We often unconsciously think that we are our thoughts; we identify with them, as them. This is not because we actually are them, but because we didn’t grow up learning anything to the contrary. Once we discover we are greater than our thoughts, only then can we learn to have mastery over them.

EXPERIMENT:  Today, simply allow thoughts to arise, then investigate them. Where did they come from? Where are they resting? Where do they go? What you’ll find just behind thought is the real You—the infinite space, the screen, from and upon which everything comes and goes. You are the stillness that eternally remains!

“Quiet the mind, and this infinite Being that you are becomes self-obvious to you.”
Lester Levenson

ENGAGING YOUR INNER CHILD: Get out a piece of paper with colored pencils, markers, pens or whatever drawing tool you would like. Do not worry about the quality of art. Start by allowing your thoughts to flow naturally. No need to analyze or filter. As thoughts come up, begin translating them into drawings on the paper. Your thought translations can be literal, abstract or whatever feels good to you. Once you have finished, reflect on what you have drawn. How did it feel to visualize your thoughts? How can this provide you a new perspective on how thoughts come and go?

ADDITIONAL NOTES 

Noticing the space that is always there, in between and surrounding our thoughts, is a powerful exercise in self-discovery. What you might find is three things:

1. I am not my thoughts, my thoughts simply come and go within this part of me that is greater and constant/ever-present,

2. This greater part of me is like a container for everything that I experience, and

3. I really don’t know where my thoughts come from, just that they come and go

When we look, it’s pretty self-obvious that whatever we are is a container for all that happens—like the stage upon which a play is performed. The play comes and goes, but the stage persists—a silent, sturdy, powerful foundation that gives life to an entire theatre of experience.

As we discussed in Unified, this container is The Second Realm—it’s the solidification of formless potential (First Realm) into a mechanism of experience, which is the stage upon which observable reality occurs. It’s greater than thoughts, feelings and experiences, by the simple nature that all occurs within it.

Isn’t it crazy how we’ve spent much of our lives suffering from our thoughts? Whether it’s conscious or unconscious, the cycles we find difficult to escape are trivial when we see them from the perspective of the “stage.”

The lesson here is this: The more we identify with the stage, and not the play, the more we can watch from the director’s chair and conduct a masterpiece.

In other words, the more we identify as the container of our thoughts—as opposed to the thoughts themselves—the easier we are able to direct them (or simply let them go). This is because when a thought feels bigger than you, it has control over you; however, when you feel bigger than a thought (as the container of that thought), you have control over it. It’s a simple shift in perspective that makes a world of a difference.Just try it—if a thought ever feels like it just won’t go away, shift your feeling state to the space that is behind and surrounding the thought, the space that feels boundless and free, and observe as the thought becomes powerless. Notice—the thought never had any power of its own!