When I first started practicing mindfulness, I saw internal words — aka verbal thoughts — as my opponents. Like most people, I thought the point was to not think. When verbal thoughts were present, I was obviously not. Start over. Try harder.

There's just one problem with this approach. It is normal for the mind to think in words.

"The true material of knowledge is meaning. And the meaningful is the opposite of the trivial. And the only thing that we should have gleaned by skimming and skipping forward is really trivia."

~ Maria Popova

nodus tollens

n. the realization that the plot of your life doesn't make sense to you anymore

"Creation seems to come out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration. And this is where I think language came from."

"If a community of speakers is using a word and knows what it means, it's real. That word might be slangy, that word might be informal, that word might be a word that you think is illogical or unnecessary, but that word that we're using, that word is real."

~ Anne Curzan

Transcendence isn't an escape plan, but an engagement strategy: liberation through intimacy. Transcending the self and the world begins with deeply accepting the self and the world. It grows naturally out of countless direct experiences of life as it is being lived and an intimate familiarity with how its composition constantly fluctuates.

Sooner or later, I thought, 
the wind would begin to make sense 
if I listened hard 
and took notes religiously.

~ Don Thompson