Guided Meditaiton: Deep Thinking

So hello and welcome.

And the teachings I'm offering these this week for meditation might come as a surprise to some of you.

And that is to, to engage with thinking while you meditate rather than trying to stop thinking.

And some people, even very experienced meditators, this is kind of an unthinkable proposal because it, when they really get into meditation, it feels like they're not thinking at all.

And I don't wanna disagree with that, but, uh, uh, uh, there, there are layers of thinking within us.

And, uh, and those layers go to subtler, subtler, calmer, calmer ways of thinking until some point the thinking, the use of intelligence, recognition, uh, figuring things out, are operating on almost a subverbal level.

And, um, we don't have to actively think about it.

We don't have to plan ahead.

We, uh, know what to do.

If we're walking down a sidewalk in a street, and we see a group of people coming towards us, uh, there, there might not have to be any conscious thinking about it, intentional thinking about it.

Um, but maybe, uh, the right thing to do is to step to the side.

Maybe the group of kids are a bunch of kindergarten kids with their teachers, and so of course you step aside and walk around them.

And, um, and so they're figuring out that how...

This is where you walk to the side.

This is how you do it.

This is how you slow down, um, make room for them.

All that calculation happens subvocally, sub, with below the level of thinking.

But it's still, the mind is figuring that out.

So as we get deeper in meditation, we're still engaging something that's right there on the interface and the, and the, or maybe the gray zone between nonverbal and verbal thinking, active thinking, and, and, and this kind of deeper intelligence.

And it's a whole different li-li-layer of thinking than discursive thinking and calculated thinking.

And to know about this and appreciate it and to have a way of just allowing for it and, and slightly intending it, "Yes, stay here.

Stay here," and to learn how to do it in a way that really supports the meditation, that it is meditative.

And one of the ways to do that is to, uh, be in time with the present moment.

Be in time.

W- And in time here is, I think, is a musical term, to be, uh, with the beat, to be with, um, in the middle of the...