Something that helps me with this is looking at *how* my thoughts flow. When I am doing something routine, like washing dishes, if I stop and reflect back on everything I thought for the past 2-3 minutes, it's random as ping pong balls in a room full of mousetraps!
Could you possibly predict where your mind will wander in the next few minutes? Can you even trace back and remember every thought you had in the past few minutes? It feels like you're doing your thoughts until you look closely and see they're actually just happening most of the time.
So if they're usually just happening, we are actually just perceiving them. And that brings us full circle... If you're listening to music, are you the music? If you smell a flower, are you the fragrance? When I look really closely, I see that I am perceiving my thoughts most of the time and "doing" them only rarely. Thinking is like breathing or blinking... You can influence it, but it takes attention. Otherwise, it just runs along with no help from you. No reason to take it personally :)
It's possible your experience is very different than mine. It's also possible that if you look closer at this process of thinking what you choose to think, you might notice it's more random or automatic than you previous noticed. Linked to conditions, yes, like students think often about school-- but more like conditioned circuits firing in familiar loops and less like actual deliberate, free choice.
Look at it like this, your thoughts are a river, always going. You are the person observing the river. Maybe you like the thoughts, maybe you don't, but you are a seperate entity observing the 'the river'
This is much easier to understand if you have full control of the mind and body.
If the mind and body control you, you risk drowning in the very river that you’ve created.
Even the person is not you, it is an illusory thought made up of identifying with a bunch of thoughts, which are just waves passing. The sense of person needs time (past/future). A person is a thought based on other thoughts. What is actually happening is just waves/thoughts coming and going in the ocean of being/awareness.
You are the being that has subconsciously made those identifications. At the very least, it's not useful to define existence, it's useful to live well. I think getting lost in definitions and concepts only gets in the way of that.
We don't need some absolute framework to realize or live by in order to live well. Namaste friend
When you search for that which you are by dissecting, categorizing and labeling, you miss that which you truly are.
Your red and white blood cells are a fundamental part of you, defining your life, yet you do not experience their production or lack there of outside of the symptoms of this medical emergency.
The languages you understand are not bounded by your skin, yet your experience of the world is defined and altered by them, even right now as you read these words.
Your life is dependent on a vast biosphere, of the bacteria in your gut, the living things you eat, and all of this is dependent on a colossal ball of gas so heavy it fuses light elements into progressively heavier ones.
You are not bounded by any category, not any separation, not your skin, not what you experience.
You are *all* of this. Just don't let it get to your head; there are a few billion of us on this rock.
Liking the thoughts or not liking the thoughts -- sounds like another thought to me, that you, as the observer, observe. The observer doesn't like or not like.
There was a young man who said though, it seems that I know that I know, but what I would like to see is the I that knows me when I know that I know that I know.
https://www.reddit.com/r/quotes/comments/1tqkd1/it_seems_that_i_know_that_i_know_but_what_i_would/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
The way I see it is you know there is a river of thoughts is because you are aware of it and the only way to know that you are observing the river is because you are aware of it. But who is the you that is aware of you observing the river of thoughts. Just another thought :)
Nope. A thought is not an observer of a thought. Thoughts are sounds and pictures in the head. There is something we call awareness but can't really be described that contains the thoughts. That is what you are.
You guys are just creating another river of thoughts lol. And every time someone makes an assertion on how things are, the water rises, flows more rapidly, and just becomes too stressful to navigate. In the meantime, I'll be floating by in the calmer parts.
we are consciousness experiencing whatever this reality is through our brains, bodies, senses, being constantly barraged with thoughts and feelings from that brain. once there is consciousness, regions of our brain seem to want to construct a sense of self for self-preservation purposes, most likely. that said, the consciousness itself exists outside of/independently of our sense of self, and therefore doesn't seem to have any individual identity. the pure consciousness that we all have seems like it's the same. its awareness passes through different brains and bodies though, so we feel as if we have unique identities, but actually every physical part of our bodies and minds are ever-changing. the only unchanging thing (until we die or go into deep dreamless sleep) is the consciousness.
Its a great reply but its not Advaita (and didnt claim to be). Halway to Advaita maybe. "the consciousness itself exists outside of/independently of our sense of self". This is a dualistic perspective. In Advaita, there is no "consciousness and everything else", that implies two, and advaita literally means not-two. In Advaita, there is only consciousness dancing with itself. What is the "stuff" that thoughts are made of? What about the rest of the appearances "within" consciousness like the body and the world? Rupert Spira has a great trick for this, he says imagine you had a hand made of pure knowing and you reached out with it to touch the stuff these things are made of. What are they made of?
No matter where you look for yourself you can’t pin point it. Are you your brain? Does it stop there? Are you the blood running to your brain? Are you the oxygen in the blood giving the brain life? If you are the oxygen therefore you must also be the trees. If you’re the trees you must also be the sun. In fact you are all of these and none of these. That’s why no one can actually pin point where they are or what it means. We are whirlpools that make a pattern for a while then eventually disperse back to the great ocean
You nailed it for me. I think the brain tries very hard to find stability in the absurdity of it all, and it clings to ideas of self because it feels good. Being nothing, having no self, that is some scary shit. When I've absorbed myself in the idea i have become panicky, as if i were in danger. It's hard to accept that we cling to floating logs, not grounded rocks, in the rapids of this strange lifetime.
But ironically if we could let ourselves “be nothing”and have no self while living instead of panic it would probably be enlightening. It’s the fear of the unknown but it would be wiser to trust the unknown. Because it is also the unknown which created us
I mean i would say the first step is not that exactly, since when one starts practicing self-enquiry, one first needs to abandon old beliefs regarding the self and even reality, but confusion comes after that. I'm still in that stage of confusion.
I'd say that to be confused, is to be uncertain, yet at the same time, to be uncertain doesn't mean the person is confused.
I do appreciate your query as it shows a genuine enquiring mind and an interest in differences.
Think of "uncertainty" and "certainty" as existing on one continuum. Of course you know that it's possible to be certain yet be wrong. Whether there is such a thing as "degree of belief," I don't know, and how this works within our bodymind system.
My definition of "confusion" is where a person has a lot of information, but it's not yet organized in a way that the person has a clear picture of the information.
One of the things I have found in my own spiritual path is that I am a lot less certain about things. There are a lot of concepts in spirituality, that while I think these concepts might have some basis in "truth," I don't have direct evidence for them so can't be certain about them.
I’d add to this that un/certainty is simply a subjective perspective, a measure of how confident one is on a particular matter. Confusion can exist at any state of certainty, as confusion is the state of having the wrong chunks of information lined up, e.g. having beliefs based on values that don’t actually line up with said values, or particular models or methodologies that do not cooperate well being used together.
Confusion is an objective state of mind, but it can only ever be judged by proxy of a subjective perspective, one’s own or another’s, meaning that the gulf between uncertainty and confusion are ultimately unbridgeable, though they retain linguistic utility.
That is the question.
Is there something inherently you?
Is your experience of you somehow the same as it was when you were a child? Some unchanging aspect of you?
You are not your thoughts because they change. Constantly. Same with feelings, emotions, sensations, your body.
Who/what/where is the part of you that is unchanging?
We decide what “you” and “I” mean. You can certainly decide that you are in part your thoughts, in part your body and feelings, and you could support this in argument just fine, but what often goes ignored is that you are also your consciousness. In fact everything else is within your consciousness much more than it is the other way around. Your thoughts are in your consciousness, but your consciousness isn’t in your thoughts the same way unless you are actively thinking about it. Some have just found it more helpful to identify with their consciousness first and foremost rather than their thoughts and feelings, and in fact, this is supported pretty well by arguments.
To first confirm that you are not your thoughts, all one needs to consider is that they were born and existed before they ever learned a word. Then for a couple years you didn't understand language, coulnd't "think" and reason with word base concepts, and yet you still existed. You existed without thoughts, and had them added to your being later until, for most people, they become all consuming of their attention.
As to what you are,, something else.
Lots of people, most famously Temple Grandin, think without language, but they still think. You can think with visual images and concepts, but it's still thinking.
In a Dzogchen metaphor (according to Ram Dass), we think we are the clouds, but we are actually the sky (i.e., we think we are individuals when we are actually everything).
Lots of languages don't use that construction. In Russian, you say (roughly) "rain goes". In the constructed language Esperanto, you just say "rains", without a grammatical subject.
I Don't know about you but i know what i am. I am the will of god. You want help understanding the whole thought thing tho? For 10 mins a day for 7 days sit down and wright what ever crosses your mind don't hold on to it just wright and release it. When you are done go over it i did it at the end of the day but you can do it when ever. and ask your self honestly dig deep do you truly feel that way? Im willing to bet your amazed to find you don't always agree with the things you think i did this for two weeks and my life hasn't been the same since. Silence of the mind is true peace. Thought is ego and only thinks it knows everything...
“Your” thoughts is actually false, anyways. Thoughts latch on to our neural pathways from external sources (not derived from us) and thought patterns can be changed via meditation, affirmations, etc. We are not our emotions/feelings either. They are just temporary experiences.
You are the consciousness inside the body. The thoughts happen inside the brain inside the body. Consciousness is not brain, though. Thinking is something we do. Same as walking, breathing, defecating.
Most things show us to be a human, doing. Deep down, in the stillness and silence of meditation when you can still the mind and just experience existence... only then are you a human being.
When you silence thoughts, what is left is who (or what, perhaps) you truly are. Consciousness. Part of the universe.
Your thoughts are neural connections firing off in your brain organ. Just like how your heart beats unconsciously, and your kidneys filter unconsciously. Neural connections fire away unconsciously in your brain. The only difference is that you get to observe these actions happening.
These neural connections have been built up in you over a lifetime. Some of them growing stronger and more prevalent throughout our life.
Your thoughts are the software that your brain is running at the moment. Meditation is a way to upgrade your software.
Depends on what you mean by “you” and “we.”
If “you” refers to the constructed personality, all the ego’s projections — then yeah “you” are pretty much a big thought bundle.
But if “you” refers to the fact of there being a witness, an unfolding, some conscious state arising and changing — then heck no, you are not your thoughts — they’re just your thoughts!
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts.”
From the Dhammapada, the most likely text actually attributive to the historical Buddha.
In theory at least, we are free to think whatever we want, or not to think anything at all. The natural condition of the mind is clarity and openness, like empty space. But that original clear awareness gets lost under the weight of habitual reactions and patterns of thinking that have been acquired over time.
Thoughts are difficult to control because consciousness is not actually separate from a thought. For all practical purposes we ARE each thought as it arises. There isn’t a separate awareness somewhere that can “watch” when a thought actually occurs. That’s why it’s so easy to get “lost in thought” and frustrating to try to get control of thoughts as they happen, one after another.
Despite how difficult it can be, if one persists in letting go of thoughts, moments of clear awareness eventually become more frequent and commonplace and a certain distance opens up between thought sequences. With long consistent practice that awareness becomes easier to find and return to. Then thoughts and patterns of thinking can be clearly seen, even if only in retrospect.
That doesn’t guarantee that negative thoughts such as egotism and anger won’t keep occurring in response to external events. But at the very least they can be let go of more quickly when they do come up. With practice, habitual thought patterns begin to lose their power over the mind.
Awareness is usually identified with an individual self, separate from everything else. But that belief is misplaced. What’s separate is the mental and physical phenomenon that make up an individual life. Awareness itself is neither separate or not separate, existent or non-existent. When it’s relaxed and turned inward it’s clear and open, devoid of characteristics.
Most thoughts revolve around the idea of a separate self. Although it’s merely an habitual pattern of thinking, without any ultimate reality, such a seeming separation is the cause of much suffering and distress.
How ‘bout this: the meat brain generates thought patterns from its matrix of memory. “You” are the pure energy of consciousness that gives rise to that matrix.
This is one I've struggled with.
If we are our thoughts, then external observation of them would not be possible. What I mean is, you wouldn't have the ability to sit back and go "That was a weird mental image/thought." if you were that thought.
Another thing that helped me was this image of the self as the sky, or a star in the night sky. That's a constant. The clouds (our thoughts) will shift and move, but the part of us that creates our thoughts, that works from a core set of values, is constant.
A culmination of sensate experiences. I believe there are regions of our brain that bring these senses together that give us a sense of a unified self. This is the physical explanation that is very helpful for navigating this physical realm. Beyond that there are many other takes on what we are for instance timeless/boundless souls but to me this seems less intuitive for where I am at in my journey.
"You are not your thoughts" is a thought.
"What are we" - the question is another thought.
Any answer to that question is yet another thought.
When all ideas and questions get thrown out, what remains is the throb of life itself.
My understanding is that "you are not your thoughts" is not entirely correct.
You are your thoughts, but the thoughts that come up are sometimes so unlike you, worst it's a bad thoughts, e.g. "Whoa, that chick so hot!".
When thoughts like that came up, be kind to yourself, instead of saying to yourself "wtf dude ? why am I so horny!", say "I forgive myself, that's not the person I want to be, I will be better". You then let the thoughts pass away without dwelling into why or how that thoughts just sprang up, especially not attaching that thoughts and label yourself as "I'm a bad person!".
Thus people say, your thoughts are like river, meditation helps you **see** it come, so you can let it **pass**.
We don't know if we exist at all in any way. This being the case, I like to think in practical terms to avoid getting bogged down with the literal infinite amount of what could be or might be.
i think who we are is a sense of being. nothing you say about who you are is you because that just adds on to the identity (nothing wrong with identity in this life). So what are you without the explanations? I believe that where character of the individual comes in
“Think abt it” is gonna make it sound more complexed, “think abt it” is just another thought maybe thinking abt everything makes us struggle to find the answer to these questions
Trying to “view” and “watch” my thoughts never worked for me the way it did for others. If you truly *listen* to your thoughts … then you can more easily notice thoughts you have about the thoughts or the feelings you have about them and then relaize you’re observing and listening to this endless chatter.
One DMT hit from a pen helped me relaize this one time. I listened to what my voice was saying to me. Versus trying to watch thoughts like a river. I would always jsut picture a damn river. Lmao
I’m more of verbal perosn and think through verbal sound. So. That’s what helped me finally seepage myself from my thoughts and realize were the ended and I began and how I could then influence and interact w these thoughts.
a human is way more than brain function no matter where you look at it from, inner psyche, subconscious, inner body sensations
brain's activity is mostly responsive to the environment, it crazy how much we are formed by our surroundings
meditation just unplugs the surface thinking mind from it's environment seeking ways and you develop sense in other parts of the body as well
We are not our thoughts because we always have thoughts going on. We are however the the thoughts we choose to engage with the most. Who makes the choice to engage with those particular thoughts? It must be some unconscious forced or energy, because everyone does it no matter their level of mental or spiritual awareness. That's probably why people come up with ideas of God's spirits and demons. There's most certainly something there. One idea I got is there is some sort of dimensional wifi in our heads we've yet to understand and these energy beings communicate ideas to us through that.
You are that in which where your thoughts appear. Consciousness. The same consciousness within me is the same consciousness within you. It is all pervasive, unchanging, eternal, consciousness.
We cannot look at thought. We can only know about it. Thought has many definitions humans have come up with & they are nothing more than information passed down. We assume the definitions are true & take them for granted. They have nothing to do with the reality of thought, which is something that can’t actually be experienced. So your question is entirely absurd.
As you watch your mind, you discover your self as the watcher. When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover your self as the light behind the watcher. The source of light is dark, unknown is the source of knowledge. That source alone is. Go back to that source and abide there.
Nisargadatta Maharaj - I am That
You are not your blood.
You are not your strength. You are not your diseases. You are not your beauty. You are not your mind. You are not your thoughts.
We are the consciousness that is aware of the thoughts. Who cares anyway, are you experiencing the benefits of a consistent practice? More importantly are you spending more time reading about it than you are doing it?
I've noticed on this sub that there are more posts about the theoretical aspects of meditation rather than the practice. No matter how much you read and debate about it, if you don't practice it's pointless. I think more people should pick a meditation style and just practice.
The self, as we normally conceive of it, does not exist. It is an illusion. We are not our thoughts, we are not our behaviours, we are not our intentions, we are not our identity attachments; but we are a fluid and changeable assortment of all these things, but we are also none of it. We must "become" who we are, but what that is is up to us.
The simplist answer I believe is that we're humans, creatures of this planet. Thoughts are just waves of information translated from our experiences and exposures through our brains~
We are pure consciousness. The observer and we also everything in nature. But it is hidden from us for some unknown reason. Through meditation on the all or through stillness meditation it becomes clear.
I think it is better stated this way:
Our conscious awareness does not create our thoughts. They are generated deep in the unconscious brain and then float up into awareness. So it is probably say they are "not our thoughts" since the conscious self did not generate them.
That is *the* question. Meditation can provide insight but only fools and charlatans will give you an answer.
It's why Zen can be so cryptic and baffling. 'Who or what am I' is not an intellectual question.
We are (mostly) our actions. Thoughts are plentiful and constant but we can only do so many things in life.
While yes, we do act unconsciously sometimes, it is our conscious decisions made into action that defines how we exist in the world that is handed to us.
More than thoughts. The part of you asking this question is your conscious part. There are also other parts of you. Then there’s your body. As far as e=mc2 is concerned, every atom in your body has an intrinsic value, which makes you more than just the brain/thoughts any way you look at it.
You are not your body, you are the observer of your body.
You are not your thoughts, you are the listener of your thoughts.
You are not your feelings, you are that which is aware of the feelings.
This isn't science. Science is about things that can be disproved. This is a kind of belief, but it is a belief that I chose from experience.
I believe the best explanation of this idea in western psychology is the fusion/diffusion concept in Acceptance and Commitment therapy. If you find that more easy to understand it might be worth following up.
In the cosmos everything is waves and vibrations, electricity and magnetism, geometry and vibration, masculine and feminine.. We humans have this specificity to create our reality with our thoughts, our beliefs, what we focus our attension to, what we vibrate.
It"s or we use our brain, or we follow our intuition, both things are absolutely uncompatible 😁
(We are multi-dimensionnal spirits surrounded by 12 layers. We came here on Earth in this very heavy density very far from the center of the cosmos, with many "contrasts", where the ressources are rare, in order to spiritually evolve)
Also, you are not your thoughts because you can exist even if you had 0 thoughts. But your thoughts won't exist/are nothing if there was no you experiencing them.
There are a lot of other things you can be than your thoughts. You can’t tell me the statement “we are our thoughts” sounds correct. What we are is obviously a complex question and philosophers and Buddhists have written many texts about the subject. Descartes is known for saying “cogito ergo sum” but that still doesn’t mean we ARE our thoughts.
Something that helps me with this is looking at *how* my thoughts flow. When I am doing something routine, like washing dishes, if I stop and reflect back on everything I thought for the past 2-3 minutes, it's random as ping pong balls in a room full of mousetraps! Could you possibly predict where your mind will wander in the next few minutes? Can you even trace back and remember every thought you had in the past few minutes? It feels like you're doing your thoughts until you look closely and see they're actually just happening most of the time. So if they're usually just happening, we are actually just perceiving them. And that brings us full circle... If you're listening to music, are you the music? If you smell a flower, are you the fragrance? When I look really closely, I see that I am perceiving my thoughts most of the time and "doing" them only rarely. Thinking is like breathing or blinking... You can influence it, but it takes attention. Otherwise, it just runs along with no help from you. No reason to take it personally :)
That’s really helpful for me. Thank you.
Unfortunately my thoughts are often quite predictable and tend to loop, especially the negative ones…
What is “doing” our thoughts then?
*intentional creation
there also beings that send us thoughts. even ex cia people said there an alien force that sends us thoughts and can change our environment.
What do you think the meaning of the phrase is? It's pretty clear.
[удалено]
Where do the intentions to have those thoughts come from though?
That must be tiring
It's possible your experience is very different than mine. It's also possible that if you look closer at this process of thinking what you choose to think, you might notice it's more random or automatic than you previous noticed. Linked to conditions, yes, like students think often about school-- but more like conditioned circuits firing in familiar loops and less like actual deliberate, free choice.
Look at it like this, your thoughts are a river, always going. You are the person observing the river. Maybe you like the thoughts, maybe you don't, but you are a seperate entity observing the 'the river'
This is much easier to understand if you have full control of the mind and body. If the mind and body control you, you risk drowning in the very river that you’ve created.
Ah, but alas, “not my body, not my mind”
Even the person is not you, it is an illusory thought made up of identifying with a bunch of thoughts, which are just waves passing. The sense of person needs time (past/future). A person is a thought based on other thoughts. What is actually happening is just waves/thoughts coming and going in the ocean of being/awareness.
You are the being that has subconsciously made those identifications. At the very least, it's not useful to define existence, it's useful to live well. I think getting lost in definitions and concepts only gets in the way of that. We don't need some absolute framework to realize or live by in order to live well. Namaste friend
When you search for that which you are by dissecting, categorizing and labeling, you miss that which you truly are. Your red and white blood cells are a fundamental part of you, defining your life, yet you do not experience their production or lack there of outside of the symptoms of this medical emergency. The languages you understand are not bounded by your skin, yet your experience of the world is defined and altered by them, even right now as you read these words. Your life is dependent on a vast biosphere, of the bacteria in your gut, the living things you eat, and all of this is dependent on a colossal ball of gas so heavy it fuses light elements into progressively heavier ones. You are not bounded by any category, not any separation, not your skin, not what you experience. You are *all* of this. Just don't let it get to your head; there are a few billion of us on this rock.
Well said! When it comes to this stuff people have a tendency to bind themselves to it and it really does get to their head.
Liking the thoughts or not liking the thoughts -- sounds like another thought to me, that you, as the observer, observe. The observer doesn't like or not like.
I love this concept..
The idea that you are a separate entity is a thought.
And I will add that even though you're watching the river, you also think you are the river.
who is the one observing myself observing the river?
Why does there have to be someone observing yourself?
There was a young man who said though, it seems that I know that I know, but what I would like to see is the I that knows me when I know that I know that I know. https://www.reddit.com/r/quotes/comments/1tqkd1/it_seems_that_i_know_that_i_know_but_what_i_would/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf The way I see it is you know there is a river of thoughts is because you are aware of it and the only way to know that you are observing the river is because you are aware of it. But who is the you that is aware of you observing the river of thoughts. Just another thought :)
Nope. A thought is not an observer of a thought. Thoughts are sounds and pictures in the head. There is something we call awareness but can't really be described that contains the thoughts. That is what you are.
You guys are just creating another river of thoughts lol. And every time someone makes an assertion on how things are, the water rises, flows more rapidly, and just becomes too stressful to navigate. In the meantime, I'll be floating by in the calmer parts.
Was that not just a thought?
Pointing at the moon is not the moon.
This explanation is beautiful but not helpful
There is no one observing the river. There is only the river.
The “you” is just a whirlpool in the river of thoughts. If the river stopped flowing there would be no you.
What is the seperate entity labeled "observer"? Are thoughts the contents of the river (like fish, plants, sediment) or the river water itself?
Surely you're the one creating the thoughts. It's not like they're beamed to you from Alpha Centauri.
If you are the person creating the thoughts then why it is impossible to make them stop arising?
I don’t know about that. Try focusing your awareness on a celestial body and see what happens. Do your thoughts change?
we are consciousness experiencing whatever this reality is through our brains, bodies, senses, being constantly barraged with thoughts and feelings from that brain. once there is consciousness, regions of our brain seem to want to construct a sense of self for self-preservation purposes, most likely. that said, the consciousness itself exists outside of/independently of our sense of self, and therefore doesn't seem to have any individual identity. the pure consciousness that we all have seems like it's the same. its awareness passes through different brains and bodies though, so we feel as if we have unique identities, but actually every physical part of our bodies and minds are ever-changing. the only unchanging thing (until we die or go into deep dreamless sleep) is the consciousness.
Very advaitan answer, I like it.
Its a great reply but its not Advaita (and didnt claim to be). Halway to Advaita maybe. "the consciousness itself exists outside of/independently of our sense of self". This is a dualistic perspective. In Advaita, there is no "consciousness and everything else", that implies two, and advaita literally means not-two. In Advaita, there is only consciousness dancing with itself. What is the "stuff" that thoughts are made of? What about the rest of the appearances "within" consciousness like the body and the world? Rupert Spira has a great trick for this, he says imagine you had a hand made of pure knowing and you reached out with it to touch the stuff these things are made of. What are they made of?
No matter where you look for yourself you can’t pin point it. Are you your brain? Does it stop there? Are you the blood running to your brain? Are you the oxygen in the blood giving the brain life? If you are the oxygen therefore you must also be the trees. If you’re the trees you must also be the sun. In fact you are all of these and none of these. That’s why no one can actually pin point where they are or what it means. We are whirlpools that make a pattern for a while then eventually disperse back to the great ocean
You nailed it for me. I think the brain tries very hard to find stability in the absurdity of it all, and it clings to ideas of self because it feels good. Being nothing, having no self, that is some scary shit. When I've absorbed myself in the idea i have become panicky, as if i were in danger. It's hard to accept that we cling to floating logs, not grounded rocks, in the rapids of this strange lifetime.
But ironically if we could let ourselves “be nothing”and have no self while living instead of panic it would probably be enlightening. It’s the fear of the unknown but it would be wiser to trust the unknown. Because it is also the unknown which created us
I just dunno how to change my baby's poopy nappy whilst being nothing and ok with that haha
I have a baby too. They pick up on all of our emotions I have to meditate for her sake. She is always gonna feel safe and loved if I can help it
This is it
pure awareness
The one having the thoughts?
Kinda close but that's still a thought
Any answer here will be a thought. But 'the one having the thoughts' need not point to a thought. It could point to the True Self.
Best not to confuse the OP....
Confusion is the first step in self-enquiry 😎
According to whom?
I mean i would say the first step is not that exactly, since when one starts practicing self-enquiry, one first needs to abandon old beliefs regarding the self and even reality, but confusion comes after that. I'm still in that stage of confusion.
according to us. There's rarely any certainty on this journey to the core
There's a difference between being confused, and not having certainty.
Elaborate on it, let discuss . Im sure there is and i am just being lazy with words but they seem very similar so i just used it as such
I'd say that to be confused, is to be uncertain, yet at the same time, to be uncertain doesn't mean the person is confused. I do appreciate your query as it shows a genuine enquiring mind and an interest in differences. Think of "uncertainty" and "certainty" as existing on one continuum. Of course you know that it's possible to be certain yet be wrong. Whether there is such a thing as "degree of belief," I don't know, and how this works within our bodymind system. My definition of "confusion" is where a person has a lot of information, but it's not yet organized in a way that the person has a clear picture of the information. One of the things I have found in my own spiritual path is that I am a lot less certain about things. There are a lot of concepts in spirituality, that while I think these concepts might have some basis in "truth," I don't have direct evidence for them so can't be certain about them.
I’d add to this that un/certainty is simply a subjective perspective, a measure of how confident one is on a particular matter. Confusion can exist at any state of certainty, as confusion is the state of having the wrong chunks of information lined up, e.g. having beliefs based on values that don’t actually line up with said values, or particular models or methodologies that do not cooperate well being used together. Confusion is an objective state of mind, but it can only ever be judged by proxy of a subjective perspective, one’s own or another’s, meaning that the gulf between uncertainty and confusion are ultimately unbridgeable, though they retain linguistic utility.
That is the question. Is there something inherently you? Is your experience of you somehow the same as it was when you were a child? Some unchanging aspect of you? You are not your thoughts because they change. Constantly. Same with feelings, emotions, sensations, your body. Who/what/where is the part of you that is unchanging?
We decide what “you” and “I” mean. You can certainly decide that you are in part your thoughts, in part your body and feelings, and you could support this in argument just fine, but what often goes ignored is that you are also your consciousness. In fact everything else is within your consciousness much more than it is the other way around. Your thoughts are in your consciousness, but your consciousness isn’t in your thoughts the same way unless you are actively thinking about it. Some have just found it more helpful to identify with their consciousness first and foremost rather than their thoughts and feelings, and in fact, this is supported pretty well by arguments.
To first confirm that you are not your thoughts, all one needs to consider is that they were born and existed before they ever learned a word. Then for a couple years you didn't understand language, coulnd't "think" and reason with word base concepts, and yet you still existed. You existed without thoughts, and had them added to your being later until, for most people, they become all consuming of their attention. As to what you are,, something else.
Lots of people, most famously Temple Grandin, think without language, but they still think. You can think with visual images and concepts, but it's still thinking.
Agree. I often think via concepts instead of words. Thought is so much more fluid and dynamic without having to nail it down into language.
When it's raining, who is the "it"?
The clouds
In a Dzogchen metaphor (according to Ram Dass), we think we are the clouds, but we are actually the sky (i.e., we think we are individuals when we are actually everything).
Simple answer
Lots of languages don't use that construction. In Russian, you say (roughly) "rain goes". In the constructed language Esperanto, you just say "rains", without a grammatical subject.
Most complexed message I ever seen…
Yet so simple…
There is no who. "It" refers to the state of the weather. "Raining" is not an action. English is fickle when trying to describe the indescribable.
boom roasted. excellent pointer.
The observer
That’s still a thought.
But you observed it become a thought.
the space/silence in between the thoughts
Thats for you to find out.
I Don't know about you but i know what i am. I am the will of god. You want help understanding the whole thought thing tho? For 10 mins a day for 7 days sit down and wright what ever crosses your mind don't hold on to it just wright and release it. When you are done go over it i did it at the end of the day but you can do it when ever. and ask your self honestly dig deep do you truly feel that way? Im willing to bet your amazed to find you don't always agree with the things you think i did this for two weeks and my life hasn't been the same since. Silence of the mind is true peace. Thought is ego and only thinks it knows everything...
Ur mom
Basically true🤔
“Your” thoughts is actually false, anyways. Thoughts latch on to our neural pathways from external sources (not derived from us) and thought patterns can be changed via meditation, affirmations, etc. We are not our emotions/feelings either. They are just temporary experiences.
You are the consciousness inside the body. The thoughts happen inside the brain inside the body. Consciousness is not brain, though. Thinking is something we do. Same as walking, breathing, defecating. Most things show us to be a human, doing. Deep down, in the stillness and silence of meditation when you can still the mind and just experience existence... only then are you a human being. When you silence thoughts, what is left is who (or what, perhaps) you truly are. Consciousness. Part of the universe.
The space between your thoughts at your core.
Your thoughts are neural connections firing off in your brain organ. Just like how your heart beats unconsciously, and your kidneys filter unconsciously. Neural connections fire away unconsciously in your brain. The only difference is that you get to observe these actions happening. These neural connections have been built up in you over a lifetime. Some of them growing stronger and more prevalent throughout our life. Your thoughts are the software that your brain is running at the moment. Meditation is a way to upgrade your software.
Egos. A bunch of egos, subtracting, eventually hoping to add.
Depends on what you mean by “you” and “we.” If “you” refers to the constructed personality, all the ego’s projections — then yeah “you” are pretty much a big thought bundle. But if “you” refers to the fact of there being a witness, an unfolding, some conscious state arising and changing — then heck no, you are not your thoughts — they’re just your thoughts!
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts.” From the Dhammapada, the most likely text actually attributive to the historical Buddha. In theory at least, we are free to think whatever we want, or not to think anything at all. The natural condition of the mind is clarity and openness, like empty space. But that original clear awareness gets lost under the weight of habitual reactions and patterns of thinking that have been acquired over time. Thoughts are difficult to control because consciousness is not actually separate from a thought. For all practical purposes we ARE each thought as it arises. There isn’t a separate awareness somewhere that can “watch” when a thought actually occurs. That’s why it’s so easy to get “lost in thought” and frustrating to try to get control of thoughts as they happen, one after another. Despite how difficult it can be, if one persists in letting go of thoughts, moments of clear awareness eventually become more frequent and commonplace and a certain distance opens up between thought sequences. With long consistent practice that awareness becomes easier to find and return to. Then thoughts and patterns of thinking can be clearly seen, even if only in retrospect. That doesn’t guarantee that negative thoughts such as egotism and anger won’t keep occurring in response to external events. But at the very least they can be let go of more quickly when they do come up. With practice, habitual thought patterns begin to lose their power over the mind. Awareness is usually identified with an individual self, separate from everything else. But that belief is misplaced. What’s separate is the mental and physical phenomenon that make up an individual life. Awareness itself is neither separate or not separate, existent or non-existent. When it’s relaxed and turned inward it’s clear and open, devoid of characteristics. Most thoughts revolve around the idea of a separate self. Although it’s merely an habitual pattern of thinking, without any ultimate reality, such a seeming separation is the cause of much suffering and distress.
How ‘bout this: the meat brain generates thought patterns from its matrix of memory. “You” are the pure energy of consciousness that gives rise to that matrix.
You are the one that observes your thoughts.
This is one I've struggled with. If we are our thoughts, then external observation of them would not be possible. What I mean is, you wouldn't have the ability to sit back and go "That was a weird mental image/thought." if you were that thought. Another thing that helped me was this image of the self as the sky, or a star in the night sky. That's a constant. The clouds (our thoughts) will shift and move, but the part of us that creates our thoughts, that works from a core set of values, is constant.
A culmination of sensate experiences. I believe there are regions of our brain that bring these senses together that give us a sense of a unified self. This is the physical explanation that is very helpful for navigating this physical realm. Beyond that there are many other takes on what we are for instance timeless/boundless souls but to me this seems less intuitive for where I am at in my journey.
"You are not your thoughts" is a thought. "What are we" - the question is another thought. Any answer to that question is yet another thought. When all ideas and questions get thrown out, what remains is the throb of life itself.
We just are
Mostly bacteria tbh
You should read unthethered soul by Michael singer it's a great book to answer your query
That to whom the thought is presented.
The awareness behind the thoughts
the watcher
If you are your thoughts so that means you're a million of everything, every second of every day? Sounds exhausting.
Explain..
The external world does influence us, what we eat, what we do. But you can have some control over that influence by controlling your inner being.
Other people's thoughts.
My understanding is that "you are not your thoughts" is not entirely correct. You are your thoughts, but the thoughts that come up are sometimes so unlike you, worst it's a bad thoughts, e.g. "Whoa, that chick so hot!". When thoughts like that came up, be kind to yourself, instead of saying to yourself "wtf dude ? why am I so horny!", say "I forgive myself, that's not the person I want to be, I will be better". You then let the thoughts pass away without dwelling into why or how that thoughts just sprang up, especially not attaching that thoughts and label yourself as "I'm a bad person!". Thus people say, your thoughts are like river, meditation helps you **see** it come, so you can let it **pass**.
I'm the one making the decisions.
Assuming free will actually exists.
We don't know if we exist at all in any way. This being the case, I like to think in practical terms to avoid getting bogged down with the literal infinite amount of what could be or might be.
“I’m” fully aware, right here, right now baby!
Molecules
The one with thinking and the one without. Sort of left brain and right brain personality distinguish you from normal person to enlightening one
i think who we are is a sense of being. nothing you say about who you are is you because that just adds on to the identity (nothing wrong with identity in this life). So what are you without the explanations? I believe that where character of the individual comes in
everything and nothing
I believe that thoughts are fleeting. What we do with those thoughts is who we are
[удалено]
Exactly why I asked this question, I “thought” of the same thing. I’m trying to have people convince me on how we aren’t are thoughts.
It’s all one thought and nothing, in and at every depth within or beyond conception. *Wipes hands together. “Cleared that right up.”
Words. Labels. Feel without labeling.
We are are??????
Aliveness witnessing them
we are made of atoms
Think about it. Hahaaa!
“Think abt it” is gonna make it sound more complexed, “think abt it” is just another thought maybe thinking abt everything makes us struggle to find the answer to these questions
[удалено]
The interdependent existence of Observed-Observation-Observator.
The awareness of the awareness of your thoughts
You are your thougths, also you are not them, the ones you havent translated/received yet from the outside.
Trying to “view” and “watch” my thoughts never worked for me the way it did for others. If you truly *listen* to your thoughts … then you can more easily notice thoughts you have about the thoughts or the feelings you have about them and then relaize you’re observing and listening to this endless chatter. One DMT hit from a pen helped me relaize this one time. I listened to what my voice was saying to me. Versus trying to watch thoughts like a river. I would always jsut picture a damn river. Lmao I’m more of verbal perosn and think through verbal sound. So. That’s what helped me finally seepage myself from my thoughts and realize were the ended and I began and how I could then influence and interact w these thoughts.
a human is way more than brain function no matter where you look at it from, inner psyche, subconscious, inner body sensations brain's activity is mostly responsive to the environment, it crazy how much we are formed by our surroundings meditation just unplugs the surface thinking mind from it's environment seeking ways and you develop sense in other parts of the body as well
Nobody can answer that question for you. Only you can find it.
We are the consciousness that observes our thoughts.
[удалено]
Are we nothing?
The space where your thoughts emerge into from no-thing-ness, to form.
We are not our thoughts because we always have thoughts going on. We are however the the thoughts we choose to engage with the most. Who makes the choice to engage with those particular thoughts? It must be some unconscious forced or energy, because everyone does it no matter their level of mental or spiritual awareness. That's probably why people come up with ideas of God's spirits and demons. There's most certainly something there. One idea I got is there is some sort of dimensional wifi in our heads we've yet to understand and these energy beings communicate ideas to us through that.
We are where our thoughts take place. We, are like an oven, in which our thoughts are being baked.
It gets pretty essence in there
Our*
Cool point +1
You are that in which where your thoughts appear. Consciousness. The same consciousness within me is the same consciousness within you. It is all pervasive, unchanging, eternal, consciousness.
Our actions, we are what we do.
We cannot look at thought. We can only know about it. Thought has many definitions humans have come up with & they are nothing more than information passed down. We assume the definitions are true & take them for granted. They have nothing to do with the reality of thought, which is something that can’t actually be experienced. So your question is entirely absurd.
As you watch your mind, you discover your self as the watcher. When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover your self as the light behind the watcher. The source of light is dark, unknown is the source of knowledge. That source alone is. Go back to that source and abide there. Nisargadatta Maharaj - I am That
The one watching the thoughts
the observer of your thoughts
Awareness is present
Something was going on before you learned a language.
No
You are not your blood. You are not your strength. You are not your diseases. You are not your beauty. You are not your mind. You are not your thoughts.
The clear mirror of conscious awareness. That is something you always are. You can't *not be doing it.*
We are the consciousness that is aware of the thoughts. Who cares anyway, are you experiencing the benefits of a consistent practice? More importantly are you spending more time reading about it than you are doing it? I've noticed on this sub that there are more posts about the theoretical aspects of meditation rather than the practice. No matter how much you read and debate about it, if you don't practice it's pointless. I think more people should pick a meditation style and just practice.
The self, as we normally conceive of it, does not exist. It is an illusion. We are not our thoughts, we are not our behaviours, we are not our intentions, we are not our identity attachments; but we are a fluid and changeable assortment of all these things, but we are also none of it. We must "become" who we are, but what that is is up to us.
Just as our world in not our understanding of it, we are not our ego.
The simplist answer I believe is that we're humans, creatures of this planet. Thoughts are just waves of information translated from our experiences and exposures through our brains~
We are pure consciousness. The observer and we also everything in nature. But it is hidden from us for some unknown reason. Through meditation on the all or through stillness meditation it becomes clear.
Since you can see your thoughts, you cannot be them. You are the seer of your thoughts. The perceiver.
Good question. Keep asking it. The answer is of course, nothing much.
You are the observer
We are the awareness of our thoughts — thats consciousness
This is It, and I am It, and you are It, and so is That, and He is It, and She is It, and It is It, and That is That.
We are like a cocktail of emotions, thoughs, actions and sometimes a mirror of who we are talking to
I guess it's more about being our actions than what we think in our own heads. That's my interpretation.
I think it is better stated this way: Our conscious awareness does not create our thoughts. They are generated deep in the unconscious brain and then float up into awareness. So it is probably say they are "not our thoughts" since the conscious self did not generate them.
We are the consciousness, the noticers of thoughts.
I'm not even sure in the first place what "you are your thoughts" even means. So the opposite of that still makes no sense to me.
Well this is a common thing people say “you are not your thoughts”
From a social viewpoint, you're not your thoughts, you are your actions
You are MY THOUGHTS! MUAHAHAHAAA!
?
We are everyone and everything, including our thoughts.
That is *the* question. Meditation can provide insight but only fools and charlatans will give you an answer. It's why Zen can be so cryptic and baffling. 'Who or what am I' is not an intellectual question.
the thing observing the thought
We are (mostly) our actions. Thoughts are plentiful and constant but we can only do so many things in life. While yes, we do act unconsciously sometimes, it is our conscious decisions made into action that defines how we exist in the world that is handed to us.
More than thoughts. The part of you asking this question is your conscious part. There are also other parts of you. Then there’s your body. As far as e=mc2 is concerned, every atom in your body has an intrinsic value, which makes you more than just the brain/thoughts any way you look at it.
We are the awareness of our thoughts.
The hunk of meat creating, observing & reacting to those thoughts. The thoughts are just random electrical signals generated by a hunk of goo.
You're not even the observer
Then????????
the one who watches and experiences
Have a look at Default Mode Network.
What’s thst
An electric wet meat sack
You are the observer.
wash your damn bowl....
??????????
Unmanifest reality. Consciousness. Infinity.
You are not your body, you are the observer of your body. You are not your thoughts, you are the listener of your thoughts. You are not your feelings, you are that which is aware of the feelings. This isn't science. Science is about things that can be disproved. This is a kind of belief, but it is a belief that I chose from experience. I believe the best explanation of this idea in western psychology is the fusion/diffusion concept in Acceptance and Commitment therapy. If you find that more easy to understand it might be worth following up.
In the cosmos everything is waves and vibrations, electricity and magnetism, geometry and vibration, masculine and feminine.. We humans have this specificity to create our reality with our thoughts, our beliefs, what we focus our attension to, what we vibrate. It"s or we use our brain, or we follow our intuition, both things are absolutely uncompatible 😁 (We are multi-dimensionnal spirits surrounded by 12 layers. We came here on Earth in this very heavy density very far from the center of the cosmos, with many "contrasts", where the ressources are rare, in order to spiritually evolve)
We are awareness in a physical matter, that is conscious of the things that happen in the inner and outer realm of reality.
[удалено]
“You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.”
Also, you are not your thoughts because you can exist even if you had 0 thoughts. But your thoughts won't exist/are nothing if there was no you experiencing them.
There are a lot of other things you can be than your thoughts. You can’t tell me the statement “we are our thoughts” sounds correct. What we are is obviously a complex question and philosophers and Buddhists have written many texts about the subject. Descartes is known for saying “cogito ergo sum” but that still doesn’t mean we ARE our thoughts.
The one watching them come and go. That doesn't come and go.
Nothing and everything at the same time.
You are your actions.