I Cannot Find the Underlying Thought I Believe In

Well, not for a while. [Chuckles] Okay but let’s go with that. [Continues reading] What to do, if, like in physical pain or in an overwhelming emotional state, I can’t find the underlying thought I seem to believe in.

Well, I can find it. [Laughs] What I mean is ‘physical pain’ or ‘overwhelming emotional states’ are the underlying thoughts. Now, I feel like I should clarify that otherwise it will be misunderstood and I will be explaining for a year. [Laughs] So, the claim that we know what it is and the claimant idea - is the underlying thought and it is quite apparent. So, the claim to knowledge of some Truth in a conceptual way is what we call a thought. It comes and says, ‘you are undergoing a deep physical pain’. Now that is the conceptual version of what you are undergoing. Now by having that claim, by having that idea, it does not help whatever you are undergoing. It never seems to help, but it more often than not, it seems to make it worse which is what we call suffering. Because that seems to last even after the event (so to speak). ‘Why do I undergo physical pain?’ or ‘When will it stop’ ‘What is the reason, why it happens’ This is searching for a conceptual answer which actually doesn’t exist. Doesn’t exist, and it is centered around (even these innocuous seeming thoughts) the idea of individual limited ‘me’. So, it is our false claim that ‘I understand what this is’, which is actually an avoidance. So, what happens is that when we claim that ‘this is anger’ or ‘this is grief’ or this is what we can encapsulate in any of these terms we have for emotions or pain, then to make that claim itself is a false statement. To say that ‘I understand this is what this is’, but actually everything that you are experiencing is fresh. So, as a way to not meet your pain is to label it as pain. ‘I know what this is’, and the minute you say ‘pain’ what happens? You experience not just... you seem to experience not just pain but the history of pain. [Smiles] Everything that you have labelled in the past as pain, you are meeting that, when you say ‘this is what this is’ (I wonder if this is clear). When I say ‘house’ or ‘man’ or ‘woman’ or ‘satsang’ or ‘master’ is it just an innocuous word you are meeting, a harmless fort of term? No, you meet the entire history, of everything that you’ve burdened that term with. Now, will you deal with that, which is the ‘pain’, or will you then have to deal with both this physicality (which we are calling pain) and what that label entails? Because once you have claimed that ‘I am feeling pain’ you are not just feeling like you are experiencing what you are experiencing in the moment, but you are experiencing the entire history of what you have called pain. Everything that you’ve used the label for, is then apparent... it seems apparent for you; it feels like you are having to deal with that. And in that way you have avoided the meeting of it, in its purity, you have avoided just what it was, by saying that ‘this is what it is’.