Everything is Already

Sometimes things are so there for us that we don’t perceive their existence. They’re so so for us that we don’t think to question their existence or their origin. For instance, did you ever wonder where thoughts come from? Chances are you haven’t. If you’re like most people you perceive yourself as a thinker, and think of thoughts as being generated by your mind.

But what if thoughts came to us from a pre-existing state? What if they’re not mind- generated events, but rather are floating in the intangible ether, waiting to be grasped by ready minds? The great Indian sage Paramahansa Yogananda taught that every thought has a particular vibration, and that it is already out there. Just as we find a radio station by turning the dial on a receiver, “getting” an idea is simply tuning in to its frequency.

If you watch your mind for a while, you’ll see that you are, indeed, not choosing the thoughts that come to you; your mind is simply allowing them entrance. Try this for a moment: make yourself a mind-observer by dis-identifying a part of your awareness from your thought stream. Watching dispassionately as one after another thought-event floats by, you can notice how they are hooked up into threads, one idea suggesting another or inducing an image or memory-thought.

A digital designer using Photoshop treats pieces of text as objects that can be moved around, shaped and sized on a screen in the same way as pictures. Watching your thoughts as objects that are “not you” is more than a mental trick. If you can train yourself to do it, you’re practicing a high degree of detachment. No longer seeing your ideas and opinions as yourself, you can hold them as perceptions apart from you. When someone else disagrees with them, instead of defending them you can listen and seek mutual understanding in a calm manner.

You can even go farther and play around with mind-sets, reframing at will until you find ways of perceiving that are consistent with your perceived values. This makes you a truly self-evolving thinker, the shaper of your own destiny.
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