Obsessive-Compulsive Thinking Disorder
I woke up early this morning, struck by a series of dreams that all included people (gurus, teachers, students etc) who talked their heads off about spiritual matters... It was quite shocking, and also a mirror of an aspect of my own mind.
Most of us today would be diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Thinking Disorder, if that was a category in the DSM. Of course, it isn't included because this is seen as quite normal - and desirable if the thoughts are healthy and valuable as defined by current mainstream culture.
Of course, it is all a symptom of a time when awareness (consciousness/mind) is typically exclusively identified with the small self. It is exclusively identified with - and blindly caught up in - the habitual patterns of the small self, the habitual patterns of emotions, thoughts and behaviors of this personality.
When awareness awakens to its own nature, it finds a new "ground" (as mentioned ad nauseam in previous postings). It can rest in its own nature of awareness empty of characteristics, in the clear spacious awareness, in the silence. And it can allow the habitual patterns of emotions and thoughts arise and fade within awareness, with no need to automatically engage in them by fueling or pushing them away.
In this situation, where the center of gravity includes the context (the spacious awareness) and the content (sensations, emotions, thoughts), thoughts become fewer and arise as useful tools for exploration, clarification and communication.
They are no longer constant, no longer anything we believe in or take very seriously, no longer anything we obsess over or with. No longer anything we try to push away, no longer anything we fuel so they repeat over and over until they make us dizzy or crazy. No longer anything that stands between awareness and a direct perception of the world.
As Chozen Bays said in a recent interview with Shambala Sun (paraphrased): My intention is to think only about 20% of the time. That is enough.