In your thoughts lie your attachments. If
you want to know your attachments then know your thoughts. Knowing one’s
thoughts makes one aware of his identifications because thoughts are related
to, arise from and revolve around our identifications, the so called
attachments i.e. raga (positive
attachments to which one is attracted) and dvesha
(negative attachments which one is repelled from). Mostly our thoughts are
about our possessions which could be anything - ranging from our own body/mind
(thoughts and emotions) to relations; physical possessions; opinions; ideas;
judgements etc.- which one is usually identified with and mistakenly one considers
these to be as ‘myself’. Or these thoughts could be about our deep rooted
tendencies i.e. habits and desires, vasanas,
as we traditionally know them. These vasanas
too are nothing but our identifications and thus are our attachments.
Mostly we are not aware of our thoughts. In
order to be aware of our thoughts so as to know our identifications or
attachments what we need to do is to start sitting alone for a while with eyes
closed. What then happens is that we get confronted with an avalanche of
variety of thoughts. While one goes through this process what is important is
that one should always maintain his awareness. Being aware or maintaining awareness
is the key. It’s only because our awareness is there that we get to notice
these thoughts while we sit with our eyes closed but we fail to notice them
during rest of the time even though we are fully awake and thoughts are very
much there, primarily for the reason that during those times our awareness is mostly
absent as we are too busy doing many other things whereas they become the focus
of our attention when we sit with our eyes closed. Even while sitting with our
eyes closed we will fail to notice these thoughts if we lose our awareness and instead
we will get entangled or involved with them.
Another important thing to remember is
that while one goes through this process, one should never label these thoughts
as positive or negative or good or bad thoughts. Thoughts are just thoughts and
not good or bad as we label them. This labelling is our own doing and this
could be relevant only socially or morally but not beyond that. Maintaining
this awareness will help us to know our thoughts and related attachments
without getting involved or entangled with them. In fact for one who walks the
path of spirituality knowing the thoughts is spiritually very significant and,
the only goal of a spiritual seeker is to go beyond all the thoughts - good or
bad……BeAware
