Hi everybody, Thomas here. I hope you're enjoying “Transformations of Faith.” I've heard from students here and there what they’re learning, what they're enjoying, what they're struggling with, and it brings me great joy that you would take time with this content. I attempted in this course to point to just the raw material of human life that we have an opportunity to give shape to and transform, and I just love having a community of practice around this particular content.

So a student asked me recently why in the course I keep using the phrase “thought form.” Why not “thought”, why not “thinking”? What on earth is a thought form, Thomas? So I thought recording a little message here would be a good medium to answer this question and also provide a little exercise here, a bit of a meditation that will help you get further insight into it.

So, thought form. It stresses this phrase, it’s a cue, it's a reminder that thought is a form that is arising in awareness from one moment to the next. Similar to the way in a wide open sky a cloud will kind of float through it. It will come and it will go, but at no point is the sky confused with the clouds. The sky’s the sky, the cloud is the cloud. 

In a similar way we can learn to distance ourselves from our thinking. The tendency in our human life is to kind of collapse into the thinking mind, to identify my true self with my thoughts. And it comes as a revelation to us when we realize there's actually something that's aware of thinking, and that something that is aware seems to be a deeper, truer self. It seems to be the more essential self that I am. It's not that my thoughts aren't me, it's that I'm much more than just my thoughts.

I think of Viktor Frankl’s famous passage, I’ll paraphrase it here, but he talks about the space between stimulus and response. When there’s a space between stimulus and response we have greater freedom to respond to life skillfully, compassionately, in a Christlike way. When we have a greater space between a thought, which is a stimulus, and a response we have greater freedom. 

So this technique I want to share with you, it's an invitation to deepen our realization that yes, we have thoughts, but we're not just our thoughts. We’re something much greater than thought really. But we're confused about that fact most of the time, most of us, in most situations. So this exercise is designed to help you get some more headspace, open up into a greater spacious awareness, and you can be aware of thoughts. You can be aware of which thoughts are useful. You can be aware of which thoughts are not particularly useful and you can let them keep on scuttling by like the next cloud in the sky. That’s the idea, I hope you enjoy it.

So take a moment here to unhook thought, unhook awareness from the thinking mind. And don't worry if you think you know how to do that or not, just do it. You know how to do it. Unhook awareness from thought. So you’re just opening up like the great open sky. You’re just aware of space. Just bring awareness to space, and let your awareness just mingle with space. Just take a moment to get a feel for this. Everything is still arising, there’s still a body, there’s still a world, there’s still the soundscape all around you, and there’s still, yes, thoughts and the thinking mind. But you're not collapsed into these thoughts. You’ve unhooked. So the thought is just arising in this wide open field of space. And I want you to just rest as this open spacious awareness, and be curious about what the next thought will be.

Maybe it's a mental image that comes up that flashes across your mind's eye, maybe it's mental talk. Whatever form the thought takes you can just notice this thought form arising in the space of awareness, and once again unhooking from it. Just relaxing as open, spacious awareness, and again being curious about what the next thought will be.

As you continue to do this, you will start to realize on a more and more deep level that there's something that's aware of thought, and therefore I can't just be my thoughts. I must also be that which is aware of thoughts. And as we deepen in this awareness we deepen our freedom, we deepen our agency, our capacity to express ourselves as unique beings in the world. Does everybody's parents say like when they’re kids and they're making funny faces like, “Be careful or your face will get stuck like that.” This exercise, it's also true, if you keep doing this, if you keep resting as open spacious awareness observing thought forms coming and going, your awareness will actually just get used to it. And it will not quite get stuck like that, but you'll take on a new form. And in this new way of being you will have the freedom to use thinking when you want to, and you'll have the freedom to be in a completely quiet mind when you don't feel like using the tool of the mind. You’ll learn to ultimately relax into your deepest identity, which is, we could say, love, which is light, which is made of the very substance of God. 

So that's the practice. That's why I talk about thought form in “Transformations of Faith.” I hope you continue to enjoy the course, and I'll be back soon with more practice for you.