The Parable of the Thinker, Part 2

My soul is feasted as with marrow and fat, and my mouth praises thee with joyful lips, when I think of thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the watches of the night; for thou hast been my help, and in the shadow of thy wings I sing for joy.

-   Psalms 63:5-7

 

James felt a sense of hope for the first time in many years as he began his plan to think about nothing. His efforts began to pay off almost immediately. Since James still had his inordinate gift for thinking - it had been tainted and had become a source of pain for him, but was still there - he found the exercises very easy. First, he purposefully focused his thoughts, as instructed in the book, on a simple material object: a flower. James sat and stared at the flower for hours and each time his mind began to wander he forced it back on the flower. Slowly he was able to ignore any thoughts about Joanna or about not having a job, or his past and future. Soon it was just James and the flower. Nothing else existed. It was wonderful. He felt like he was a child again thinking about ice cream.

 

James was very relieved.

 

While it was true that he had to sit very still and do nothing else to achieve this feeling he at least now saw that it was possible to get it back.

 

"I am accomplishing nothing in the external world," he thought, "but it no longer matters."

 

A few weeks ago he might have been bothered by this idea but it was different now because all this meditation and focus was just preparation. It was just to get him ready to think about nothing. It was only one step along the way, a necessary one, but not the end goal.

 

"THIS is all that matters!" he exclaimed as he enjoyed the relief that flooded his being.

 

After a few days of thinking about nothing but the flower, stopping only to eat, sleep and drink, James felt he was ready. He felt an exciting anticipation. He had control of his mind once again, could snap its attention back to whatever he wanted, and as long as he stayed in his house and stared at the flower no thoughts of Joanna or the external world could intrude at all. He was in complete control once again.

 

Even though there was no one there to hear him he enthusiastically declared, "It is time!" and smiled a big smile.

 

James sat down in his usual spot in front of the flower but this time he closed his eyes and began to focus his thoughts on nothing. At first he wasn't sure how to think about nothing.

 

"How does one envision nothing?" he thought. "How can one focus a thought on nothing when, by definition, there is nothing there to focus on?"

 

He quickly concluded that the best plan would be to arrive at nothing by subtraction. He would begin by moving his focus away from all of the somethings that existed inside him. While there seemed to be hordes of possible thoughts for him to think, he knew that it had to be a finite amount. If he slowly removed them, one by one, he would eventually arrive at nothing. Internally, his mental world took on a vast shape and space as he began the task of moving everything that could be thought about to the space behind him...back where he could no longer see it.

 

First he removed thoughts of the future. They shifted back behind him and were gone. Then he removed everything in the past. This took some time as he had all of his memories to deal with, many of which put up a struggle. Joanna in particular scowled and resented being moved, but nevertheless she was only a thought, which James now forced to disappear behind him somewhere. He could tell all of the thoughts he'd moved behind him still existed, were still there, but he was no longer looking at them. Oddly, once moved, it was almost as if he had no idea what they even were anymore.

 

Eventually James had moved it all behind him where he could no longer see it and he narrowed his gaze in on what was left.

 

"There is still something here," he thought.

 

At first he couldn't put his finger on it, but eventually he realized what it was. The present. The present was still there. He could still hear his breath and feel his skin and the sensations of the air moving past him. Suddenly he was very away of the position in which he was sitting and the tension it caused in his back. It hadn't occurred to James that he would need to move the present behind him as well but, now that he saw this, it made sense. He snorted a little laugh to himself, amused by his own obliviousness.

 

He started with his back and moved the sensations behind him. As he did, he felt a ripple of relaxation pour through his entire abdomen; this didn't really matter all that much to him though because the whole idea of his body was moving off into the distance. It was very difficult to turn his gaze completely away from his own body - moving the future and the past had been much easier - but James was determined and, being an expert at controlling his thoughts, he slowly inched his way toward his goal.

 

He began to lose track of time. "Time flies when you're having fun," he had heard someone once say.

 

His body and its sensations were now almost completely gone, pushed back behind him somewhere with everything else. He gazed into the approaching emptiness eagerly. He really was slowly moving his way to nothingness, to a true lack of everything.

 

"I am almost there," he thought.

 

Finally he was left with nothing except the very act of thinking itself. He could clearly see this capacity within him. He had finally isolated the very thing that was the source of his problems. At this point, one might expect James to think, "Now it is time to stop thinking entirely!" but he was purposefully not allowing this. No, he would not even think it but instead just do it. No more thinking would be allowed. Once he moved thinking itself behind him there would be nothing left at all. He would have arrived at true nothingness.

 

With one finally determined push James let go of thinking and it slid behind him as well.

 

He was.

 

And nothing more.

 

He didn't think that. He just knew it.

 

He knew it.

 

He just was.

 

Oddly James found he knew something else as well.

 

There was something else that just was, something that wasn't thought, or conceived, or imagined.

 

James focused on the nothingness that greeted him and knew - not thought, but knew - that all of this (or perhaps none of this might be more appropriate) wasn't him.

 

This wasn't him.

 

You see, in the very heart of nothingness, James discovered something about himself. It wasn't a new thing for him to learn. It wasn't something he was now seeing for the first time. In fact, it was something he had always known. Indeed, it was the oldest thing he had ever known, the very first thing he could remember knowing.

 

"I am a thinker," James whispered.

 

He didn't think it, he didn't decide it...he didn't assume it or imagine it or have to believe it.

 

He was it.

 

James was a thinker. That's what he was meant to do. That was his job, his mission. It was his purpose.

 

Thinking was what gave James joy.

 

Realizing this, he opened his eyes once again and looked at the world around him in a strange new way. Everything was suddenly very different because James now saw his thinking in a different light. He wanted to think. In fact, that was all he really cared to do.

 

It no longer mattered what James was thinking about. He now saw that he didn't really care about feeling successful. He didn't really care about Joanna, or even ice cream. While he may have been fond of these things, there was something else much more important, something more fundamental that far outweighed his own cares or likes and dislikes. It was thinking. He just loved thinking.

 

Even if the object of his thoughts made him feel sad the simple act of observing himself thinking made him feel happy.

 

"Okay, Joanna," he thought, "let's have a look at you, shall we?"

 

The thought of Joanna reappeared in his mind and James thought about her. He didn't fight it anymore, didn't try to not think about her or recoil in pain at the thought of her. He simply let himself think about her and enjoyed doing it. Oddly, as James happily observed himself thinking about Joanna leaving him, as he watched himself review the memories of the pain he had felt, the feelings of anger and betrayal and bitterness that he still harbored, he found that by accepting these thoughts, nay, even encouraging them, he was finally robbing them of their power to harm him.

 

"I enjoy thinking about Joanna," he thought with relief. He let his mind focus on nothing but thinking about Joanna and he simply watched.

 

Soon, the thoughts of Joanna were spent and no longer seemed very vivid or appealing. In a way James was disappointed because thoughts of Joanna, good or bad, had always been so real, so engaging and vibrant, that he had completely lost himself in the act of thinking them. Now he found himself wanting to find something else to think about, something new to replace their intensity. It was strangely amusing to him that refuge from thoughts of Joanna, escape from the pain they caused him, had been found in the most unexpected manner.

 

"All I had to do was think about her," he squealed with delight. "All along the true way out was through." Since Joanna finally no longer interested him very much he decided to lay her aside for good and move on to something else.

 

Just for old times' sake, James then decided to think about ice cream. With a sheepish grin on his face he concentrated on ice cream like he had when he was a child. Everywhere inside of him was ice cream...chocolate, vanilla, strawberry...ice cream upon glorious heap of ice cream. For what seemed like an eternity James reveled in the joy of thinking, this time thinking about nothing but ice cream. At some point though, he began to finally lose interest in ice cream as well. Just as the thoughts of Joanna had done, the thoughts of ice cream now seemed to lose their vibrancy.

 

"Ice cream is dead to me," he concluded.

 

James wasn't very concerned about this. He bid ice cream a fond farewell and moved on again. Even if no single thought could stay alive under the renewed power of his focus, even if his very delight in thinking itself now seemed to suck thoughts dry until they were faded and lifeless imitations of what they once had been, it didn't seem to matter much to James. After all, weren't there a lot of things to think about?

 

"I'll just keep thinking about something new!' he thought happily.

 

James spent the next few days sitting in his house thinking. First, he thought about all of his past. This took quite some time and included a variety of happy and sad thoughts, soothing thoughts and painful thoughts, angry thoughts and peaceful thoughts, calming and agitating - the entire gamut. All through the entire review of his past though James was happy. The joy of thinking itself always trumped whatever secondary feeling any particular thought caused.

 

Eventually he was done thinking about his past so he laid it aside and moved on to the future. The future, even with its limitless possibilities was surprisingly sparse of material for James to think about. He tried his best. He imagined many different possible courses his life could take, some tragic and some happy, carefully thinking through an assortment of key events and their expected ramifications. He imagined standard sorts of events as well as extraordinary events. He imagined how he would react and how others might react. Some of the possibilities were frightening and some were not but he thought about both equally because he loved to think. James continued to think in such a fashion until thinking about the future became stale also.

 

"Goodbye future," he finally said with a grin, "it's been nice thinking about you, but its time I was heading on."

 

Now that he was done thinking about his past and his future, about ice cream, and even about Joanna, James finally felt completely free to think about the present.

 

"The past was limited," he declared, "and the future is limited by my own imagination. Joanna was very limited and ice cream perhaps most limited of all but the present...yes, the present offers limitless things to think about."

 

With that James began thinking about all the things that surrounded him. He thought about his bedroom and its contents, followed by his house and all that was within it, and finally about everything he could see out of his windows. Doing so made him very happy indeed.

 

"The present has so much detail!" he exclaimed with genuine surprise.

 

Right there, contained within the baubles on his desk, he found more things to think about than all his memories of the past had offered. Now that he really looked at it, the view out his window made every speculation he could muster about the future seem hopelessly rudimentary. Experiencing a sudden desire to further investigate he decided to leave his house. He opened his front door and walked out into the sunshine. It was a nice sunny day, with a slight breeze, and James took a deep breath and smiled a big grin.