398 — Thoughts Without a Thinker
you gain the ability to step back and observe the mechanics of your mind. You begin to see the thoughts that arise as mere phenomena, not as directives you must follow. This perspective allows you to create a space around your thoughts, empowering you to choose how to respond.
We often confuse our thoughts with our identity, creating a false narrative that can lead to suffering. The moment we start identifying ourselves with our thoughts, we risk being at their mercy. However, meditation teaches us that we can detach from these thoughts. It offers a way to notice them without getting entangled, which can be transformative.
Moreover, this practice of mindfulness affects not only our inner lives but our external relationships as well. With greater clarity in our minds, we can engage more authentically with others. We can respond to conflicts more wisely rather than reactively. This is particularly important in an increasingly polarized world where arguments often escalate due to misunderstandings and misperceptions.
Unfortunately, many people remain trapped in a cycle of distraction and superficial engagement. We are bombarded with stimuli that pull us away from deep thought and introspection. The constant notifications and endless scrolls of social media serve as distractions that fragment our attention and impede the ability to engage in meaningful conversations, both with ourselves and others.
By practicing meditation, we can counteract these tendencies. It can help us regain focus and become more present. When we learn to be present, we can appreciate the subtleties of our experiences and the richness of life. This presence leads to enhanced relationships and a deeper understanding of ourselves and our emotional responses.
It’s vital to realize that transformation is not just possible but necessary throughout our lives. Continuous learning and growth should be embraced as fundamental aspects of the human experience. Just as we commit to our physical health, we must equally invest in our mental and emotional well-being.
So, I encourage you to explore meditation and its benefits. Whether through guided practices, workshops, or simply finding quiet moments to sit with your thoughts, you can begin to unlock the potential for change within yourself. The insights gained from meditation can illuminate aspects of life you didn’t even know existed, allowing you to move forward with newfound clarity and purpose.
Ultimately, the journey of self-discovery is ongoing. The commitment to grow mentally and emotionally is fundamental to leading a fulfilling life. Let this understanding guide you as you navigate your mind and the world around you. Embrace the possibility of change and the power of thought, and you may find that the key to a more harmonious existence lies within your own consciousness. then you have a choice. So when you’re suffering, just notice the present thought. Where is it? What is it? What happens to it when you pay attention? And how is it that your suffering can continue in the next moment when the present thought has disappeared?
There are many ways we use the term self. And not all of these selves are illusory. I can talk about myself in terms of my personal history or with respect to my location as a body and physical space. I can think of myself in various social roles as a writer or as a father or as a customer in a store. And there’s nothing wrong with thinking about ourselves in these terms. Most of this is unavoidable.
There is, however, one sense of self that is confusing and that produces a tremendous amount of unnecessary suffering for us. And happily, this sense of self can be dispelled through meditation. It can be discovered to be illusory through meditation. And this self is the feeling in each moment that we are subjects internal to our bodies. The feeling of being inside our heads. It’s almost as though we feel that we’re passengers in our bodies. And it’s this feeling that is also referred to as the ego.
If you’re like most people, what you are calling I is this feeling of being the internal subject of your experience. I does not refer merely to the body. And it certainly doesn’t refer to the totality of experience. I appears to be the center of experience. It’s that which is appropriating experience. And this feeling that we call I is itself the product of thought. Having an ego is what it feels like to be thinking without knowing that you’re thinking. It’s the feeling of being identified with thought.
Imagine that you run into someone you know and like a lot. And when they see you, rather than smile as they usually would, they look very unhappy. And the first words out of their mouth is, I can’t believe you would do that. Now, assume you have no idea what they’re talking about. So your first thought is, what? What did I do? Now imagine your friend looks at you with real mistrust and says, seriously? And all you can think at that moment is, what? What did I do? What are you talking about?
Now these are just thoughts. And yet they completely subsume you. They seem to be what you are in each moment of their arising. You have no perspective on them. There’s no space around them. Your consciousness has been almost entirely reduced to a string of sentences. To the feeling of urgency that created them and which they create in turn. But how could you actually be a thought? How could consciousness be trimmed down to a sentence?
Whatever their content, thoughts vanish almost the instant they appear. They’re like sounds or sensations in the body. How could this next thought, however urgent, define consciousness at all? Consciousness is the prior condition of its horizon. It’s the state of being identified with thought, of there being no space, no perspective, where each thought is just you. Now what? What did I do?
Thoughts are arising in each moment and you don’t even know that you’re thinking. It’s like dreaming when you’re asleep and you have no idea that you’re dreaming. That experience of full capture by the contents of consciousness is the ego. It is the self that is the target of deconstruction by the practice of meditation. And this self is a burden.
Even when things seem to be going well, consider the feeling of pride. Let’s say you’ve just done something great and you’ve been praised for it in high places. How good does that feel? You know the feeling. Some part of your mind is just lapping it up with its little cat’s tongue. But this is the same part of you that is always poised to be miserable. This is the part of you that’s always comparing yourself to other people.
This part of you, even when it’s riding along at full gallop, can be unhorsed with a single sentence or even a glance. The rewards of the ego are not good enough. And again, we’re just talking about patterns of thoughts. One thought following the next. And the selflessness that can be realized through meditation is not a deep feature of consciousness. It’s right on the surface. And yet people can meditate for years without recognizing it.
How can something be right on the surface and yet be difficult to see? Well, consider the optic blind spot by analogy. You’ve probably been shown this in school where you close one eye and then stare at a fixation point on a piece of paper. And then you’re asked to notice that a dot in the periphery of your visual field disappears when you’re just the right distance from the paper. If you close one eye now there’s certainly something in your visual field that falls into your blind spot and yet you don’t notice it.
And surely most people in human history have been totally unaware. That the blind spot even exists. And many of us who know about it go for decades without thinking about it, much less noticing it. The absence of the self is also there to be noticed. As with the blind spot, the evidence for it is not far away or deep within. It’s almost too close to be observed.
For most people, experiencing the absence of self requires considerable training. And that’s what we’re doing here. It is possible to notice that consciousness, that in you which is aware of your experience in this moment, does not feel like a self. It does not feel like I. Rather, whatever feels like I is itself another appearance in consciousness. Whatever you can feel is being known by this prior condition, which we’re calling consciousness or awareness.
Now, how can we know that the conventional sense of self is an illusion? Well, the most compelling way is to get yourself in a position to really look for it and then find it absent. And that’s the point of meditation. When you really look for this thing that feels like I, it vanishes. This is compelling in the same way that the disappearance of any illusion is compelling. You thought something was there, but upon closer inspection, you can see that it isn’t. In this case, you can feel and know that it isn’t.
There’s a general intellectual and epistemic principle at work here. Whatever is there when you’re paying the closest attention stands a better chance of being real than what seems to be there when you’re not paying attention. What doesn’t survive scrutiny cannot be real.
As you get further into the practice of meditation, you will discover that there is no thinker apart from your thoughts. There’s no one producing these thoughts, and there’s no one receiving them. There’s just consciousness and its contents as a matter of experience. There’s no one who’s choosing the next thing you do. Thought, intention, and choice just arrive and become effective or not based on prior causes and conditions.
The feeling that you are in the driver’s seat, able to pick and choose among thoughts, is itself a thought that has gone unrecognized. This feeling of being a self that can pick and choose is what it feels like to be thinking without knowing that you’re thinking.
Again, those are selections from some lessons in the Waking Up app. You can find out more at WakingUp.com. The new year is off to quite a start, and I’m wishing you all much happiness in it wherever you can find it. You.