Stop Thinking

When taking a test, why do people always tell us to trust our first answer? Why do we remember some person's name that was elusively on the tip of your tongue earlier, in the shower or before we drift off to sleep? Why do we have some our greatest creative ideas in the shower? When we are doing a crossword puzzle and get stuck on a word for an eternity, why do people suggest that we put it down for a while? And, why is it that when we pick up the puzzle a little later the letters practically jump into the boxes? The answer to all of these questions is "because that is when we are not thinking" or "we stopped thinking so much".

The complete title of this piece should be "Stop Thinking and Just Know" or, even better - "Don't Think with Your Brain, Know with Your Soul". When you know that God is part of you - in your soul (what Hindus call Atma), you also know that God's infinite knowledge - or if you prefer, the infinite knowledge of the Universe - is also in your soul. Those moments when you are in the shower or drifting of to sleep or even driving you car, are moments when you are knowing with your soul. You are not consciously trying to think and in doing so, you brain is left out of the process. The great Yoga master Swami Sivananda put it in a very simple yet profound way when he referred to this as "knowing without thinking".

So, why is thinking and knowing so different?...read more>>>...