You Are Not Your Thoughts
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels
Recently two students came to me with the same question. They wanted to know how I could claim that we are not our thoughts.
“I think I AM my thoughts,” one of them told me.
It’s such a fundamental question that it’s almost impossible to talk about: what is our relationship to our thoughts?
Sometimes we direct our thoughts purposefully. If you wish to think about a pink elephant, you can will yourself to do so, at least for a moment.
But much of the time, the mind functions automatically, just as our heart and lungs do.
It’s estimated that our minds churn out thoughts at the rate of 50,000 per day. Of course, we don’t remember most of these thoughts.
In the moment that we think a certain thought, it may seem to be the voice of our inner being. But if we observe just a bit, we see that our thoughts come and go, while we remain. Thoughts say one thing yesterday and the opposite today, and yet a third contradictory thing tomorrow. Even thoughts from two minutes ago can suddenly seem absurd.
Here’s an example that came up in class.
Hoping to make a good impression, Rob took a new client out for an elegant dinner, but when the main dish was slow to arrive, he became nervous and impatient. His mind began to churn.
Rob knew the owner of the restaurant, and their conversation the previous week had been a bit awkward. Perhaps the owner had taken offense. Perhaps today’s slow service was his revenge, an attempt to sabotage Rob’s evening with his client. In his mind’s eye, Rob saw himself marching back to the kitchen to force the issue. There he confronted the head waiter, and then the owner himself, with a few choice phrases and clenched fists.
Rob was awakened from this reverie by a gracious arm lowering a plate of filet mignon onto the linen tablecloth before him, as the waiter smilingly offered to refill his wine glass. Checking his watch, Rob realized that the entrée was not so delayed after all, and that the entire conflict had taken place in his mind, and only in his mind. Meanwhile, he had totally missed what his new client was saying.
Rob laughed in amazement as he told me this story. A very mild-mannered and kindhearted person, he felt like a pugnacious alien had momentarily taken over his brain.
And the whole train of thought had passed so quickly that he might not have noticed it, if not for the assignment he was doing for our class, which asked participants to observe their thoughts and note them down several times a day.
What is Rob’s relationship to his thoughts, in this instance?
He remembers that the thoughts passed through him, but he does not identify with them. In fact, he is laughing at them.
He had been immersed in them for a few seconds; they felt real. Similarly, a good movie can carry us away to a place that feels real, but whenever we notice the red exit sign in the corner, we come back to ourselves. We are in the theater, and the movie is just light flickering on a screen.
See if you can notice the red exit sign that frees you from your thoughts. See if you can watch them flicker by on the screen of your mind, while you stay secure in your seat.
Consider even the lasting thoughts, the ones that seem certain. Haven’t some firm beliefs from a decade ago lost their force today? Is it possible that something you know today will be something you disagree with tomorrow? Can you take a little distance, and notice that the thought is not you?
A thought is just a momentary interpretation—one of many possible ones—of what you're going through. If it helps you, use it. If it doesn't, let go of it.
If you keep observing, you’ll see the thoughts coming and going, and you will feel your own presence as the still, silent observer.
You will cease to identify with your thoughts. As you let them go, you’ll feel simultaneously lighter and safer.
Lighter and safer.
You may even have a good laugh at them as they pass by.
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