You are not your Thoughts, You are who sees Them

If there was one thing to be learned from a lifetime of meditation, this would be it. You are not your thoughts, you are who sees them.

Last week we talked about the importance of recognizing when our mind has gotten carried away with thinking. We looked at a simple technique called Noting which we can use to acknowledge when we’ve been distracted and to bring ourselves back to the present.

Today we are going to talk about what happens when be don’t do that, now we are going to talk about fusion. Fusion occurs when a thought enters our mind and we immediately take it as a fact. Unconscious fusion to our every thought is the opposite of awareness. It is exactly the type of thinking we seek to understand and evolve from by way of meditation.

Often the fusion of certain thoughts began long before we ever dreamed of having a conversation about how to think. Thoughts of not being good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, capable enough, talented enough… All of these limiting beliefs generally come from a state of fusion.

Thoughts that conform to our existing reality are generally accepted without hesitation. It is the nature of humans to accept that which strengthens our reality and refute that which challenges it. This is because reassuring our world view makes us feel safe, smart and in control. Questioning our world view can lead to stress, anxiety and uncertainty, but it also leads to growth.

What would you think of a person who will do anything that is asked of them without any consideration? Someone who says yes before hearing the question? In the nicest of terms they would be gullible, but essentially they would be a slave. This is exactly the same for a mind in fusion. This is slavery, this is living in reactivity, this is the opposite of living from your own intention.

Without awareness, your mind is a slave to whatever thoughts may come. This is because it listens without discretion. It’s as if you were listening to the radio, but you were unable to turn the channel. You hear a good song, you enjoy the music, but when you hear a bad song, you listen to that too, all the way through.

Perhaps you realize the station you’re tuned into rarely plays anything you like. In fact, let’s say all the music it plays makes your feel annoyed, unhappy, or unable to focus. In fusion it doesn’t matter, in fusion you spend countless hours, maybe even your whole life, listening anyway.

It sounds ridiculous, but without awareness and intention, this is exactly how many of us hear our every thought for our entire lives. Perhaps we accept them because we feel a responsibility for them, after all they’re OUR thoughts, right? We own them and we have an ego, so it feels good to believe in our thoughts, but as a result we tend to do so even as those same thoughts make us miserable.

The truth is, no one can own a thought. A thought is it’s own entity. You can take a thought and write it down, patent it, sue anyone who tries to say it was their idea; that doesn’t make it yours. The universe doesn’t cater to the human ego. A thought will still be a thought, floating along freely for anyone to attach to, discard, resonate with or try to take ownership of, at their own risk.

When we let go of this hard association with the thoughts that pass through our mind, when we stop thinking of them as ours and of their accuracy as a reflection of our intelligence, only then are we actually free to think. Free to think about the thoughts we choose to think about, and equally free to let go and choose not to think about the thoughts that no longer serve us. How can we ask “is this thought useful” when we automatically assume that it is, just because we thought it and we don’t want to feel stupid for doing so.

This is like judging the quality of a stereo system based off your opinion of the music on the station that’s playing. The best radio in the world won’t make Mozart out of autotunes. What you get depends on what frequency you tune to, and in a state of fusion the dial is locked to one station.

Don’t let your mind stay locked on one station, especially if it sucks. Lousy music isn’t a reflection on the radio, it’s a reflection on the person turning the dial. You might notice DJs always say “keep it locked” right before they go to commercial.

Keep it locked?

No fucking thank you.

Make your own playlist, or at the very least don’t blindly follow orders. Find your music, turn up the volume and roll down the windows, because from here on out you are riding shotgun with your brain on the road trip that is your life.