Reflections on Key Meditation Text, Part 4.

I am able to determine what goes on my head and by implication what I do, when I am not breathing. Great artists, the author notes, do their best work, when they stop breathing. I have realized that I cannot stop a succession of pre-occupations with things that I don't wish to think about or do them, so long as my breathing is not stopped.

Only one thought is able to assume the mental stoplight at any given point in time. The author mentions this, but let us assume it for now. If so, there has to be a succession of thoughts that impress you as if they are too many of them occupying the mind at any given point in time.

The point of meditation, if there is any, is to have no thought or thoughts, so that the mind gets blank. No one is occupying it. The mind is empty. It has no residence. Since zero is emptiness, then zero, you might say, is occupying it. I am, or you are, at point zero. It is sort of things that make you curious. It is like saying I was about kilometer or mile zero.

One may therefore, in this state, choose who will take residence in his or her empty house, doing so places pressure on the head.

During your career in meditative practices, you may note no thought means no pressure, that is to say absence of the chattering box or the occasional burst of thought that occupies the head and quickly departs, is an absence of pressure, or force per unit area.

When such thought or pressure is present, the author says, the tendency is to discharge such pressure by saying it so.

Self-help literature, most notably, that of Steven Covey, notes the existence of choice between stimulation, the existence of pressure to so say or even do, and response, to actually say something.

Exercising your right to choose what to say and do on moment to moment basis is what it is all about.

I a firmly believe that I can acquire the ends that I desire when I am able to choose. It is very exciting thing to know you are able to choose who you want to be and be so.

An ancient adage links thought and action, when repeated, that is, to fate. If so, by choosing again and again what to think about and do, or feel for that matter, one chooses his or her fate. That is what is exciting about choice, you choose your fate. People generally feel happy when they are able to choose and do what they chose, on constant basis. This gives them confidence, very attractive quality.