Release from Oppression

Gauguin

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When I started meditating, I was shocked to see how deeply ingrained this habit of thinking was. I was already aware that thinking often got in the way of the pure enjoyment of many things but had no idea what to do about it. It was only when I started to sit still in silence that I saw just how noisy it was inside me, how I had virtually no control over what or when I thought. My thinking mind had total control over how I felt, what I did, and what I didn’t do.

This practice is not about trying to stop thinking. It’s much deeper than that. It’s about getting to the source of the desire to think, seeing that no thought is real, no thought is creative.

Realising that every thought that we have is a judgement and related to a past experience. It’s about seeing that even though we feel secure in our thought world, this supposed security is really a fear of the unknown, the fear that if we don‘t think, we’ll cease to exist. But we were all young children at one time, innocent, vulnerable and free from the desire or need to think.

~ Linda Claire

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One of our people in the Native community said the difference between white people and Indians is that Indian people know they are oppressed but don’t feel powerless. White people don’t feel oppressed, but feel powerless.