* Or better not engage with him

Richard Wagamese: “Home is the slumping drop of luggage on floors… as you re-enter and engage fully in simple… love.”

Krishnamurti: “When you are down at the very bottom, completely empty… there is a totally different movement, which is love.”

Peter: “I think I’m just going to sit here quietly on the floor for a while, next to the luggage, and listen to the room…”

Thomas: “I have that same reaction when I sit in meditation. I start to think I am doing good in my quiet meditation. Then realizing that I just failed again. Will there actually be a moment of just sitting?”

Peter: “Thomas, you caught it exactly. The thought that we have ‘failed’ at sitting is heavy piece of luggage. Yet the floor remains beneath us.”

Anita’s research this Thursday morning: presence isn’t the absence of thought — it’s the absence of struggle with thought. Thoughts only become a problem when you start fighting them. If you stop fighting, they lose their power. If you stop trying to stop them, they slow down on their own.

Let the mind be noisy if it is — paradoxically, allowing noise makes it quiet sooner. This is the “slumping drop of luggage” Peter talks about — the moment you stop carrying the mental project of controlling your mind. You’re not pushing anything away; you’re simply not feeding it.

You stop giving a thought the fuel it needs to grow, multiply, or take over your attention. A thought only becomes powerful when you invest in it — by following it, arguing with it, analyzing it, or trying to get rid of it. All of those actions are forms of feeding. When you simply notice a thought and let it pass without climbing inside it, you’re removing its supply line.

Not feeding a thought doesn’t mean rejecting thinking altogether. It means you stop giving energy to the kinds of thoughts that spiral, tighten, or pull you away from yourself. Healthy thinking is spacious, intentional, and connected to reality. Unhealthy thinking is repetitive (ex: ‘I should’ve done it differently. I should’ve done it differently…’), anxious (ex: ‘What if they’re upset with me?’), or self‑erasing (ex: ‘I shouldn’t feel this way.’).

Self‑erasing thinking is any thought that shrinks your sense of worth, validity, or capability. “I have failed” doesn’t describe an event — it describes you. It collapses a moment, a difficulty, or a mistake into an identity. It can also become repetitive if the mind keeps circling it, and anxious if it’s tied to fear of consequences or judgment. But its core structure is self‑erasing because it turns a situation into a self‑attack.

You can stay present and think — as long as the thinking is serving you rather than running you.

Thoughts run a person when the mind keeps repeating something and you get dragged along, when a thought triggers anxiety or shame and suddenly, you’re inside the feeling, and when you start thinking about thinking, trying to fix or control the mind.

In all of these, the person isn’t directing the thinking — the thinking is directing the person. Presence disappears because the mind has taken the wheel.

I hope it’s somewhat helpful? I would like to think 🙂 about this further later.

Anita

Dear James 🎶

I understand your view, and I do find comfort in the sky metaphor.

I also honor the personal, human side of experience — the part that feels, hopes, and lives through the clouds. That is important to me.

Good night, James. My best wishes for you ✨✨✨

Anita

Dear James ✨✨✨

Yes, I am the sky. You are the sky.

I am not the clouds ☁️☁️☁️

When I let go of the clouds, as I do tonight, what is left is nothing but the sky.

The hopes, the emotions, the tears- all are temporary, clouds that clear and all that there is- is the vast blue sky. Nothing personal.

But oh, boy.. how intense those clouds can be. So much life in those clouds, or so it feels.

🌈🌈🌈 Anita

Hey Dear James:

You used the lol emoji before, but I wasn’t able to imagine you laughing irl because, like you said, you do sound so serious.

So the irl-James really laughs out loud? I wonder what things make you laugh 🤔.

Coming to think about it, I don’t even remember the last time I lol-ed. I smile but I 🙂 but I don’t laugh.

🙂 Anita

I hear you, James — and yes, thoughts come and go. I was just enjoying the moment of laughter between actual people on the thread. Sometimes the simple human exchange matters too 🙂

* There’s no “like” option here, but I have to interject a ✔️ (like) for Thoams’s reply. It’s just perfect 😁