Please spend time in silent reflection with the following quotes before going to today’s reading. After the reading, return and reflect on the quotes again.

1. We need silence to be alone with God, to speak to him, to listen to him, to ponder his words deep in our hearts.  We need to be alone with God in silence to be renewed and transformed.  Silence gives us a new outlook on life.  ~ Mother Teresa

 

2. You will receive everything you need when you stop asking for what you do not need.
   ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

 

3. Imagine that every person in the world is enlightened but you.  They are all your teachers, each doing just the right things to help you learn perfect patience, perfect wisdom, perfect compassion.  ~ Buddha

 

4. Everything you see and experience, you see and experience through the filter of your own mind. In order to find peace, one must abandon interpretation and remember knowledge. This is the process of learning that I lead you through. You are learning that you do not know; you interpret. This enables you to step back from conflict, and knowing that your interpretation is nothing, let your interpretation go. As interpretation is released, knowledge can be given. Knowledge is peace, since knowledge has no conflict, because it is whole and it is truth. ~ NTI Luke, Chapter 6

 

5. Silence is most powerful. Speech is always less powerful than silence. ~ Ramana Maharshi

 

6. The world is indeed a mixture of truth and make-believe. Discard the make-believe and take the truth. ~ Ramakrishna

I’m sure you’ve noticed that the mind can be more or less noisy when you meditate. Although a quiet mind is considered ideal for meditation, it is not required. Michael Langford’s awareness-watching-awareness practice instructions say:

If you seem to be having a lot of thoughts, ignore them and turn your attention away from the thoughts and towards awareness observing awareness.

In this case “ignore” means, place your attention elsewhere. It does not mean, “repress.” Some applicable synonyms for “ignore” are:

Disregard, take no notice of, pay no attention to, pay no heed to, tune out

Meditation is called “practice,” because meditation is practice. We know our practice is paying off when we notice ourselves disregarding thought in daily life. When we ignore thought, we live from awareness, intuition and spontaneity.

The Teachings of Inner Ramana refers to ignoring thought and living by intuition as “living from within instead of living from without.” In today’s reading, the Pharisees are a symbol. The Pharisees who are not distracted symbolize living from within. Jesus symbolizes intuition, and the Pharisees who are not distracted are able to hear him. The Pharisees who are distracted symbolize living from without. Their perception is biased and limited by their thoughts. They do not hear Jesus’ message, just as we do not hear intuition when we are caught up in thought. They also do not notice “the peace beyond the words,” just as we do not notice awareness when thought has our attention.

Jesus is clear that we are not guilty if we believe our thoughts, even if we act on them. We are not guilty, because consciousness is unaffected. However, believing thoughts and acting on them is the cause of suffering. In NTI Matthew, Judas symbolized the mistake of believing and acting on thought.

In daily life, it’s important to turn our listening attention inward. It’s important that we learn to disregard thoughts and live from awareness, intuition and spontaneity.

Here’s something to remember from the Mullah Nasruddin story about the leaky bucket:

If you react unconsciously, you push the lesson of the moment away.

Our bucket leaks when we live from without instead of living from within. It’s as if we put water in the bucket during our morning meditation and contemplation, but then we let it leak out again as we live from thought throughout the day. We are never guilty for this mistake, but it is confusion, the cause of suffering, and an obstacle to truth realization.