What if you weren’t confused about who YOU are?
Every day, humans process between 50,000 - 70,000 thoughts. That’s about 60 thoughts each waking minute. Many of these are completely random. And, these thoughts run our lives.
I’m cold.
Oh, look, my sock has a hole in it.
Maybe I’ll make a tea.
Oh shoot, we are out of milk and I have to get groceries today. But it’s New Year’s weekend. I wonder if the grocery store is open.
What a shame that stores are open all the time nowadays. I feel sorry for the workers who have to work all hours. They’re probably at high risk for COVID-19. Except that cranky store clerk who snapped at me last week when my kid took off his mask.
I should check on the local rates of coronavirus before I go out.
Look - it snowed last night. How pretty.
If anyone could actually watch the inner chatter of other people’s brains, it would probably be the most hilarious form of entertainment. (Didn’t Mel Gibson do a movie about this?)
But, wait a second - you do watch the thoughts in your brain.
You are the watcher of your thoughts.
How, you might ask, can YOU be the THINKER and the WATCHER?
(Stay with me…)
Beyond the chemical signals firing in our brains causing thought patterns, is YOU. The WATCHER. The inner entity that can witness the brain’s thoughts. When your brain chatters, an entity is listening. That entity is YOU.
So, who am I?
I am the WATCHER. I am not my thoughts. I am not my body. I am that who is having a human experience.
In Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions, we call YOU, who is the watcher, a soul. Buddha called YOU, the awakened one.
Indigenous traditions refer to YOU as the spirit.
Other more secular terms that are used include, our intuition or inner wisdom. Tolle calls it our Enlightened Self. Freud called it our subconscious.
But, no matter the label you give it - just be aware of these two components - the inner YOU who is the WATCHER of your thoughts. And, the mind that thinks thousands of thoughts each day.
Being aware that you have a primitive brain that rambles on and on all day, completely unsupervised, is the first step in being able to start to wake up and live a more conscious life. And, it’s the first step to realizing that your brain is simply a biological engine powered by chemicals and electrical signals in complex biological systems of hormones and neurotransmitters. Every thought that passes through your mind is not true. The power lies in quieting our minds by tuning up that engine so that it drives you toward the life you want to build.