You Are Not Your Thoughts
Have you ever “seen” yourself about to do or say something as if you’re outside your body? Maybe even wanted to stop yourself from saying or doing it but couldn’t?
Have you ever tried to meditate but kept hearing constant chatter in your head?
Have you ever heard an inner voice telling you that you’re stupid or weak or incompetent?
As Michael Singer says in his brilliant book "The Untethered Soul", if you can hear the voice in your head, the voice isn’t you. There are two entities within you: The entity that thinks thoughts and the entity that observes thoughts. They are not the same.
The entity that thinks thoughts is your “ego” or “mind”. It is driven by survival instincts, and often lives either in the past or in the future - dwelling on things that already happened, or planning and worrying about things that will / won’t / should happen.
The entity that observes thoughts is the “real” you, aka your “soul”, “seat of the soul” or “consciousness” (depending on your comfort level with spiritual-leaning words). It is who you truly are deep inside in full glorious potential. It is present to what is occurring in the moment and ready to respond from love and possibility rather than fear and self-protection.
Labeling this split between my thoughts and the real me was a game changer, because it made me realize that my fears and worries - of making changes, trying new things, risking failure etc. - were not MY fears but my mind’s fears. The real me was excited to try things I’ve never done. My mind was afraid that I’d never be able to be more than mediocre at them, or that I’d create something so bad I’d be a laughingstock if it ever saw the light of day, or that I’d become irrelevant because I wasn’t focusing on the things I “should” focus on. It was protecting me from everything that could go wrong by preventing me from even starting.
Distinguishing between the two opened up the possibility of not always following my mind’s dictates. I continued to feel the fears, but was able to see the choice to put them aside because they were holding me back from the life that I - the real me - wanted to live.
Since you’re not your thoughts, you can change the thoughts that don’t reflect who you are or would like to become. It’s just a slow path of awareness and observation: You can become an observer of that voice in your head and start to isolate how you think and behave from who you really are. Over time you’ll naturally shift thoughts and behaviors that are not aligned with who you are, which will gradually evolve you into the version of yourself you’d like to see in the world.
Up next: Opportunities to take the observer’s seat, rather than let your mind run the show.
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