I believe you're mistaking what I talk about for a path that philosophizes about thinking - that is - thinking about thinking (although this is certainly a beginning). Thinking is only the focus point, the pinhole through which we go. After all, if we want to reach the source of creative spiritual activity isn't it the most logical thing to turn our attention to exactly this activity? If I want to trace the origin of thought I wouldn't go too look for it in feeling or non-thought. Thinking is the point of contact with spiritual activity - it's a limited form of spiritual activity, and as such it's the most logical place to start our quest for the more unrestricted forms of spiritual activity - the higher forms of activity. In other words, we focus on a thought in order to penetrate into the essence that animates it and to find ourselves active in that essence at a higher level.Eugene I wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 4:34 pm But this seems to me a too reductionist approach. I would not agree that there is only one dimension of the progression of thinking, because the variety of qualitative modes and directions of progression of thinking and spiritual development is inexhaustible, and that is exactly what makes is beautiful, unpredictable and full of new never-ending discoveries. It also opens to us the freedom of choice of the dimensions of our preference and never-ending space of development and exploration.
As described in the essay, the goal is not at all to get stuck in thinking and do more thinking, forsaking every other qualitative experience. It's that through the concentrated meditation, when we hold a single focused thought, actively energizing it, we come to recognize the 'carrier waves' underlying it, deeper stratum of reality that can never be known as long as we are engaged in thinking or even thinking about thinking. Clearly, we can never reach this realm in a no-thought (no activity) meditation either - we can't reach the essence of what we are avoiding. Once we pass through the focus point, not only that we are not stuck in 'mere thought' but we begin to find everything from our ordinary consciousness plus a whole other world of qualities that simply can't be perceived in the ordinary state. In the higher state we find a new level of self. Somehow it's still 'me', although 'me' that's of a different kind. I know that this 'me' has always been expressing through my ordinary self, but at the same time my ordinary self is too entranced in the thought forms, feelings, beliefs, etc. to ever recognize what gives it its spiritual life. Normally the higher 'me' is 'mute', with 'tied hands and legs', capable of only moving a finger - which stirs the substance and forms the ordinary thought-forms. From my ordinary perspective, my higher 'me' is hidden in the blind spot of consciousness - the one place that I never consider. I address the blind spot when I want to find from where my spiritual activity proceeds. But I can't do that it the same way I find any other perception or a thought - these lie in the contents of my consciousness - now I want to find what is the essence that makes these contents possible. By concentrating on the essence flowing in a thought I rediscover the essence of my being - or at least a part of that essence - that expresses itself in my ordinary state and I'm fully conscious, as another level of 'me', in a state that precedes the crystallization of the thoughts of my ordinary 'me'. I can find another level of 'speech' and 'movement' in a more fundamental and less restricted level of consciousness. In this realm I can see how my ordinary thinking being comes to be what it is. I see what makes it 'tick'.
Even the slightest glimpse of this, opens a whole new venue for me. It's not a one time event, it's just a step in an endless progression. But now I have an idea of direction. Once I've seen the reality of my ordinary self - not by extinguishing it but by seeing it in front of me and how it is animated from the higher spiritual activity that normally goes by unnoticed, I know that this process can go ever further - layer by layer revealing the labyrinths of being that I've been previously wandering by being merged with them.