What do you see when you think you see a glimpse of spirit, something so fair passing your cheek that you wonder if you saw anything at all? Regardless, beloveds, you saw a thought, or you thought a thought. What is seeing but a thought? Your eye saw something, and your mind pounced on what you saw and turned it into something with a name. Words are names. Thoughts are names for whatever we happen to be thinking about and attribute these names to. Thoughts are for something. Life in the world is pursued by thoughts. Thoughts certainly may seem to muddy up the waters and complicate rather than simplify.
How does it happen that you know the meaning of so many words? How does a young child already know so much? How does language become natural to the lips, tongue, and cheek of someone in one land and another person in another land finds a different formation natural to him? How does thinking come about, and what is it anyway? Beautiful to one may be mumbo-jumbo to another.
Perhaps it is voice like a bellows that pumps vibrations out to the ears, and language is no more than a familiar lilt or an exercise on a mandolin. Language is a wonderful invention. Even so, might communication be simpler, easier, more peaceful without the entanglement of language? You might be more relaxed without the intellect of language.
And yet I gave you language to explore with. With language, you are like a hunter with bow and arrow. The bow is like a thought, and you pull back on it and then you let it go. You shoot the arrow of thought in order to catch something, perhaps to catch another thought, perhaps to understand the angles of active thoughts you have. Perhaps without language, My children are closer to their hearts and, therefore, Truth.
You may have wondered whether you think thoughts or whether thoughts take over you. How can you have so many thoughts in a day? They must come from somewhere. You may think that thoughts are like birds that fly around somewhere in the stratosphere and land on you. Thoughts seem to come on you from every direction. Sometimes you think you think your thoughts, that you discover them, that you put them together, and sometimes you think thoughts are like entwined bushes with thorns that you stumble into. How can one person, you, for instance, think so many thoughts in one day, and another day your mind is sort of blank and you are looking for the thought to fill your mind.
And where do thoughts go when you’ve finished with them, or they’ve finished with you?
Whether thoughts come from you or whether thoughts are like bites from mosquitoes -- mostly, you are inundated with them. Your thoughts are rapid-fire thoughts. There seem to be no screens to keep thoughts out. Thoughts have free range and a field day with you. Most often, you have enough thoughts to build fires with. Thoughts eventually go on their way or make their escape, and still you are responsible for them.
You are like the old woman in a shoe who had so many children, she didn’t know what to do. Thoughts are your children. You are responsible for them. After all, they do issue from you. You want to learn to rein them in and not let them go all over the place and get in the way of other people. Thoughts are such a bother, and yet you cannot disown them. One way or another, they are your thoughts. You thought them or borrowed them or spelled them. Therefore, you are responsible for them.