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authorNicholas Johnson <nick@nicholasjohnson.ch>2023-02-17 00:00:00 +0000
committerNicholas Johnson <nick@nicholasjohnson.ch>2023-02-17 00:00:00 +0000
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title: "The Dream of Life"
date: 2022-07-06T00:00:00
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---
## Meditation is Not Trivial
-In a journal entry I made last year titled "The Addiction to Thinking"[1], I claimed that the normal human condition is to be spellbound by incessant thinking every minute of the day. That is, to be thinking without being aware of the thinking. I went on to claim that the lack of awareness of thinking causes nearly all of our psychological suffering. Near the end of the entry, I offered substantial evidence that there's actually an alternative to living this way.
+In a journal entry I made last year titled "[The Addiction to Thinking](/2021/02/06/the-addiction-to-thinking/)", I claimed that the normal human condition is to be spellbound by incessant thinking every minute of the day. That is, to be thinking without being aware of the thinking. I went on to claim that the lack of awareness of thinking causes nearly all of our psychological suffering. Near the end of the entry, I offered substantial evidence that there's actually an alternative to living this way.
A lot of people read stuff like that and think "I'm thinking. I know that I'm thinking. I don't see the problem." They conclude that meditation is just this trivial thing. In reality, they're just hopelessly lost in thought. Proving to yourself there's nothing to meditation with "I'm thinking. I know that I'm thinking." doesn't discredit thousands of years worth of contemplative literature by people who spent considerable portions of their lives meditating.
@@ -35,7 +34,3 @@ People talk about thought as if they're doing it and as if it's happening to the
When instead of appropriating each thought, you become aware of thought as thought, then life becomes like a lucid dream, but with total clarity rather than the fuzziness and discontinuity of a dream. You realize that there really is nothing to worry about except for worries you create.
If meditation can be said to have an ultimate purpose, then the purpose is to radically transform your conscious experience and to grant you a sense of conscious freedom akin to the level of freedom you get from a lucid dream. Even if you never meditate and I hope you do, at least now you know, at least in the abstract, what all the fuss is about.
-
-
-Links:
-[1: The Addiction to Thinking](/2021/02/06/the-addiction-to-thinking/)