Resources

Concepts are ways to create polarity in the world. They help create ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Right and wrong. Concepts are very much used by the mind for mind identification. ‘I believe this or that to be true’. This is a thought, simply. Not to be held onto, just to pass through experience, just like everything else. We are in a permanent state of endless flux and change, that is all. We are simply here. Now. Concepts can lead to mind identification. What concept are you running right now? Can you identity one? Perhaps something like… the belief in wasting time, or the concept of having to have a political stance… or having an expectation that a spouse or yourself should behave a certain way. See if you can notice, these concepts, are in fact just beliefs, which at their finest form are simply thoughts. Thoughts can simply pass. Just like everything else in our experiences. The only constant is this Being in Now.

Ego is the thinking mind, the individual mind. It's a way of experiencing separation from the oneness of all that is. It's a way of upholding a false sense of self. Ego can be described as 'the one who makes us believe we are a someone'. But actually it's a collection of thoughts which is just happening, and if consistently believed and interacted with it can create the idea of 'who we are'. This is the perceptional error which we start looking at in this work, who am I, without these thoughts? Who am I, after thoughts have stopped, and before the next one comes? Try playing with this! What else is here beyond thought? What is here, that cannot be described by the mind?

Tom speaks about the mind being our filtered perception of all that is. The only way for us, in totality, to know ourself, is for us to experience ourself. Tom uses the analogy of a projector, and the only way for the projector to know itself, is to see the projection. So in this sense, we experience our reality, so we may know the vastness of all that we are. We are not the individual separate identity, but we are Life itself. Tom asks us to question, where actually IS mind LOCATED? We are told consciousness is located in the brain, but what if it's not? What if consciousness is everywhere, and it makes up the totality of all of experience?

Tom shares that we can get into the place of awareness where we can observe thoughts. But see they are not WHO we are. With a meditation practice, we stop all distractions and begin to see this ‘operating centre’ of the world of thought. All thoughts can be interacted with or not. We always have that choice. By actively rejecting thoughts - we can also cause resistance. So it is simply about learning to see that thought occurs. Regardless. But it is not WHO we are. Thought can be essential for activities which use logic for daily life. But unconsciousness of thinking can result in suffering. In the end we see that everything is always taken care of outside of thought. But that is a process we have to learn and trust.