"Thought creates the world and then says, 'I didn't do it!'" (David Bohm, physicist)
Thought is limited.
Attention is unlimited.
David Bohm, a physicist, in his books On Dialogue, and Thought as a System, examines the role of thought in our lives. Often thought takes on a life of its own, especially in the middle of the night. Thought is full of worry, regret, and fear. It creates inequality, racism, classism, ableism, sexism, and every other imaginable difference. It is the cause of hatred, domination, oppression, power, control, violence, and war. Thought creates boundaries and nations but then acts like it didn't do anything, like nations have always been there.
Thought creates all these things. Thought also is the source of our actions. But then once we take the actions that we take, we wonder why these things have the kind of result that they have. We can't see that the source of the problems (thought) is the same thing that created the problem; thought.
Sit quietly and pay attention to your thoughts. Notice them. Count them. When you have a thought about the past, hold up a finger on your left hand. When you have a thought about the future, hold up a finger on your right hand. After a few minutes, notice that none of your thoughts are in the present moment. They are all caught in the past and future, regrets and worries, broken promises and failures, and also successes and joys. But never are they helping us be fully present, now. And that's all we have, NOW. So what good is thought if all it seems to be is a distraction from here and now?
Thought's primary purpose in our lives is to solve problems. We will always need that. But if it does not have problems to fix, then thought creates problems. It then keeps you awake at night trying to solve the problems that it created. Where do you think your worst nightmares come from? Or on a more subtle note, from whence do these things come: fear, worry, regret, failure, hatred, self-degradation, and on and on???
That's why Bohm's friend, neighbor, and coworker, Albert Einstein, said this:
"We cannot solve the problems that we created with the same thinking with which we created them."
