34. But Remember That You are Not Your Thoughts.

This is a hard concept to explain. . . so I’m going to do my best to do this. Then, I’ll look back on it and be a little disgusted with my work! But, it’s better to try then not to get this to you.

You are not your thoughts.

Children, I love you so much and this is a very, very big thing. If you get this piece of advice right, and this concept right, it’s going to help your life tremendously. I forget it sometimes myself, but honestly, if you learn this and you take it to heart and practice it daily, then you’re going to have a much better life experience. The big principle is you are not your thoughts. Instead, you are the observer of your thoughts and the consciousness that listens to the thoughts going on inside your head. You are not the thoughts. Another useful way to think about your thoughts is to call them your inner voice or even your inner critic .

Your inner voice is always talking and chattering up a storm all the time. No matter what, it’s always going and just doesn’t shut up. It comments about everything, and a lot of the times it’s not saying good things to you. Now, I got these principles and ideas from two books I read by a gentleman named Michael Singer: The Untethered Soul and The Surrender Experiment .

According to Mr. Singer, “There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind, you are the one that hears it.” That’s the concept and the thought process behind it, and you’ve probably heard it before, but I want you to understand and take this to heart. You are a spiritual being having an earthly existence; and you, your soul, your consciousness, the part of you that makes you you (not your physical form or the temple of the body) are actually the soul that inhabits that body. You are spiritual and divine, and the incessant voice inside your head is earthly. Very different things.

This is another quote from Michael Singer. He asks, “How would you feel if someone outside really started talking to you the way that your inner voice does? How would you relate to a person who opened their mouth to say everything your mental voice says?” After a very short period of time, you would tell them to leave and never come back, but when your ‘inner friend’ continuously speaks up you don’t ever tell it to leave. No matter how much trouble it causes, you listen. I’m going to compare your inner voice to, well, it’s a little bit like a bitchy friend. The things that it says are things we all know the inner critic, or the voice inside your head, says often. Maybe you’re not worthy enough, you don’t deserve things, you didn’t do that well enough, you’re not beautiful, or any of the number of things that it can say that can really hurt you. You are not saying those things, it’s the voice in your head.

You don’t have to take that, so the best thing you can do is start separating that voice from you. If it says all those really bad things you’ve got to realize it’s not you talking, it’s just that alien creature that cohabitates your mind. So often it’s mean, selfish, and inconsiderate. You’re going to have a lot of problems in life if you let that voice hold sway over you, and if you think it’s your voice.

A practice on this, and something to think about, is to learn to lean back from your physical self and realize that you are the spiritual being having the earthly experience. If you can make that change and think about that, then you can actually lean back from a problem you’re having or a particularly bad thought, a bad day, or a bad set of circumstances. You can separate yourself from the circumstance and realize that it doesn’t have to affect you. You can be an observer to all of these thoughts and fears going on in your head, but you don’t have to be an active participant in it once you realize it’s not really you .

About this internal conflict Michael Singer says:

“Eventually you will see that the real cause of problems is not life itself, it’s the commotion the mind makes about life that really causes problems.”

The big thing is we’re going to be okay. Our soul, or our spirit, is going to be just fine even if something happens to our earthly vessel. Most of the problems that we create and think about are constructs of our imagination, and it’s our inner voice giving credence to these. Singer also says that to attain true inner freedom you must be able to objectively watch your problems instead of being lost in them. Once you know that you are not your thoughts, you can sit back and objectively watch your thoughts go by and consider them without buying into them. That is the mark of intelligence.

Singer also says that if you come to know the one who watches the voice, you will come to know one of the great mysteries of creation. You are divine, the voice inside your head is not.  If you keep this principle in mind, that you are not your thoughts, you’re going to have a better, easier, happier, and overall a more problem-free experience of life. I hope this wasn’t too much to try and explain on just a few pages, but I really think that if you get this concept, it can help you a lot.

Advice in Practice.

• One of the biggest ways of putting this advice into practice is to read, understand, underline, dog-ear, take notes, and refer back to the book, The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer.
• The other book by Michael Singer that I would recommend is called The Surrender Experience . In fact, this may be the very first book that you read because it’s not quite as deep as The Untethered Soul . It reads more like a biography than the owner’s manual of the mind and spirit that is The Untethered Soul . I’d recommend that you read this, take it in, and take some notes from it. I recommend paying special attention to the moment when Mr. Singer “wakes up” from life, from the incessant chatter, and realizes it’s not him that’s making all of his thoughts. If you can have that type of epiphany in your own life, it makes everything much easier and much better.
• You should also periodically remind yourself that you are not your thoughts. There are several ways that you can do this. You can put these into your affirmations in the morning if you are doing a miracle morning practice. You can also set timers on your phone to go off once every day or every few days (as often or as little as needed) to remind you, again, that you are not your thoughts, but rather you are divine consciousness. As you get into the habit of doing that, it will become more and more a part of your everyday life.
• As always, I hope this advice has helped you out and will help you out. I ask that if this is important to you, and if it helped you, that you pass it on to others. I love you so, so very much.