Paying Attention To The Spontaneous Arrival Of Thoughts
A Story About What The Dance Of Reason Tells Me
Inner spontaneous sounds and thoughts, are similar in nature: they are spontaneous in origin, and responsive to our attention. But not just our attention.
As I write this sudden insight down, the sound of water becomes exuberant and loud, though I am barely paying attention. It seems that they approve, but that is my adumbration of the sudden exuberance of water. Perhaps this insight event has brought me closer to the source of all, as if another veil has lifted — this one being my not having noticed before that these sounds and thoughts are of the same nature…
It follows then — my dance of reason tells me — that it is the same for the colored lights and visual forms, memories, feelings, and meditative insights. They all arise spontaneously — I wouldn’t know how to create them, or where to find them otherwise. And they do so in response to the occurrent now.
Yet, I cannot expand the range of sounds that I hear — they are not an orchestra under my direction. And I cannot expand the range of my thoughts., unless they suddenly do.
Why have I not noticed that these inner spontaneous sounds and my thoughts are similar in nature before this moment? I have written at length about their spontaneous nature — both of these occurrent phenomena — and, as well, about their responsive character and their collective origin in responsive naturing. Why haven’t I noticed before this moment? Because you asked me about my use of the word “naturing” and I wanted to find a way to introduce you to that which “naturing” denotes. And what better way, than that of following thoughts back to their origin, here-now, as I sit in meditation… and suddenly the thought arises: “These are not different and they are not my doing. They both are spontaneous: uncaused by me.”
But what if they are the handiwork of some unconscious brain activity? Well, if this activity is unconscious, what would it know? Perhaps it is actually conscious, though I am not conscious of it? Like some spy listening in to what I say? Or some autonomous control function of my body, that obviously knows what is going on, though I am unaware of its activities. Perhaps my thoughts are just the output of a ‘wetware’ version of ChatGPT located somewhere in my brain that responds to my questions?
I focus now on the impossibility of thinking a thought without knowing its contents before thinking it. Why did I not notice that inner spontaneous sounds and thoughts are of the same nature before this now?
Ah! There it is. The insight. Something I have never recognized before. Is it just me thinking a new thought whose contents I have never before noticed? How would I know to do it? Or know how to do it? Where does this creative feature lie in my physically limited brain? How is it invoked? How is it coded — after all, my brain is a material construction of biological cells, none of which contain my possible thoughts waiting to be called upon. And if I can’t do it consciously — think a thought before knowing its contents — why would I be justified in believing that a mass of biological cells that have never had a thought themselves, might suddenly notice something that I haven’t until this thought came to me unbidden?
Plato said in the “Meno” dialog that we recollect this knowledge that has been accumulated over our soul’s past lives, but this doesn’t answer the question: how can I think a thought without knowing beforehand what that thought will be? I can imagine lots of things, but rather than that, I must fall back on what I know veridically: that creativity, by its very nature is spontaneous, without any originating process or cause, and my brain is finite. It cannot contain all possible thoughts. So where does that leave me?
I am in a state of bewilderment.
A sudden thought arrives: “You forgot about the sounds.” And then another: “You cannot expand the range of inner spontaneous sounds you hear!” That stays my bewilderment for a moment as I ponder what this means, while ignoring that these two injunctive statements in the second-person seemed to indicate direct knowledge that I don’t yet have.
Ah! Yes. They are uncaused, yet of specific characters: the sound of a gurgling stream or falling water, deep rumbles of moving earth, wind sighing in a cave, and a resonant tone that I identify as fire because it seems powerful and energetic. And then the special one that accompanied an ‘energetic’ change in my inner being: a single blasted note as if from a wooden flute. As well, there is the high pitched metallic squeal-like sound that tracks my focus and concentration. But the others don’t track my attention. Not really. They seem to recede when I turn my attention elsewhere, but when I ‘turn my hearing around’ to within, they are suddenly already there, as if they had been all along. And if I place my presence in certain areas of my body — the energy chakras — these sounds become ‘closer’ and more well-defined. These sounds aren’t responsive in the way my thoughts are, nor are these sounds as myriad as my thoughts. And they cannot possibly be caused by anything going on in my body. First, because then everyone would hear them; and second, there isn’t a flowing stream or a waterfall in my body, nor a sighing continuous wind, nor deep rumbles of earth, nor powerful energetic tones. However, having heard the theory that attention is related to synchronous wave patterns in the brain, I consider if the high-pitched squeal might be a resonance of those synchronized brainwaves.
And then I stop to consider why I think that it is the brainwaves that cause the resonance, rather than the focus and concentration of my attention that causes the synchronized brainwaves. And this makes me realize that I was doing the same thing when I was trying to place the genesis of my thoughts in my brain without any luck, though I continued to have faith that there was a way for their genesis to be found there in that organ.
I seek simplicity in my understanding and always have. I see the wisdom in Occam’s razor that holds that the entities involved in any phenomenon should be the least number possible, so I search…
As the element sounds are uncaused and cannot possibly be originating in my body’s material activities, I consider their association with the locations of the subtle energetic body’s centers. Perhaps they are resonances of these energy flows. But the energy flows are variable, and the element sounds are not, so I flip the relationship around. The energy flows are the result of the elemental sounds, and those flows are attenuated by my material form’s varying state, and can be augmented by my focused presence of awareness to the various chakras and channels of the subtle energy body. This is what traditional sources say, and I now see their wisdom.
So these element sounds that I hear when I ‘turn my hearing around’ to them, are the genesis of my subtle energy body, which in-forms my material form. And the high-pitched metallic squeal that I hear, is the genesis of my focused and concentrating attention, and it is the synchronized brain-waves that are the ‘resonances’ of the focus and concentration of my awareness.
I call this “naturing”, because these sounds are the origin that I seek. And more importantly, this naturing is simply activity, not an entity. And that tickles my razor. Nothing here excludes the divine — in fact, it is the ‘presencing’ of the Divine, of the Real, that has now become intelligible for me, so that my bewilderment is no more.
Now when I sweep my attention around, I comprehend what is happening in a completely new way — an alien in a strange land whose inhabitants construct Rube Goldberg mechanisms all day, while growing ever-longer beards. And who confuse resonances for causes.
Oh, and my thoughts? They cannot possibly originate in my brain, but must have the same divine origin that natures them responsively to my attentive focus, my intended line of reasoning, and my active desire to achieve something. As well, sometimes a thought arises that just spontaneously points out something that I have missed and wasn’t even considering — thoughts that always seem to use second-person pronouns. There is brain activity that occurs along with thoughts, just as there is with the sound of my attentional focus and concentration. Perhaps they mark the translation of my thoughts into human words, just as these words that I speak have obviously been, since now I pay attention to their spontaneous arrival, laden with gifts that I’ve never — yet — ‘thought of’. They all seem to be the translation of an understanding that I can only come to, but not inhabit — yet.
