What is thought? Is it necessary?

Advaita teacher Ramesh Balsekar, in his book, Consciousness Speaks, says thought is failure, it represents failure to deal with that which is present now.

Werner Erhard, famous human potential movement leader of the 80s says that the sentence, "I think..." is fallacious.  "It" thinks us"  (my understanding is the ego, the previous structures we are born into) He says to check it out for yourself.  He also says when thoughts show up they show up as assessment, judgement, comparison...etc.  (I have been listening to several of his audio recordings lately...I really dig his transmission)

Dr David Hawkins, author and spiritual teacher says that the incessant chattering of the mind, the monkey mind is only 1% of the mind.  98-99% of the mind is quiet according to him.  He uses the analogy of a small black and white t.v. in a huge stadium, turned on and we are sitting in front of it transfixed...  I love it when he says thought is a vanity...with its never ending commentary on everything.

Why do I wake up EVERY MORNING with a STUPID song in my head?  Shut up already!  It really makes me wonder...if it is all being recorded in my unconscious...maybe I should be much more careful about what I am exposed to.  What was I singing this morning?  (singing) Whatsa matter you?  Why you looka so sad?  Itsa not so bad.  Itsa nicea place...AWWW SHUTUPA YO FACE!!!  

What the hell is that?  Wasn't that a number one song when I was growing up? Does it mean something when I wake up with some crazy, irrelevant song in my head after sleeping all night?  And then of couse I can't purge the song from my head for most of the day!

What is the relationship between visual representations and thought?

We are very visual creatures...Zoltan Torey, whom I mentioned in my previous post, who reverse engineered self-conscious awareness, was blinded in an industrial accident at the age of around 20...he was told by the doctors to abandon imagery and learn a new way of understanding life and the environment.  He did the opposite and used his visual imagery to create a representation of everyone and everyplace he encountered.  This led to a much richer experience for him. 

One thing that IS liberating is to know...I am not my thoughts.  Once I stop identifying with my thoughts...once I have a relationship to/with them...I no longer am them.  Meditation is a great way to take an absolute position to thoughts and feelings.  My teacher Andrew Cohen says, Meditation is a metaphor for enlightenment.  Being completely still during meditation and not moving no matter what occurs during meditation is a metaphor for wanting to be free more than anything else.  Ease of being in meditation is a metaphor for letting everything be as it is, not trying to control the experience, stop the monkey mind...etc. Paying attention in meditation is a metaphor for having NO relationship to the arising of thought or the presence of feeling.  No matter what occurs during meditation, ecstatic bliss states, inability to focus due to the chattering mind, whatever...I am already free from it all...as Ken Wilber says "always already free".  It is a position of absolute freedom that one takes when sitting in formless meditation.  Meditation is a training ground for waking life, walking and talking...so I can see the mechanical responses and repetitious thoughts, the wheel of Samsara going round and round in my head.