I was reading an earlier post in my blog that felt as it had been written by somebody else. A ‘past me’ that exists no more, not because I no longer subscribe my own opinions, but because the language and reasoning sound… distant. I look at my hands typing. Are they mine? They belong to my body and to a certain extent I can feel that I identify with them, but are they really mine? The problem, of course, is the definition of ‘I’.
Thoughts just arise. Who thinks the thoughts? If they arise spontaneously, how can I say I think those thoughts? Thinking is like raining. It just happens. And I have come to accept that I, the ego, am a thought. A thought who is made to believe is the origin of other thoughts and not just a happening. I am a line of code. I guess if we see the world as cause and effect, it was necessary for my brain to have a thinker of thoughts. That construct would be me. Except that thoughts don’t need me to sprout like mushrooms. I am a story, the story I tell myself in a circular conversation.
“You are not who you think you are.” The key to that sentence is not “you”; it’s “think”. Because the true you is not the one who thinks.
It is strange to be just a thought. Suddenly one is entitled to nothing. What would a thought need or feel? How is a thought to be treated fairly or kindly? What a responsibility does a thought have? As I float in ether purposelessly, I wonder if there is any thinker of thoughts… If that ‘I’ is not there, who is ruling? Do all things happen of their own accord? If there is no thinker of thoughts, there is no subject separate from the objects. There are only objects. If there is no thinker, I am a thought too, I am an object, not the subject. I am like other objects and, I guess, one with them. I no longer am the centre. And the space I thought I occupied, just there, where my throne used to be… is empty. Everything floats in a strange and perfect way.
How do I know anything, if I am only a mental construct, a mere concept? If I am not the thinker, who then knows? There is no doer, every action is spontaneous, emotions arise and decay. If I am not the doer, who’s in the driver’s seat? If everything is peripheral, does it just work on its own, it just flows orderly? How did the universe and all its creatures manage to get to this point without a boss…? Right… And so, my mind does not need a ruler either. I, the concept who dreamt he was in charge, can keep swirling in the periphery and relax. It is a bit of a relief to know that I, the ego, am only a thought. An illusion created by my mind to fill the unbearable vacuum of the empty throne.
But is there an ‘I’, some presence? The best definition I found is that we are the silence in which everything happens. A background against which shapes can be perceived, the nothingness in which everything exists. If I were silent, so much would be heard…
I wish you very Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and all the best for 2024!
The Introverted Tree 