You Are Not Your Thoughts

Socrates is often quoted as saying that an ‘unexamined life’ is not worth living. While it seems rather typical today for someone to be spending a lot of time thinking about their life, and what they want out of life - it is rare to find someone examine the nature of thought itself.

Spend a little time to reflect on this. For some, it is easy to miss the fact that we can spend enormous amounts of time worrying about things, such as what others think of us, whether or not we will achieve a goal or perhaps fail, "what if" something bad happens, "why did they do that to me?", "look how nice my life is", "look how horrible my life is", etc.

When thoughts cause no problems, when they are pleasant or at least neutral, no one pays any mind to them. But what about thinking that is unpleasant?

In other words, thoughts related to anxiety, fear, depression, negative and harsh self judgement. Then we have a problem, because, having a mind full of these types thoughts is not enjoyable. So why not get rid of them?

Easier said than done, apparently.

The unsaid assumption here, is that for most people, there is a desire to continue the pleasant thoughts and discontinue only the unpleasant thoughts.

People sometimes look for a trick to only have good thoughts. We can find new friends, new partners, a new job, new external circumstances. All of this, though, can provide only fleeting changes in the content of the mind. If this is all that changes, we can be sure that eventually all the negative thoughts continue again. The anxiety, the fear, the harsh negativity, whatever it may be, will rear its ugly head again.

Why?

Fundamentally it is due to a naive, unexamined understanding of our own mind. We reflexively and unconsciously unite our sense of self with every thought we have. This is called cognitive fusion in modern psychology.

One thing is thought. Another thing is 'self'. You have thoughts, but you are not thoughts. You have a face, but you are not the face you have. You have thoughts, but you are not the thoughts you have. Make sense?

There is obviously a relationship between the two, but to comprehend the difference can be the foundation of real change. 

You don't have to believe this outright but if you can at least accept this conceptually, you can then put it to the test. In order to do this, you have to reflect on what you hold the 'sense of self' to be.

We can break it down in the following way:

1. You have sensations: pleasant (e.g. good food), unpleasant (e.g. cold shower), and neutral (e.g. walking down a hallway).

2. You have emotions: pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral.

3. You have thoughts: pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral.

We could get technical and write a lot about all of this. The point is, if you have all of these things, what are you without any of these things present?

How can you define yourself without referring to sensations, emotions, and thoughts?

One way is to say that the 'self' is that which experiences sensations, emotions, and thoughts. In this way, the self is the consciousness, that which perceives. When we embody and live this way, we now are able to experience unpleasant experiences without automatically becoming fused with them. But it takes a lot more than just acceptance of this as a theory to actually experience it as a reality.

Let's take a look at three levels of cognitive fusion, in terms of anger:

1. Complete cognitive fusion: The angry person screams, slams doors, yells at people.

2. Partial fusion: The angry person realizes their level of anger, and thinks or states, "I'm so angry!"

3. Cognitive diffusion: The person realizes that (s)he has anger, and could say, "My thoughts are angry... because I wish my life was different... I feel great sadness and I am afraid of the future."

It is very important to reflect when thoughts and emotions emerge into our experience that are unpleasant. If we naively accept these experiences as the totality of our self in that moment, we are forcing ourselves into a cage of suffering. If we realize that thoughts and emotions arrive automatically, without our prior endorsement, we can begin to realize that it is silly to give them dictatorial rule over our well-being.

Perceiving Chaos Within the Mind

Cognitive diffusion is a skill, where we radically accept the content of our mind and emotions, while simultaneously acknowledging that such content is not the totality of self. Such thoughts and corresponding emotions are something related to 'self', but not the entirety of self. When they cause suffering, they are an afflictive maladaptive process. Yes, the discomfort they bring is real and not imaginary, but none of those properties intrinsically impact the capacities of the consciousness, the perceiver, to remain attentive to the very same thoughts and emotions.

Thoughts come and go. Emotions change constantly. Sensations are at one moment pleasurable, while the next become abhorrent. The only thing that remains constant is our natural, spontaneous capacity to be aware of these experiences of thoughts, emotions, and sensations changing.

You are not your thoughts. Your thoughts are a part of you.

The external world happens. It arrives into our perception. Something about the way the world appears to us, causes a reaction to occur in our mind. Perhaps it is subtle or perhaps it is obvious. We react with behaviors, emotions, and thoughts - but who is the one generating the thought?

We can observe thinking - but where do the thoughts emerge? We are normally ignorant to the real nature of thinking. If we remain unconscious to this process, our 'sense of self' remains locked within a unpleasant reactionary mechanism. Thoughts, which are not in our control, become our dictator.

We have a terrible habit of accepting every thought that pops into the mind - and thereafter try to change the world to fit our thoughts instead of changing our mind to fit into the world. This mechanism ignorantly attempts to change the external world in order to prevent further reactionary, unpleasant, manifestation of thoughts. But such a effort is futile because we cannot control the outside world.

What we can control, to a much higher degree than is ordinarily known or accepted, is our inner world. In order to proceed in this way we must become aware of our own inner process. The first step to do this is become aware of how external events (things in the world) produce reactions within our inner world (emotions and thoughts). Only when we do this, do we see the reality that our thoughts and emotions occur without our own consent. They just happen. But they do not occur for no reason. They occur due to the way our mind is configured. We can change the configuration but only when we observe what that configuration is.

We cannot observe the mind if our sense of self is fused with the process of the mind. If we are going through life tightly bound to the incessant bubbling of thoughts, we are like the man whose foot is caught in the saddle of his horse, being dragged across the ground, while the horse runs rampantly and in any direction it pleases.

Those who persist in the practice of observing thought will have direct experience of existing for some moments without thought. If we have that experience, we know directly, without belief, what the nature of thought is - in itself.

If we want to examine life, we have to examine the mind, because the mind is the lens through which all experience is contingent upon and viewed through.

 Simple Mindfulness Practice

1. Sit upright in a comfortable chair. Close your eyes fully or three-quarters way.

2. Breathe through your nose if possible.

3. Notice your body and relax the tension you find.

   1. With each breath, notice your body in a sequence such as: your stomach, lower back, chest, upper back, hands, shoulders, neck, and face.

4. Pay attention to the experience and sensation of breathing.

   1. Every in breath say to yourself “In one… out one… in two… out two…”

   2. Choose a number between 3 and 10. Count to this number, and repeat for 5 sets.

5. Every time there is a distraction – notice it – but return to the practice without analyzing it with any thoughts.

6. When you have completed, notice and rest in your emotional state.

Alternate instructions

1. If the practice is too difficult, you can try to do it with your eyes open.

2. To make the practice more absorptive, you can visualize candles being lit for each number you count. When you complete a set, start a new set of candles being lit.