For the most part, it was never pointed out by our parents or teachers, and no suggestion was made during our educational trajectory, that maybe awareness of thinking could provide some kind of balance and perspective so that our thoughts didn’t rule our lives, unbeknownst to us.
Let’s reflect for a moment.
Is it not true that ever since we were in school, we were trained to think “properly,” to think critically? Isn’t that a good deal of what school is for? I remember very clearly asking my teachers at Humboldt Junior High School in New York City, when it came to learning something that I did not like or want to learn, such as trigonometry or grammar, “Why do we have to learn this?” Usually, when the teacher didn’t just get angry but took the question seriously, the response was that it would help us develop the capacity to think critically and to speak and reason more clearly and more thoughtfully.
And you know what? It turns out that is true. We certainly do need a foundation in critical thinking and in analytical and deductive reasoning in order to understand the world and not be totally lost or overwhelmed by it. So thinking — precise, keen, critical thinking — is an extremely important faculty we need to develop, refine, and deepen. But it is not the only capacity we have that needs developing, refining, and deepening. There is another equally important faculty that almost never gets any systematic attention or training in school, and that is the faculty of awareness. Yet awareness is at least as important and useful to us as thinking. In fact, it is demonstrably more powerful in that any thought, no matter how profound, can be held in awareness.