The habit of spending nearly every waking moment lost in thought leaves us at the mercy of whatever our thoughts happen to be. Meditation is a way of breaking the spell.
-Sam Harris
Going Home
Hmmm! We are all on an inward journey whether we recognize it or not. In our search for peace and happiness (which we may still mistakenly assume can be found "out there") we are headed in the direction of knowing Self. Yet to get to Self we have to get past this veil the ego has thrown over Self in hope that we can't see it.
Thinking, meant to be tool to guide us home
You see, it is our inherent human goal to get back to Self...the mind is a tool we can use to do that. It is a fascinating instrument that allows us to ''make sense" of things in our outer and inner worlds as we journey along toward our destination.
Thinking is the means it offers to do this. There is actually no problem with thinking. Thoughts are just thoughts...little energy forms that come and go. If we see them for what they are and use them correctly they can be very helpful.
Misusing and getting lost in thought
The issue is that with most of us...we don't use them correctly...we don't use them as the pointing fingers they are meant to be leading us back to the familiar home of Self...we don't weed out the unhealthy thoughts and learn from the healthy...we become too identified with them....we get lost.
We have collected so many thoughts over the years and not all of them are positive and life affirming. In fact, the majority of them aren't. We have heard from authority figures (people we believed knew more than us) over our life spans all kinds of things about who and what we were. Those "thoughts" like little entities of energy landed in our psyches and found a home there. The more we heard them from the outside or inside voices...the more we have come to believe them.
And that is the problem...once we believe all our thoughts...we become them. We see them as us and this is what ego is. Ego is our identification with thought and this is what throws a veil...a thick, dark veil, in many cases, over Self...so we don't see it, don't have a chance to become familiar with it. We believe we are these little vulnerable selves ego defines us as. We forget there is a Self to go home to.
Our thoughts become us and if we believe those collective thoughts we live through this veil...seeing the world in the way ego tells us to see it. We get further and further away from Self, from home. We are as the saying goes "lost in thought".
Creating Space
Hmm! Without any space between us and thinking, we are our thoughts and we are guided by ego. If, however, we are able to create at least a small amount of space between us and our thoughts...we begin to see that our thoughts are not who we are. We are the one observing them.
So the trick is to be able to take a step back from thinking...just enough so you can observe your Self thinking. That distance allows you to disconnect from the crazy illusion that you are your thinking. How can you be your thinking and the one observing your thinking? You cannot be the subject and the object at the same time can you?
You don't have to stop thinking (you couldn't if you tried because it is simply a flow of energy) nor do you need to actively control it. All you have to do is take a step back away from it, create a little space between you and your thoughts so you can see the thought as the object...not you. In other words, you do not have to believe everything your monkey mind is telling you to believe. Thoughts are something one can simply observe. Meditation can help us to create this space.
That space between you and your thoughts is actually where Self is. That space is the doorway home. Find it.
All is well.
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