Here are examples of passing thought conglomerates that would NOT form or would be written off as delusional if someone used Trungpa's method of thought noting
or Tolle's method of dropping thought and remaining in some luminous 'now'.
Once, I strolled down a neighborhood street and saw a large cactus. Suddenly,
in spite of myself I imagined saying to some trustful visitor, "Have a seat".
This is not a single thought, but a thought-complex. My inner rascal.
Another time, I interviewed someone for a student project. The person was
renowned in the community for being saintly and altruistic. I looked forward
to meeting Father X.
We sat down, Father X, kindly as could be, responded to my questions.
All at once, I had an inner vision of a mask over Father X's face, then an eerie feeling that Father X was not one personality but a double personality -
his public personality a sweet artless charitable person, and, trying to
hide, a brilliant persuader and manipulator.
This is not to say I felt Fr X was evil, more that he was a much more complex person than his public image.
All this was a thought/emotional complex. I would not have been able to
intuit all this had I been trained in thought noting/thought dropping.
If we lose ability to notice incongruities, inconsistencies, lose ability
to notice our inner prankster, we lose access to the very thing that
can warn us that someone or something is corrupt or becoming so.
Those impulses in which we notice the guru has BO -- just like the rest of us,
or our feeling that the guru is a snob for expecting his assistants
to learn to speak in an upper class English accent -
all of these are products, not of individual thoughts kept in isolation by
using the Trungpa thought noting mindfulness process -- these subversive
observations and thoughts are not isolated individual thoughts, but are
thought complexes -- a part of our inner life that, as Brainwashed90 notes
is necessary for our inner life and necessary for us to care about other people, too.
or Tolle's method of dropping thought and remaining in some luminous 'now'.
Once, I strolled down a neighborhood street and saw a large cactus. Suddenly,
in spite of myself I imagined saying to some trustful visitor, "Have a seat".
This is not a single thought, but a thought-complex. My inner rascal.
Another time, I interviewed someone for a student project. The person was
renowned in the community for being saintly and altruistic. I looked forward
to meeting Father X.
We sat down, Father X, kindly as could be, responded to my questions.
All at once, I had an inner vision of a mask over Father X's face, then an eerie feeling that Father X was not one personality but a double personality -
his public personality a sweet artless charitable person, and, trying to
hide, a brilliant persuader and manipulator.
This is not to say I felt Fr X was evil, more that he was a much more complex person than his public image.
All this was a thought/emotional complex. I would not have been able to
intuit all this had I been trained in thought noting/thought dropping.
If we lose ability to notice incongruities, inconsistencies, lose ability
to notice our inner prankster, we lose access to the very thing that
can warn us that someone or something is corrupt or becoming so.
Those impulses in which we notice the guru has BO -- just like the rest of us,
or our feeling that the guru is a snob for expecting his assistants
to learn to speak in an upper class English accent -
all of these are products, not of individual thoughts kept in isolation by
using the Trungpa thought noting mindfulness process -- these subversive
observations and thoughts are not isolated individual thoughts, but are
thought complexes -- a part of our inner life that, as Brainwashed90 notes
is necessary for our inner life and necessary for us to care about other people, too.