I don’t know if J.K. Rowling knows anything about The Work, but it seems like she might. She certainly has been drawn to the idea of investigating one’s thinking.
In The Goblet of Fire, book four of the Harry Potter series, there’s a scene that could be right out of Loving What Is and step number one of the work: seeing what our judgments and thoughts actually are. Admitting them. Getting them out of the murkiness of a busy mind.
Professor Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts, Harry’s school, has an amazing magic “thought collector” in his office called a “pensive.” It’s a stone basin with a silvery substance where you can put your thoughts and memories.
Dumbledore says: “I sometimes find that I have too many thoughts and memories crammed into my mind.” (Gosh, I’ve never felt like that before!)
“At these times, one simply siphons the excess thoughts from one’s mind, pours them into the basin, and examines them at one’s leisure. It becomes easier to spot patterns and links when they’re in this form.”
I know the feeling…having had so many thoughts whirling so fast and furiously in my mind, that it seemed like I couldn’t stand it, and I certainly couldn’t spot patterns and links. It all seemed like a cesspool!
I worked with a client yesterday who was having this experience. Each thought led to another image, and another…ideas, warnings, worries, fears, impulses. It’s almost like they’re humming like a huge hive, each buzz a different thought.
It can feel so chaotic, and then on top of THAT there are thoughts like “I have to find the right thought to question, I have to get to the bottom of this, I have to understand myself, I HAVE to get it!”
Which leads to more frustration and more agonizing.
So what is our version of the “pensive”?
Putting our thoughts on paper, of course. This is the only way I know to examine these thoughts at my leisure.
When we write, we can stabilize the whirling dervish of a mind and look at what’s true and what’s not…to find the freedom underneath.
The Work really is for me slowing down the mind, putting it in a solid place, like paper (which is kind of funny to say when I think about it, but it’s true). I can see it there. I refer back to the sentence, it doesn’t slip past and get tucked under something in the dark.
Then I love trusting the process of answering the questions.
And then, through this inquiry….where once there was lots of chaos and clutter, there is a great, simple, and vast space.
Adyashanti spoke not long ago about Inquiry and said that all that is not true tends to fall away, to decay.
Once we just look, sit, stay with it, then we see the magical mystery of it all. The mind has actually been an amazing thought collector, without the “pensive” nearby, until we find out how to use a “pensive” by slowing down and doing The Work.
That mind has been so fascinated with all the details and the thinking and the “facts” and explanations about ourselves. But then as we question and see all the ways we define ourselves, and find out that we can’t really KNOW….
We enter the unknown, we know less rather than more. The excess thoughts really are all abstracted and somehow, they fizzle away.
The Tao Te Ching #48: “In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of the Tao, every day something is dropped. Less and less do yo need to force things, until finally you arrive at non-action. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone….”
Much Love, Grace