Originally posted on Facebook HERE
In a book I’m reading right now, I read a passage yesterday that said, “Thought cannot be bigger than life. If you want to know life in its immensity, you need something more than the intellect”. To me, what he’s saying is – we can’t “think” our way to God. We have to let go of our minds to truly experience Him. When we get on a roll in life, when we’re really “in the zone” – it’s not because we’ve increased our thoughts, more so that we’ve pushed them aside in favor of just going with the flow. Times of the most stress are usually times of the most thoughts. Worry, anxiety, despair, even grief… we create that for ourselves. And when we let our minds take over and control us, this is where obsessions come in. Gotta have this, gotta do that, once we hit that goal, own that car, buy that house, get that job, we’ll be all set… but we’re never going to be happy living a life where happiness is a supposed end goal. Once we get there we’ll move the finish line. Happiness is available to us every moment we’re alive no matter what the situation, it’s just that we haven’t figured that out yet. Because there’s these bills and my physical ailments and my kids/spouse/coworkers are making me crazy, and I need a new car, and I hate where I live, and people suck, and… uh huh. Where is God in all that? God is calm. Love is open and available. Always. It’s one reason I like doing yoga so much. In order to truly progress, it’s not in any way just a physical process. Much of it is mental. You have to calm your mind to hold a balance pose. Some of the stretches can put my mind in “panic” mode… calm… calm… calm… you have to learn to be calm to progress. Yesterday I held a plank for five minutes – it was all about staying calm and slowing my breathing. After three minutes it gets a lot harder to do… after four my breathing cycles were increasing even as I tried to stay calm. And finally at five minutes I had to stop. But I started out last year just doing a one minute plank and built it up from there. In one year I increased the time 500%. How much time do we really spend in a peaceful state getting to know God? In meditation and prayer. Every day? Once a week? Once a month? Never?… our minds will tell us we have to feel stressed, worried and anxious, that’s just the way life is. Is it? What if there was a wealth of joy and happiness inside us that is always available and we’re so caught up in our own minds we never spent any time there? “If you want to know life in its immensity, you need something more than the intellect”. Get out of your mind today. Moments spent with God are never wasted. And they have to be experienced in the part of us that lies beyond thought 🙏
