You Are Not Your Thoughts

I am a firm believer that our perception shapes our reality. Our decisions and actions are heavily based on our worldview. This is why people make different choices and take different actions. We all see the world differently and that's part of what makes us unique. Of course, our perception of the world is always changing over time. The way we look at life now is very different from the way we looked at life when we were a teenager. Our perception is something that is always evolving.

One of the many things I actively do in my life to deepen my perception of the world is to read every day. When you read you gain knowledge about any subject you want and that new knowledge can help you see the world in a different and more beneficial way. Three years ago I read a book called “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle. This was one of those books that really had an impact on me.

This book came at the perfect time for me. I had just started meditating consistently and started opening myself up to the subject of spirituality. Timing is important when reading certain types of books. You sometimes have to be ready for certain information to flow into your life. You can read a book today and not resonate with it at all and come back to it a year or two later and completely fall in love with it.

I would get into what Eckhart talks about in the whole book but I'm not trying to write a book summary. Im going to talk about one of the many concepts I've learned from this book as it is synonymous with the entire theme of the book and has helped me tremendously in my life.

Identification with self.

Eckhart argues that the majority of people’s pain and suffering stems from identifying with our self. We identify with our possessions, our thoughts, our emotions, and pretty much everything in our life. When we identify with a car, for example, it becomes a part of who we are. We start to derive our sense of self from that car. Take away that car and we feel like a part of us is missing.

Eckhart explains how we are not our thoughts or emotions. We are actually the observing witnesses of those thoughts and emotions. When you are identified with your thoughts and emotions, you will be subject to whatever thoughts and emotions you are having at any given moment. If you have negative thoughts then you will probably feel bad and if you have positive thoughts then you will probably feel good. This is what identification with the self means.

What we want to do is to break identification with the mind. We want to step outside of ourselves and become aware of the mind. Instead of being attached to our thoughts and emotions, we want to be able to detach from them and become aware of them. When you are detached, you gain a higher vantage point from which to view the events in your life instead of being trapped inside them. You become like an astronaut who sees planet earth surrounded by the vastness of space and realizes a paradoxical truth, the earth is precious and at the same time insignificant.

Next time you have a negative thought, instead of being engulfed by it, try to become aware of the fact that you are the observer of that thought and are not the thought itself. This is what many people try to do during meditation. So many people are run by their thoughts and emotions. They are completely identified with their mind. The key is to take a step back and become the experiencer of your thoughts and emotions and not let them take a hold of you. That way you can choose which thoughts can serve you and which ones don’t.

This is such a simple and easy thing to do but it requires a lot of awareness. The more you start observing your thoughts and emotions, the more control you have over your life. You take your power back. You can still be angry but at the same time not act out your anger. You can still be sad about something but at the same time not let the sadness take you over. At the end of the day, we cannot control what happens in our lives. We can only control our reaction. Cultivating a sense of awareness and breaking identification with the self will give you control over your reaction instead of automatically acting out your impulsive thoughts and emotions at that moment.

We have two selves. Our ego self and our true self. The ego self is everything we identify with. The car we identify with is part of our ego self. Anything we attach our self to is part of our ego self. Our thoughts and emotions are part of our ego. The true self is the experiencer. It is the witnessing observer of our ego self. It is the awareness of our thoughts and emotions. Our true self is our consciousness. Once we start to separate the two and break identification with our ego self, our lives will become a lot better and we will be a lot happier.

This is one of the main teachings in the field of spirituality. Eckhart is not the inventor of these ideas he is just one of the messengers. I like his books because he simplifies all these spiritual concepts into easy-to-understand material. If you do resonate with everything I just said, maybe you can go grab a copy of The Power of Now and read it yourself.

It is really hard to explain concepts that have to do with spirituality because you have to understand it through experience and feeling instead of logic and comprehension. One of the reasons why I resonated with The Power of Now is because at the same time I was reading it, I was experiencing what he was talking about in my meditations. It was understanding through experience, not understanding through intellect.

All of this goes back to when people always say that it is about your internal instead of your external. Whatever happens on the outside doesn't matter because the inside is where your power lies. The moment you start to understand this is the moment you start to gain control over your life.