I do my best thinking when I'm not thinking
Dear Soul,
photo by Fer Troulik
Dear Soul,
Please hear me out.
I know it sounds crazy,
but I’m starting to think that
I do my best thinking
when I’m not thinking.
I discovered this the other day,
tracing the shapes of letters on the page.
I stopped when I couldn’t think of more letters to trace,
and my mind went blank.
Half a minute later
I was tracing shapes again.
Wait! What just happened?!
I never saw a new thought in my mind,
I only felt the impulse to press pen to page again,
Yet the new sequence of letters
was already waiting.
Here was the fresh spark of idea
that previously eluded me.
But where did it come from?
My mind was blank!
I have been experimenting
with doing nothing.
I always fail.
Two hours is a long meditation,
but in the end I always stand up
and go to the bathroom or the kitchen
or take a walk outside.
When I drive, I don’t think
about where I’m going,
but I do GO there.
I always arrive.
Think!
They said this to me when I was young,
when I seemed not to be thinking.
But I’ve never had much luck with
Think! - ing.
It’s like trying to push on a string.
No leverage.
I had a new idea.
Stop thinking!
In order to clear a space for thinking.
Perception is my refuge.
Rather than thinking I can
listen, look, smell, touch or taste.
It’s always available.
Moments or minutes or hours later,
I notice myself doing something.
Apparently, somebody thought about
What would be the thing to do.
Was that you, dear soul?
It seems strange to think that
I have thought all my life that
I had to try hard to think.
Is this what they mean
when they say
“get out of your own way”?
This is how it seems to me
when I feel the energy streaming through me
as if it had nothing to do with me.
If it isn’t mine, why does it feel like
trusting this
is trusting myself?
It’s especially strange when
my habit is to distrust anything that
feels like trusting myself.
It has not been my habit
to trust what feels good.
I have stories about how
“what feels good”
has harmed me
in the past.
Yet now is not the past.
So why should the same rules apply?
Could it be, dear soul, that
what feels insane
is only the long-awaited discovery of sanity?
It never seemed right,
the way they taught me how I ought to be.
But it also never seemed right to be in the wrong.
Was I right to be wrong all along?!
It’s too much to calculate.
I don’t know how to think about it.
So I’ll stop thinking
and just see what happens.
Yes.
Much better.
Wordless wisdom is your birthright.
It’s the place you go before you find the words,
the je ne sais croi that words can only dream of capturing.
It’s the place of true dreams,
the place the poet points at, not the poem itself.
In this place, your body knows exactly what to do.
Your soul does not know how to do what it is told.
Nor does it communicate in words.
But it does know how to know - without second-guessing.
It’s necessary to silence words
to hear the soul speaking,
a speech without sound.
Soul knows exactly what you want to do
and is ready to guide you
if you are willing to trust.
I support life-long learners to find the self-trust that opens the doors of perception so it’s possible to hear the musicality of being and dance with its energy.
I work with individual clients and host weekly Friday calls for the Grounded Connection community where co-learners hold the shared intention to cultivate relational well-being.