We're all too familiar with getting headaches, illnesses & countless other problems from 'overthinking'. As a species, we've pushed rationality well past reasonable limits - to hyper-rationality! BALANCE is desperately needed. We must re-acquaint ourselves with & make regular use of ALL our ways of perceiving & knowing.
Wolff's book below is imho a wonderful nudge towards not just sanity, but a much fuller life:
“Suddenly, a new thought burst in on me: maybe I could sense water. In my mind I made a sort of list: seeing water, hearing water, smelling water. I might smell water, or even hear it if it was dripping on a leaf perhaps. I looked around.
‘Do not talk,’ Ahmeed said – I knew he meant ‘Do not think.’ ‘Water inside heart,’ he said next, with a gesture of his hand on his heart. I knew he meant I should sense inside – not with my mind, but from the inside.
It is sad to have to use so many words to say something so simple.
As soon as I stopped thinking, planning, deciding, analyzing – using my mind, in short – I felt as if I was pushed in a certain direction. I walked a few steps and immediately saw a big leaf with perhaps a half a cup of water in it.
I must have stood there for a full minute, in awe. Not in awe of anything in particular, simply in awe.
When I leaned over to drink from the leaf, I saw water with feathery ripples, I was a few mosquito larvae wriggling on the surface, I saw the veins of the leaf through the water, some bubbles, a piece of dirt. Reaching out, I put a finger in the water, then saw that one of the wriggling mosquito larvae had been trapped in a tiny bubble on my finger. How beautiful, how perfect. I did not put the finger with the water droplet in my mouth, but looked back at the leaf.
My perception opened further. I no longer saw water – what I felt with my whole being was a leaf-with-water-in-it, attached to a plant that grew in soil surrounded by uncounted other plants, all part of the same blanket of living things covering the soil, which was also part of a larger living skin around the earth. And nothing was separate; all was one, the same thing: water-leaf-plant-trees-soil-animals-earth-air-sunlight and little wisps of wind. The all-ness was everywhere, and I was part of it.
I cannot explain what went on inside me, but I knew that I had learned something unbelievably wonderful. I felt more alive than I had ever felt before.
All of me was filled with being.
What this other sense is, I do not know. For me it is very real. I think of it as a sense of knowing. It probably is a quality we all have to a greater or lesser degree. For me it works when I can get out of my mind, when I can experience without having to understand, or name, or position, or judge, or categorize.
It is a quality that has to be used or it fades away; just as one has to exercise muscles, so too knowing must be exercised.
I am saying this after the fact, trying to describe something that does not fit into our Western concepts, and therefore there are no words. At the time I did not think anything. I was learning how to put my mind aside and use some other sense to know.
Standing over a leaf with a little water in it, somewhere in the jungles of Malaysia, I did not think in words. I did not think. I bathed in that overwhelming sense of oneness. I felt as if a light was lit deep inside me. I knew I was radiating something – love, perhaps – for this incredible world, this rich, varied, and totally interconnected world of creations that, at the same time, gave love to me. And with the love, I also felt a very deep sense of belonging.”
Robert Wolff. “Original Wisdom. Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing.” Inner Traditions, 2001. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery, “The Little Prince”
"The emergence and blossoming of understanding, love and intelligence has nothing to do with any tradition, no matter how ancient or impressive - it has nothing to do with time. It happens completely on its own when a human being questions, wonders, listens and looks without getting stuck in fear, pleasure and pain. When self concern is quiet, in abeyance, heaven and earth are open. The mystery, the essence of life is not separate from the silent openness of simple listening." Toni Packer
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