Why can't I stop thinking?
Video transcript:
You may have noticed that you are unable to stop thinking. That is actually not just a common condition, but the standard of every person in the world, unless awakened. People don’t even consider it a problem usually, unless that thinking gets a virus of sorts and its products become too repetitive or unpleasant. Otherwise, people simply consider this to be the normal way to be.
It might be considered normal but it’s certainly not our natural condition.
Our natural conditional is living in silence, being ourselves made of that silence. And from that place we may decide to think or not, when it is needed.
Are you able not to think?
Have you come to notice that fact by now? Are you able not to think? I don’t refer to distracting yourself through an absorbing movie or through getting intoxicated and dulling your sense. Are you able to just be truly quiet without mental movements. Just being? That notion appears imaginary and totally unobtainable for an average person. But not only is it attainable, it is our natural state.
The question - Why can't you stop thinking?
Why are people in this condition? Why can’t a person stop thinking?
The answer
A person is fully identified with the mind, and the mind is nothing but thinking - The reason is that an average person, an unawakened person, is completely identified with his mind, or his ego, which is the mind that calls himself me. That mind is made of thinking, it is made of movement, and since at this stage we derive our very identity from that movement, its absence or its suspension would signifies death, from the perspective of the ego. It has no choice but to think, because in its eyes, it’s a question of life or death. Life for the ego equals thinking. No thinking would therefore mean death.
The result is a painful and superficial way of living
The result is a very unpleasant and superficial way of living. What a person considers his life is thinking. He has no other life but the one lived through the mind. It could be gross thinking, it could be background interpretation, it could be having emotions, either way it is there.
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The movement of the mind, which means thought, emotions and perceptions, is always there. We consider that movement to be our own self.
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The result is that we are at best given a positive interpretation as an input and then we’re kind of ok, or we’re given a less pleasant ones, and then we suffer. At times, as it was for me when I was 20, it was very unpleasant. And then life is just a torture. And since we consider ourselves to be that movement, that voice that speaks inside us, we have nothing to do to change it.
What is the solution to the inability to stop thinking?
What is the solution? Or is there at all a solution for this?
Most certainly there is. The bad news is that our starting point is indeed that unpleasant situation, but the much better news is that our natural state is one of peace, bliss and joy. We are actually made of silence and so does life. The mind is a very useful tool, but it has nothing to do with who we essentially are.
How do we reach that mode of being?
A step by step process of shifting identification
We do it through a step by step process of shifting our identification from the mind and ego to our deeper self. It is entirely doable when given the conceptual and practical tools.
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The first step is recognizing that state of identification and sense of unison with thoughts and emotions.
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Then we start growing distance from the mind by replacing our habitual participation in its products to watching it in an uninvolved way. This is for instance the practice of mindfulness. This culminates with discovering our true identity as the watcher. When we shift our focus from the changing objects to the unchanging subject, and we experience it exclusively, we meet our essence. In that condition we can also experience for the first time a state of no thinking where our field of awareness is so full with our own presence that there is no room for the roaming of the mind. It can’t operate without our engagement.
But the true awakening and the point where we become truly free is when we realize that this subject made of silence, that field of the Now which exists under and in disconnection to the movement of the mind, is not only a higher plane of reality, it is reality itself, it is what life is and who we are. at this stage we moved to a state of no mind. More than the suspension of the mind, we’re now fully free from the illusion that it is our reality.
Conclusion
As long as you are identified with the mind and you are not in touch with a deeper plane of existence and identity you have no choice but to perpetually think. But there is a clear and practical way to change it. The good news is that the destination of this journey is a reality you already have inside you, you just need to discover it. The result is a life of unconditional peace, joy and fulfilment.