I listened to a video clip on YouTube, and I felt like someone gave me a secret suddenly after searching for many years. I felt like I was ‘the chosen one’. But I realized I had to listen to it a few times to grasp it. At first, I knew how powerful that idea would be in changing my life to the future. So, with heart-thumping hard, I listened again. Finally, after I understood the real meaning, I called it ‘the truth of life.
In essence, it means to put a distance between your mind and you, and your body and you. So what does it mean? Bear with me as I give my best attempt to explain what I understood here.
Thoughts cause things we worry about in life. Ideas that are so powerful and larger than life because we gave them credit for it. Reviews that are ours, but NOT US. Thoughts generated by the outside world interpreted based on experiences we have had, people who told us how it should be and what it meant. The truth of the matter is, though, is something you had acquired in a way you responded to the outside world, where even you would never know if it’s right or wrong, apart from the fact that you keep binding into them, making them interpreted in your mind.
The French philosopher René Descartes stated, “I think therefore I am.” What he proposed was that thoughts are evidence you exist. Because thoughts come in a conscious mind, non-stop. Thoughts come up and go away as you ignore them. Once you had paid attention and given meaning to a thought, it can come up differently. So keep reminding yourself to show you that your interpretation is correct. However, the truth of the matter is that you are alive because you are getting different thoughts. But your understanding of them the way you thought may not be correct at all. So you associate with your, And you go on interpreting them based on your past experiences, others’ experiences, health conditions, your beliefs, our moods, your health and illness at present and your level of consciousness.
But does your experiences equal YOU? Aren’t you the same before and after your thoughts? You are still breathing, and your heart is still working. The blood in your body is still red…Did your life change?
Or did these thoughts because you gave them an interpretation of our own? In other words, you associated with them because you thought they are YOU – you changed your heartbeat to a faster tempo, you lost your appetite, your head started to ache, you felt suddenly hard to breathe? Isn’t it that you are the same person you were before you had the thoughts? Can you see the damage we do to ourselves, how we mislead ourselves, fool ourselves because we entertain some ideas, and we think these thoughts are US when we are NOT?
Imagine you see a child in a playground, a happy, laughing, lively child, running around as the world doesn’t exist? You start a dialogue in your mind…. The child is so carefree. It must have come from a happy family. What incredible energy. It’s so infectious to others around. And then you go on…. I used to be like that when I was small too. How sad today I hardly smile, due to many problems I have…. I don’t know when I can laugh like that ever again…
Just observe the thoughts generated above. The thinker had no idea the child is coming from a happy family. How do you know if the child is battling a childhood blood disease? But we judged based on our experience where laughter is associated with happiness. Or we have been told when we were small how happy children run around laughing. Or, as children, when we laugh, we knew our parents were delighted as they smiled looking at us. The awareness of the child laughing made your mind interpret what is perceived. But that may not be true at all. This is where all problems lie.
Now again, go back to the above child, running around the playground laughing. Where did it end up? The whole narrative was becoming negative with a focus on you. How happy you used to be, how unhappy you are today. A comparison that made you judge yourself, insecure, sad etc.
Eckhart Tolle’s following quote explains it best. “People tend to dwell more on negative things than on good things. So the mind then becomes obsessed with negative things, with judgments, guilt and anxiety produced by thoughts about the future and so on,”
In essence, the judgements we pass, the sadness we feel in our hearts about the past, the anxiety we feel about the future, the anger, the pain are all part of this dialogue, we have started with our minds, based on how we interpret the thoughts that had come up in our minds. But you, as the person with life, remained SAME, except at times, these powerful negative thoughts can alter your physical well-being, bringing suffering, both mentally and physically.
I have enjoyed the blog post on mission.org ‘Here is why you are not your thoughts by Tony Fahkry. There he explained in detail the whole idea of why your thoughts are not you by bringing about excellent examples and quotes as he wrote the piece. I have always loved the following quote by Jamie Smart. Look how simple he puts the idea across.
“No matter how lost you sometimes get in thoughts of lack, worry and insecurity, who you are are always the same… Peace, freedom, wisdom, clarity and love,” states Jamie Smart in Clarity.
If so, why do we look for wisdom outside? Why do we hand over our happiness to someone else? Why have we gone down the pathway of slavery?
We have so much to learn in life about how to run this human machine properly. We were never given a life manual to run this most complex, unique creation of the universe – ME and YOU. But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. We should at least start now – to understand the ‘truth of life.
