My doctor recently asked me if I had any pre-existing conditions.

But has anyone ever asked you this?:

Do you have any pre-existing ideas?

Do you have any ideas that are affecting your day-to-day life, making it difficult for you to get your work done, to focus, or sleep? Are there any ideas that have caused you to expect bad things to happen all around you? Are there any ideas that have led you into a downward spiral of internal negativity? Are there any ideas that could enable you to hurt someone?

Are there any false ideas that you have allowed to guide you and influence you in your everyday life?

With so many ideas floating around in our lives, it’s difficult to be clear-headed, isn’t it? For anything we look at or anything we do, a flood of ideas comes tumbling in. Some of these ideas we don’t even consciously perceive, but they come flooding in and we drink them up.

But what would it mean if we could just empty the cup that is the mind?

Then perhaps we would find peace, freedom, get rid of our “need” to chase people or things, perhaps gaining clarity and focus.

What if like a child, you could stop having any need for ideas at all?

The young child eats or laughs or touches real things. He has no need for theories, beliefs, or ideas. What is there is what is there, and that is all.

The young child is almost incapable of being contaminated with ideas. But the adult has lost that immunity. We are susceptible to all kinds of ideas.

I am not anti-idea. Of course, there is some value in ideas. But there may be a greater danger in allowing the wrong ideas to lead us astray. That is what we have to watch out for.

It’s tremendously difficult to see the person in front of you, isn’t it, when we are loaded with pre-existing ideas. We are more likely to see a reflection of all our ideas instead of that person. I like this thing about that person, or I don’t like that thing. These are the types of thoughts that we will get reflected back to us based on our preexisting ideas.

Understand that whether the ideas are positive or negative, they are still ideas that lead you to think in particular ways. The pre-existing ideas cloud your ability to see what is actually there, and rather, you see what you had already believed or expected was going to be there.

In looking at the world around us, all that some of us will ever be doing is exploring the nature of our own minds. We see the pre-existing ideas that we hold, present in all the people and things around us. We do not see what is there anymore.

With so many ideas floating in our world - how is anyone supposed to empty the cup?

Some of us may use techniques to empty the cup – such as meditation, yoga, running, or other exercises. The issue is that when you finish with that exercise, the cup fills quickly again.

And if our cup is full, we are just imbibing what is in our own cup, perhaps obsessing over it, looping it in our minds over and over again. When we create stories in our minds, these ideas have truly latched onto us, and we become more and more convinced of them. Then we discuss these stories with others, and maybe we convince them or not. But in telling the stories, we convince ourselves more and more that we are right. We think our ideas are correct, and all the other ones are wrong.

And that feels safe, doesn’t it? It feels safe for us to think we have it figured out. It’s riskier to venture out and try to learn what is actually out there. By learning, I do not refer to acquiring preexisting ideas from others. I refer to an attempt to observe and understand reality, rather than forcing your preexisting ideas upon that reality. But where or when was this ability taught to us? It was not.

It’s risker to think to yourself: Maybe these ideas in my mind don’t actually represent what is happening out there in the world. Maybe these ideas just gave me comfort, but now it could be time to let them go.

Look around with an empty cup, an empty mind, and dare to see what is there, without needing to imbibe it. Perhaps you succeed at emptying your cup for a moment, and you stop in the street to talk to someone. He talks to you and fills you with ideas. Then you talk to someone else, and she fills you with more ideas. And you find it a struggle to let go of all those ideas that you know are not doing you much of any good. At night, your mind is flooded with all the ideas that you learned throughout the day. Perhaps you even dream of them.

So we see, keeping your cup empty is not easy, and you will merely get to inner peace just to lose it again, as new things rush in to fill it. And so the practice becomes to empty your cup at every chance, even when knowing that this process will be disrupted over and over again.

If you learn to keep your cup empty, even for a short while, it will not feel natural. You will resist it. But stay the course and see for yourself what it means to empty your cup. What will happen is just that rather than spreading your pre-existing ideas to the world, you may find that there is a world beyond ideas to fill your cup with. Some may fill it with love or peace or gratitude or hope, rather than ideas, for example. And also, even if your cup is filled with nothing at all, this is not the end of the world.

You can find joy with nothing in your cup. It can be done. Remember that the purpose of emptying your cup was not just to fill it again with another set of preexisting ideas.