Is Presence Possible Without Questioning Thoughts?

Title of the question, is it possible to go to the state of presence directly? The question is, is it possible to be in the state of presence without before having questioned all our stressful thoughts? I think that Byron Katie would say, no. Thank you. Okay, I'll read it again. Is it possible to be in the state of presence without before having questioned all our stressful thoughts? I think that Byron Katie would say no. Okay. For those of you who don't know Byron Katie's teaching, it's about questioning your stressful thoughts so that you don't believe in every thought that comes into your head anymore. So you ask things like when a thought arises and you make a statement about a situation, a person, about yourself, about life, you ask yourself, do I know absolutely that this is true? For example, and other questions with which you address that thought. Now the questioner says, can one be in a state of presence without before having questioned all our stressful thoughts? Well, there is no. The questioning of your stressful thoughts implies that there is already an awareness that is arising. Without an awareness of your thoughts, you can't even question your thoughts because you would be your thoughts. So you wouldn't be able to step outside the thought consciousness would not be able to at least partially step outside the thought and from there look at the thought and question whether this is absolutely true or whether this is just one of many possible perspectives. So the questioning of your thoughts is inseparable from the arising of presence. Although not for everybody in whom presence arises, it applies that they question their thoughts. The disidentification can happen in various ways, but the arising of presence always implies disidentification from thinking. Questioning your thoughts is a way in which that happens, one particular way in which that happens. So you cannot question all your thoughts and then enter the state of presence as the questioner implies. It's a simultaneous process as you question your thoughts again and again as they rise. Especially stressful thoughts means thoughts that cause you upset or suffering. Then you begin to disidentify. And with the disidentification, presence or awareness grows. And when it's grown enough, thought loses its power to make you unhappy, loses its power to bring about a state of stress inside you to make you suffer, basically. So as awareness arises, awareness grows. The power of thinking to make you unhappy and to distort your experience of reality diminishes. And so, and that's the transitional stage. And then you come to a stage where stressful thoughts don't even arise anymore. But the most important thing is already when thoughts, if they do still arise. Intermediate stage. They are recognized as stressful thoughts, Though they lose their hold over you. In other words, the mind loses its hold over you. There's no longer a total identification with who you are and your mind. And then in the awakened stage, stressful thoughts don't arise anymore. In other words, you don't tell yourself stories that make you unhappy or upset. And then to a large extent, you can let things be. To a large extent, you can move around life without an excessive interference of thinking. You can approach situations and people and let them be, even interact without judgments. That's an enormous sense of freedom that comes in. And you become free of external conditions. The external conditions no longer have power over you. You no longer give them that power. You only give them that power through your involvement in them. And the involvement in them happens through judgment and reactivity, which are unconscious. It's a wonderful thing when you don't need to judge people anymore. You just let them be. And one thing you notice then, with people who are conscious in an awakened state, you don't hear them say, commenting negatively about anybody. It's not ultimately true. Any negative comment just strengthens the ego. Don't complain about anybody. They do what they do. What can you add to that by complaining? Situations are as they are. What can you add to them by upset? Should, shouldn't. All those mind structures. He should have. He should not have. They shouldn't. They should. I should have. Why didn't I? Why didn't he? That complicates life. But that's most people's reality. So with the awakened state, you become very simple and just very clear. And really, no situation is complicated anymore. And you don't even try to figure out what people's motivations are. They do what they do. And today's thief or dishonest person or whatever they do, maybe 10, 20 years from now, they may be enlightened. So when you call a thief a thief, then you fix him in your mind. You've created a conceptual reality for that person and stuck it on his head. But you cannot stick a conceptual reality on somebody's head without sticking an equivalent one on your head. And since the mind manufactures a conceptual reality for everybody. With fixed ideas and opinions about people, often with a focus on the negative, often with a focus on their shortcomings. So you get trapped in prisons. You have a prison for everybody, a conceptual prison. Not realizing that the more conceptual prisons you create for everybody else, the more you yourself get trapped in your own conceptual prison. Somebody else said that 2,000 years ago, in slightly different words, about judging others. But it's so prevalent, that mind pattern, and it's so satisfying to the ego. The false mind made sense of self. With every conceptual prison that you make for somebody else, it feels strengthened in its sense of identity. The more you judge, the stronger the ego feels because you have the authority. You are then the authority figure that judges you are morally superior to every person that you judge and to any situation that you judge. This is the implication, the unconscious assumption. And imagine then, millions of humans living in that way, forming a nation or forming a religion or any entity, collective entity. So the world cannot change unless those patterns change. And they do not change with the collective entities. They can only change with you. And it requires vigilance on your part to know whether or to what extent you're still doing it as a spiritual practice. You could say, next time I complain about somebody or say anything negative, I'll notice it. Let's see if I can catch myself. And when you do, you don't need to beat yourself up. It's a success. It's not a failure to catch yourself in a negative conditioned thought to notice it is. You don't say, oh, you see, I'm doing it again. How dreadful. No, it's a great success. Just to catch a thought. And then, oh, wow, there it goes again. You don't even need to say, go away. It's enough to see it, and then it loses its power over you, Sam.