.
In this case “ignore” means, place your attention elsewhere. It does not mean, “repress.” Some applicable synonyms for “ignore” are:
Disregard, take no notice of, pay no attention to, pay no heed to, tune out
Meditation is called “practice,” because meditation is practice. We know our practice is paying off when we notice ourselves disregarding thought in daily life. When we ignore thought, we live from awareness, intuition and spontaneity.
The Teachings of Inner Ramana refers to ignoring thought and living by intuition as “living from within instead of living from without.” In today’s reading, the Pharisees are a symbol. The Pharisees who are not distracted symbolize living from within. Jesus symbolizes intuition, and the Pharisees who are not distracted are able to hear him. The Pharisees who are distracted symbolize living from without. Their perception is biased and limited by their thoughts. They do not hear Jesus’ message, just as we do not hear intuition when we are caught up in thought. They also do not notice “the peace beyond the words,” just as we do not notice awareness when thought has our attention.
Jesus is clear that we are not guilty if we believe our thoughts, even if we act on them. We are not guilty, because consciousness is unaffected. However, believing thoughts and acting on them is the cause of suffering. In NTI Matthew, Judas symbolized the mistake of believing and acting on thought.
In daily life, it’s important to turn our listening attention inward. It’s important that we learn to disregard thoughts and live from awareness, intuition and spontaneity.
Here’s something to remember from the Mullah Nasruddin story about the leaky bucket:
If you react unconsciously, you push the lesson of the moment away.
Our bucket leaks when we live from without instead of living from within. It’s as if we put water in the bucket during our morning meditation and contemplation, but then we let it leak out again as we live from thought throughout the day. We are never guilty for this mistake, but it is confusion, the cause of suffering, and an obstacle to truth realization.
