Thought will never be happy. By nature thought is restless, ever-changing, always seeking something it cannot quite reach. Even when it resolves a problem, the next problem soon pops up. You fix one thing in your life, and the next thing breaks.
Thought is always trying to complete the story of ‘me’, fix it, wrap it up neatly, bring it to a conclusion, take the Me Movie to some kind of resolution, some perfect ‘final scene’, but the story is endless and has no conclusion, since all form is impermanent and subject to change, and the search just keeps going and going…
Thought will never find the permanence it craves. Thought will never be happy, even when it momentarily concludes that “I am happy”. That is its nature.
And so, perhaps, at some point, there is a kind of disillusionment with thought altogether, a loss of faith in it, a distrust of its supremacy. Attention turns away from thought, away from that which is relentless and restless and always changing, and towards YOU.
There is something here, prior to thought, that is ever-present, and always and already at rest, and silently watching and holding thought as it struggles for permanence and happiness. That which sees thought is not itself made of thought.
You are the loving space in which thought arises. You are aware of thought, so you are not made of thought, or bound to it. You tenderly hold thought as it wears itself out looking for home. You are thought’s embrace, not its enemy. You are its mother, not its son.
Thought will never be happy, but what can be remembered is this effort-free happiness – otherwise known as You – in which thought is allowed to come and go, this natural embrace of all waves in life’s vast ocean. Who you are, beyond even concepts of happiness and unhappiness, is unlimited and ever-present, and even thought’s exhausting search for something it cannot name is deeply allowed to come and go in your limitlessness.
You have always been at rest, friend. Your true nature IS rest. And the fact that thought will never be happy is your perfect disillusionment… and your perfect liberation.
– Jeff Foster