I find people have so much reverence to thoughtless mind, especially those who never really have it thoughtless. This creates a feeling in them that awakening is impossible, since many around point to awakening as having a no thought state. It creates confusion about thinking mind and what it is means to be awake. Awakening wrongly associated with no thinking.
Contemplative practices are specifically designed for those with active mind - not randomly thinking, but focusing the mind in a specific direction and remaining in contemplation about specific subjects. Buddhism and Christianity both offer this path, Natives use prayer as a contemplative focusing, great works of poetry came from contemplative mind states, great teachings are contemplative in it's nature.
Please do not chase the homogenised goose of "no thought", become intimate with your own mind, notice how it works, what it needs, how it operates, how it is unique. Become so intimate that you are not in a contradiction with your own mind, you use it as a tool, it is available to you. Learn how to use this instrument effectively. Otherwise we use the hammer to fix a computer, you know what happens next...we smash the keyboard, and end up with a piece of equipment that we can't let go off and can't really utilise properly.
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