It’s an age old question, isn’t it? Wisdom keepers of all stripes have spoken about this, and science sort of confirms it: Your mind isn’t the one that generates thought. Thought (apparently) generates itself, and your mind receives it. And then instantly, seamlessly, you claim the thought as your own.
All of which kind of begs the question: If it generates itself…what the hell is thought, anyway? Where does it come from? And why do we glom onto it, mistaking it for our own self?
It’s a very rich line of enquiry, which each one of us might do well to delve into, on our own. Setting aside everything others (including me, and all other teachers and teachings) might tell you, the time is ripe for noticing and deeply questioning this whole setup for yourself.
Because things are changing, in these ever-shifting, ever-rising times. Just because something has ‘always been,’ doesn’t mean it necessarily needs to continue in the same way that it has.
New opportunities for higher ways of experiencing life are constantly presenting themselves, these days. It’s up to each one of us, to take those opportunities and run with them. And looking into what thought is; how it functions; and our habitual relationship with it, is one way of doing that.
In these transitional times, as we rise to meet the already-present world made of love, this line of inner questioning itself, can start to shed collective light onto that murky human business of mistaking thought for who we are.
A good place to start
Simply noticing, is a good way to begin the process. Noticing a thought, as it arises in your energetic field. No matter what kind of thought it is, it has no actual life of its own; it always shows up merely as an invitation for you to take it on, and give power to it.
For whatever reason, we’re all deeply in the habit of automatically skipping over the choice we have, to embrace the thought or not. But the mere act of noticing creates the opening of a gap between you and the thought. It might just be a split second recognition that the thought isn’t an intrinsic part of yourself, and that the choice of whether to accept it is optional.
Probably you’ll have that recognition, and then you’ll go ahead and embrace the thought anyway. (They can be very hard to resist, sometimes.) Still, this is a good place to start building that muscle.
Noticing it’s not you
This is a slightly different, more subtle sort of awareness that you can cultivate. I’ll explain more about it, by using the following realtime (and slightly icky) physical example of my own:
This is a big year for ticks, where I live. So I’ve been quite naturally experiencing heightened awareness of them. I find myself placing my conscious awareness on ticks, especially those tiny little deer ticks, because I tend to get lots of them when I venture outdoors. Like, we’re talking one every few days.
I know. Eww.
Anyway, I’m not particularly freaked out by them (any more!), I’m just alert and noticing.
My skin is fairly freckly-spotty in general, and even moreso in summer. So it’s not necessarily easy for me to recognize a tiny dark-colored tick, just by quick visual inspection. So here’s where the conscious development of a more subtle kind of awareness kicks in.
In order to be receptive to subtle awareness, by the way, I’ve found that the right sort of attitude is key: I’m not being obsessive about the possibility of ticks; I’m not running scared, or fighting enemies. Just simply paying attention. This neutrality is important.
Then, either inadvertently or on purpose, I touch a spot. And if that spot is a tick? A subtle, higher energetic sense, a kind of wordless knowing, arises within:
This thing is not me. It’s firmly attached to me. But it’s not me.
Thought is not so different from this.
I know, it’s a slightly gross illustration, to explain the topic at hand. Sorry about that. But I think it’s a pretty good analogy, overall. Because you can do something very similar to this for yourself, anytime you’re noticing a thought.
Make sure you’re being neutral while you’re noticing. And then you can feel into the subtle energetics of it: You’ll notice this thought is not you. It feels like it’s you, only because it’s become attached. It’s familiar. But it’s not actually you.
How can you be completely sure it’s not you?
Because you, my magnificently divine friend, are something entirely beyond that. You are a limitless universe of sublime beauty. You could not possibly be defined (in truth) by any sort of limiting mental construct. It simply isn’t you.
And yes, for the record, we’re talking about all thought, here. None of it is you. But let’s focus right now on just the troublesome thoughts. The unkind, or inconsiderate, or repetitively judgey ones. The self-sabotaging ones. The ‘us versus them’ ones. The ‘this thing about me will never change, no matter how hard I work on it’ ones.
You know the kinds of thoughts I mean. The ones that plague us most.
Ideally you’d approach that thought with an attitude similar to the one I use with the ticks. You’re not embracing the thought, or pushing it away. You’re not welcoming it in, or fighting it as an enemy. You’re noticing it, but not actually buying what it’s selling.
Just this act of neutral noticing can change things quite radically.
Because, for example, if a thought invites you to beat yourself up, yet again, for whatever it is about you that isn’t good enough? Noticing and not buying into it, means you’re not tempted to launch into yet another bout of working on your flaws…because, well…they’re not your flaws. Are they.
They belong to the thought. Not to you.
Right?
Back to the tick analogy…
Thought is much like a small parasite, which only inflates and gets bigger when we claim it and feed it. If you made a practice of merely noticing a thought, and then feeling into its subtle energy signature, you’d immediately recognize it’s not made out of you.
Not so easy to do on a regular basis, I know. But what if it was? What if that way of quick recognition became second nature for you?
It would make a huge difference in whether you’d choose to allow or deny a thought further access, right? You’d still have that judgey or unkind thought present in your field—but you’d know it’s just a temporary unwelcome visitor. Not a character flaw of your own.
So…ok. You’ve noticed and felt into the subtle energy of it; the thought has been correctly identified as not your own. But, then what?
A tick, once correctly identified, can be twisted cleanly out of its berth with the use of a small device made for that purpose. But unlike the tick, at this moment I don’t yet know of any device that can cleanly and permanently twist a sticky, painful thought out of your energetic field.
Although…in a sense, the ever-rising frequencies of this transitional time, are starting to function exactly like that. As we move more deeply into the love-based world, these higher frequencies bring with them more opportunity for clarity, and more subtle ability to notice what isn’t you.
Which means, I guess, that gradually, you’ll be able to teach yourself how to BE the tool that twists persistently painful thought out of your own field (and in doing so, out of everybody else’s field, too).
It’s just a very slow process, is all.
So, I suppose the message here is: Take heart. Have patience. Keep noticing those troublesome thoughts. And know that a world unvisited by limiting thoughts, is on its way. And that life will be amazingly beautiful beyond our imagining…eventually.