Where do we go when we close our eyes? We still can see, but we don’t see – our sense of sight shuts off and the longer our eyes are closed the further we drift away into unconsciousness, and eventually sleep.
What happens to our thinking mind?
There are other occasions too. When we are exhausted, too tired to think, yet still awake, our minds go blank and we don’t feel fully there.
So too our minds may go blank when we panic or are put on the spot – all rational or conscious thought is put on hold, as if paused, and instead our instinct kicks in.
Or when we are totally absorbed in something, using our full concentration on a game or activity, we no longer think, we just act.
Have you ever set off on a journey and arrived at your destination with no conscious memory of how you got there? Your mind took over for you, the automatic pilot aspect of your consciousness, freeing up the rest of your mind to do other things.
The mind is an amazing tool, vast and limitless – but that is not all we are. There is so much more to us, to life, than we think.
We do not think and therefore are. We are, and thinking comes after that.
Zen musings 