from our feeling
Learning to think to give ourselves peace, and harmony, light, love, truth, inner development and spiritual expanding.
‘Over the bridge and not back again ...’
Spiritual expanding
In the books by Jozef Rulof the development of our thinking is seen as the main motor for reaching spiritual expanding.
During the contact evenings, Jozef was therefore regularly asked the question: ‘How can we learn to think?’
This article gives an introduction to a number of aspects which are dealt with in the answers and the books by Jozef Rulof on this subject.
Space for our inner life
The article ‘From feeling to thought’ follows the formation of thoughts from our inner life.
Our inner life has been built up by all the experiences in this life and our past lives.
By thinking from our feeling, we can remain sure of our own thoughts, instead of repeating the thoughts of another.
For this purpose, see the articles ‘thoughts from another person’ and ‘what we know for sure’.
Thinking is giving space to our feelings.
We let a feeling from ourselves surface, and we feel it, we give it words which fit that feeling, as a result of which we think the feeling.
In this way, during the thinking we remain in harmony with our feeling and with our soul, which contains all our feelings.
Using few words
We can remain close to our feeling when we use few words to think and to talk.
In the case of using many words, there is more danger that, as a result of that word flow, we will drift from our feeling, and that, with these words, we will form new sentences which no longer originate from our feeling.
Retrieving original feeling
Many people have difficulty thinking through on a subject, because they are distracted by other feelings or perceptions which have nothing to do with that subject.
It is then important, in the case of every distraction, to retrieve the original feeling or subject.
As for many actions, we become better in this the more we practise it and the more will we commit to it.
Like learning a language
We can learn to think playfully like a language, word for word.
When we feel, examine and experience every word and every thought, we anchor those words as building blocks in our inner life.
The more building blocks we acquire, the more beautiful buildings we can make.
When a thought appears to be not sound because it does not correspond to our own feeling, then we do not need to think that through, because otherwise sooner or later our building will collapse.
Deep experiencing
Most people experience their thoughts for only fifteen percent at the most, and then they already proceed to the next thought.
As a result, they quickly get rid of a subject or their feeling, because they do not experience their thoughts deeply.
Experiencing a thought is possible by giving that thought as much feeling as possible from yourself.
If we take the word friendship as an example, then the question is how much feeling we can give thinking about friendship, how much feeling we can raise from our inner life in order to inspire the thoughts to do with friendship.
That will determine how deep we can think through about friendship, and how effectively we can think about what we can do to increase our friendship.
This also means that we finish a thought, and do not break it off halfway.
In a conversation, this is reflected because we can express ourselves completely, and we also allow our talking partner to finish speaking completely until he has fully experienced his feeling.
Jumping from one subject to the next is disastrous for the deeper experiencing of a thought.
On the other hand, it is important to remain in the day-consciousness.
There are people who want to experience themselves everything that Jozef Rulof experienced.
If they commit too much will to this, they can become overstrained, and even lose their day-consciousness.
Our experiencing is limited to the depth of our inner life that we have built up in all our previous lives.
Playing draughts and chess
People can also practise remaining with a particular train of thought by means of a particular mind game such as draughts and chess.
In order to plan game moves, people have to be able to keep a move in mind.
This is a study in concentration, which people can improve in a playful way.
The art of a chess master is thinking.
By means of a game such as chess you can see how long you can hold on to a thought.
People who had been thinking out of the natural in a past life, can have difficulty remaining with one train of thought.
With a game of draughts, they can build again on a calm train of thought.
Empty thinking and finishing tasks
Most people have a mind full of thoughts when they have thought for an hour.
They are then tired from thinking, they are full of thoughts that are not finished, because the thoughts have not been experienced to the full.
This disrupts the formation of new thoughts, because the unfinished thoughts require experience and deepening.
Many people are a pawn of their thoughts.
They are thought, even if they do not want that.
If they rest, then they unintentionally start to think anxiously, and thus disrupt their rest.
For them it is important to only think if they want that themselves at that time, so that they start to think themselves instead of being thought.
In order to be able to reflect on our feeling purely, we must first clear out the swamp of unfinished thoughts.
The more empty we become and the more cleared out our realm of thought, the better we can hold on to and deepen one subject, without being distracted by thousands of unfinished thoughts.
We can also apply this to tasks such as in the household for example.
Someone who interrupts an action and walks away from it to do something else, and keeps on doing that, can become anxious from all the unfinished work.
On the other hand, finished tasks give precisely satisfaction.
Over the bridge and not back again
When we have reached a conclusion with a reasoning, we do not help ourselves to progress by continuously following the same reasoning again.
If we always repeat the same thoughts, we cannot develop our inner self.
Repetition can be compared to crossing a bridge, and then on the other side turning round and going back.
Thinking through more deeply assumes that we think ‘new’, and minimise the repetitions in ourselves.
We can check this for ourselves by looking at whether we are growing inwardly and starting to think more broadly.
People who do not change do not think things through, they usually repeat already familiar thoughts.
One thing at a time
Reading a book and at the same time following a TV programme creates unrest in the thinking and is not in harmony with what people actually want to do.
When we want to think something through, this is counterproductive, because the various actions and thought cannot experience our full powers of feeling.
When a simple action does not demand our full attention, we can of course deploy the remaining power of feeling to continue thinking.
In this way, we create much extra thinking time.
Superficial
In society, a lot of talk is superficial.
A number of people think to the full and do each other heads in with inanities, and laugh about everything.
In order to learn to think more deeply, that superficiality first has to go.
Harmony at home and in society
We can only develop spiritually when we have our household and our social task in order.
Otherwise, those tasks take us way from our peace and they cost us the necessary power of feeling.
In addition, we must also be in harmony with the people to whom we are connected.
If we ourselves are a disruptive factor in the togetherness, that disruption first demands to be resolved.
For this purpose, a thorough self-examination is often essential.
Thinking on the basis of love
In that analysis of our character, if we also encounter gossip, or envy, jealousy, laziness, waste, pride, boasting, dishonesty, then we can begin with first discarding those characteristics.
On the other hand, when we can forgive a fault from another person and can admit to our own shortcomings, then we can begin to think on the basis of spiritual love.
Many people get stuck because they only think about and for themselves.
By thinking about what we can do for our fellow human being, we can become competent in universal love.
What is true in my thinking?
Spiritual development begins with the very first question: What is true in my thinking and what is untrue?
What is the truth of myself?
Is there still a lie in my words which I give to another, or can the other person build on my words?
Do I take part in half truths, or do my words already have a spiritual background?
The thinking in ‘my’
Spiritual expanding requires looking at the truth of our soul.
If we only continue to think materially within this one life, then our thinking does not receive any universal truth.
Our soul experiences many lives, and for the soul truth is what remains valid through our various lives.
An example is the thinking in ‘my’.
‘That is my wife.’
Will that still be true in the next life?
‘That is my husband’.
Is this the case for our eternity, is my current partner my eternal companion, my ‘twin soul’?
Thinking within this one life is still not spiritually true thinking.
When we allow our gaze to look at many lives, then what we develop inwardly is only of ourselves, our inner life.
If we wish to think in terms of ‘my’, then only what my soul absorbs is actually mine in eternity.
All the other is temporary possession, earthly relativity or social circumstance.
Past the material
Most people only begin thinking things through after they have left the material life.
After death, when they experience that they are more than the body that they left behind, they realize that they still cannot think spiritually, because they had still not begun with that during their lives on earth.
It is only then that they realize that if they had already thought past the material on earth, they would have more spiritual ground under their feet in their hereafter.
Difficult?
Is it difficult to think past the material, to transcend the ‘my-thinking’, to always bring truth into our thinking and to always think on the basis of universal love?
As with most actions, we become better at them the more we practise them.
Gradually, we bring more light into our own character.
Most people want to receive love, but what do they devote of themselves for that love?
Thief or soul
In the article ‘soul’, the concept of ‘human being’ is let go of, we are soul in the first instance, with a reincarnating inner life through the centuries.
When we wish to expand spiritually, it is important to see every human being as a soul.
If we only look at the character, then that can disturb our peace.
If we are faced with a thief, are we then able to think that the soul is much more than that theft?
If we connect ourselves with that thieving sphere, we lose our harmony.
If we leave that sphere, we can use our powers elsewhere in a much more meaningful way.
When we are faced with a murderer, can we then think that every soul evolves through all the ‘grades of feeling’ towards the light?
As long as we do not take part in violence and hatred, we will not endanger the evolution of our soul.
All our thinking and feeling is an expression of a grade of feeling, and we can only reach the spiritual grade of feeling if we learn to love all life.
It is not about loving the murderer, because the murder will first have to be made amends for before the perpetrator can expand spiritually.
But we do not need to look at the other person as a murderer.
When we look at the other person as a soul, we can love that life of that soul, because we know that this soul will also later transcend those dark thoughts and deeds.
Expanding
When we start to think of ourselves and others as soul, our thoughts receive space, they transcend the small space of the own self.
They then become more spacious and also comprise in love the life around us.
We then look further than the material, to the inner life of every soul with whom we come into contact.
We then look up to the stars, and we reflect on our place in the large universe, the cosmos.
We bring our thoughts to truth, to the spiritual reality of our infinite life as soul.
We let the thoughts that we had yesterday reincarnate today and let them radiate renewed with more light and spatial feeling.
