The Gravity of Thought

Gravity, as generally understood, is a good thing. It keeps the coffee in the mug and the mug on the table. It allows the pitch to be hit or caught. More or less, it makes life on this planet possible. Without it, we literally have no idea where we would be.

Yet, though it is ever present and necessary, more is not better. When we are overcome with a sense of gravity, a sense of weightiness and importance, we begin to close down. Suddenly everything feels more significant and fear of some perceived loss arises. Life gets heavy and less fun.

In particular, when our thoughts attain a sense of gravity life gets hard. By their nature, thoughts are weightless and ephemeral. Free of our intervention they merely arise and float away. Only when we select and hold onto them do they become objects bound by the excessive gravitation. They become sticky and weighty.

Oddly, even thoughts we may consider positive or loving, when introduced into our personal gravitational system, become detrimental. With the implication that their loss will diminish us in some way, they become things to safeguard. We become like the football team playing not to lose. We grow tense and joyless.

When thoughts arise and pass through us unimpeded, even the negative or embarrassing or evil thoughts lack the power to affect us. No individual thought, no collection of thoughts, has any power over us. Ever. Until we gravatize them. Until we weigh them down with the power of our precious attention.

The nature of thought is to be free and weightless. The less we interfere with that nature, the more harmonious our co-existence with all thought becomes and the more joy we invite into our lives.