Dreams. Nightmares. Insomnia.

The mind is always present with the exception of very few times when we're able to get a deep dreamless sleep and are allowed to just be with presence. Even if we don't know it because we tell ourselves that we were sleeping, we've still found respite from the machinations of the overworked mind.

The mind is something that once it gloms onto a thought, it can then turn that simple thought into a thought stream. Now, forever preoccupying us with its endless tangential ideas and offshoots regarding that original thought, it's incessant and seemingly endless.

Every time a new experience comes into our day we find ourselves ruminating or going over and over the endless thoughts that are now created about that experience. They never end. Even when the experience is over we then find a way to think about what happened, rather than what will happen, or what is happening.

We all know this through our many years or even decades of living in this fashion.

The mind is a marvelous machine. It's a useful tool that has gotten us many wonderful aspects of our daily existence that we operate from today. It's useful. It's destructive. It's evil at times. And, it's our best friend.

As I sit here writing these words I have to notice how this mind is working today. It's trying its usual seductive pull. It's wanting to grab hold of an experience that is impending and then make this into something that can be the focus of the coming days and weeks. This experience will become its food. Its food for thought, so to speak. This is the food of existence for most.

Thoughts are what keep the days from being seemingly empty. Thoughts are what keep the mind in the mental picture of life and allow existence to seem to be filled with substance and life workings that are productive and substantive.

Fine. Think that way. Live that way. It doesn't change anything.

Trying to paint the sky isn't going to mean that the sky is going to be affected by the effort. It isn't.

Life is not affected by the workings of the mind. The mind is simply a preoccupation of existence. A simple distraction as what is. It's something that life is finding at the moment to fill itself up with. Thoughts are only processing in the brain. They aren't real.

They seem real. They 'feel' real. They taste real. They have outcomes that appear real. But thoughts in and of themselves are electrical impulses. Outside of that, the massive complexity of Einstein's Theory of Relativity doesn't exist, except on a chalkboard.

The mind is a machine. The mind uses thoughts for fuel. We use thoughts to give us life and to sustain the existence of the world centered on thoughts that we build up over the decades of existence that we each have.

Can this be changed? Sure.

Why would one want to do this? Well, there can any number of reasons for this. Some of them might seem useless and impractical and of no worth to some. To others they are of critical importance.

Millions of people the world over meditate or do other practices so as to stop the mind. Have any of them succeeded at enlightenment? Many have abated the mind for periods of time, but it always returns. It's part of sentient existence. It's what the brain does. It has electrical processing which is categorized as thoughts and which are then classed as what is called mind.

Can what the brain was created for be stopped? Sure. When one is dead. Can the creation of thoughts be reduced or not placed in the seat of importance that so many of us operate from on a daily existence?

Sure. Only if one wants to do so.

Thoughts create feelings. Many of us are addicted to our feelings. Say, anger. Say, sadness. Say, happiness.

We love to feel what we feel. And what we feel has a thought as the precursor to it. Feelings come about with thoughts as their basis. Their root cause. Thoughts come from the operations of the brain.

So, they are happening.

It's up to us to ascertain what we want to do with these thoughts and these feelings. Do we want to give them first importance in our day? Do we want to have our existence operate around them? Or, perhaps, should we just see that they're part of our existence and continue on with our day.

Kind of like making the choice between swatting at the annoying fly buzzing around our head, or just ignoring it and continuing with what we're doing. The incessant buzzing continues unabated, but we continue to operate at a different level.

Thoughts are not going to go away as long as the mind is assumed to exist. This is generally the human condition as long as we're on this side of the grass.

Thoughts don't even go away with devout practice through so-called spiritual efforts. They are the food for feelings.

So, we have a choice if we're so inclined. Do we want to continue to be dragged between pillar and post with the thoughts that come up? Or do we want to simply do what needs to be done during our day and not give the thoughts that come up the prior importance that we've assigned to them?

This can be done. Life doesn't have to be lived with thoughts as the primary focus of existence. Sure, they can't be denied as being present during our day. But, they certainly don't need to be given the absolute importance that we give them as we blithely follow them down the feelings-lined path that they create.

Continue with your life. Continue doing what Life presents to you. Life has presented these thoughts as well. They're part of Life. Not Life altogether; a part.

At times the body is the priority when one chooses to eat to feed the body. Then one chooses to exercise. Then one chooses to follow a thought that says that one should take a shower to clean the body. The thoughts aren't needed as the body is being cleaned with the stream of water. The shower doesn't have to be filled up with the stream of thoughts. They don't clean the mind or the body at this moment. They are unnecessary as a priority.

The need of the body is to be literally cleaned. Thoughts can't do that. The water and the soap suffices for the moment. Go through the routine of picking up the soap and the shampoo bottle and ensuring that the water isn't too hot so as to scald the body. But do allow the thought stream to be washed away down the drain along with the dirt and dead skin and hair cells.

Leave the shower, cleansed - inside and out.

It's a wonderful way not only to cleanse the body but to cleanse the mind and the heart, and start clean with existence.

Simply remember to wash, rinse, repeat, as often as needed.

Written by Andre Best
http://www.andrebest.com
'...insights :: insightful information for inquisitive individuals'

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