I would like to tell you what I have learned about thoughts. For most people, their days are a stream of one thought after another. It is almost never quiet in our heads. If you pay attention to your thoughts you will discover that they are often repetitive… the same ideas over and over. This should not be a surprise… no one could have so many new and original ideas everyday.
There is nothing bad about thoughts, they simply just happen. The problems begin when we mistake who we are with the mental position that a series of thoughts create. Things get so complicated when we accept and believe that series of thoughts as the truth. We believe that they represent who we are. This is when our emotions come in.
Often thoughts consist of judging something as good or bad, what should or should not be happening. Someone behaving inconsiderately, a traffic jam or even bad weather are all just a part of life and needn't be a source of stress. But they become stressful when we allow our thoughts to convince us that it is personal. "Someone or some event has done this to me! This shouldn't be happening." But what good can come from resisting what is? After all, it already is. Our day can become a wild emotional ride based on a few thoughts (that repeat over and over) out of the thousands we have during a day.
What can we do to avoid the emotional ups and downs our thought stream causes in our life? It would be nice if we could simply decide to stop thinking and only use the tool that is our thinking mind when we needed it. Some people can but most cannot. But we can take the power away from the constant chatter of our minds by simply recognizing that our thoughts are just thoughts… they are not the truth or the truth of who we are. They just happen and seem to come from our past experiences or from our imaginings of the future. One thing is for sure… they pretend to be so very important and distract us from the present moment. I think it's important to consider that the past is just memories and the future is just a fantasy. The only thing that is real is right now. If we spend our time focused on and believing in our past/future mind activity we actually miss the only thing that IS real: this moment. We miss our own life and so miss the chance to experience the richness of this gift we call our life.
At the beginning of this essay, I suggested that "if you pay attention to your thoughts you will discover that they are often repetitive..." If you stopped for a moment to do that, did you notice that the thoughts subsided, if only briefly? That often happens just by shifting your awareness to something in the present moment. Try it now if you want. And by the way, who is it that is paying attention to the thoughts in your head?
RSS Feed (xml)
