If you’re like most people, you spend most of your life lost in thought. Thinking consumes the vast majority of your attention. And you find yourself dragged along by a constant stream of old, repetitive, compulsive thoughts.
Your thinking is conditioned and limited by the past. This mental conditioning affects how you feel, how you act, and how you perceive the world around you. At first glance, it may seem like you’re in control of your thoughts. But more often than not, your thoughts are in control of you. Thinking is a wonderful servant but a terrible master.
When you identify completely with everything you think, you unconsciously identify with the ego, a false, mind-made self pretending to be you. This false self always feels alone and afraid. It never has enough. When you confuse yourself with the ego, you lose yourself in an endless fog of desire and fear.
Liberation comes from realizing that your true identity is much deeper and vaster than thinking. You are not your thoughts. You are not your fears and desires. You are the awareness, the conscious presence, in which all your thoughts, fears, and desires come and go. You are the being underneath the thinking.
Ultimately, your thoughts are just thoughts. They are not you. So don’t take your thoughts too seriously. Don’t identify completely with them. And don’t believe everything you think. Be aware of your thoughts, but don’t be your thoughts. After all, you are not the thinking. You are the awareness.
