Try to look past these words and don't get attached to any specific ones. It's important to realize that words can only say so much. I know this probably doesn't make much ringing sense, so let me try to explain... it's like names. You can call something or someone a name, but that isn't what they are. You can point to something and say that it is a chair, or a tree, or a bird. But it's not -- that's just what it's called. You can describe things with words but it's important to feel the true things beyond them.
So when you read this journal, try not to think about the words too much, but instead try to feel beyond them and see what you find.
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When someone asks the question "who are you?" ... it's usually difficult for us to answer. We could give them our name or our job or even our entire life story, but it still doesn't seem to give "us" justice. This is because none of these things are who we are. In situations like this, our thoughts are saying one things while our emotions are saying another. You might not have realized it before, but it does happen.
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Controversial to what millions believe, you are not your mind, and you are not your thoughts.
So many people are "possessed" by their mind, and instead of awakening to this, they simply believe that they themselves are the possessor. To put it simply, we are addicted to thinking. Thinking is not commonly considered an addiction because of the sheer number of people who are addicted to it, but it is. The definition of an addiction is this: "Addiction is a persistent, compulsive dependence on a behavior or substance."
Thinking would be classified as a behavior. This doesn't mean that thinking is bad or wrong, just like every other behavior or substance isn't wrong. But once you become dependent on it, it becomes controlling and persistent. The average person has over 700 thoughts a day, and many have a lot more than that. Now you can imagine just how addicted we are. It's like drinking 700 bottles of wine a day, washing your hands 700 times a day, or logging onto the Internet 700 times a day.
People who are addicted to something don't always like to admit it, and usually don't even realize it. But it's harmful. Thinking, by itself, isn't harmful. But compulsive, controlling, persistent thinking is. We compulsively think about an incredible amount of things, and one of the characterizations of a compulsive behavior is not being aware of it. Once you're aware of it, you've already taken the first step.
We think about the past and the future. We sketch out different scenarios in our heads, think about how we want to say something or how our day will go. We think about how things would be different if we did or did not do something. We think about everything we want to change and everything we want to resist. We judge people and places and things with our thoughts immediately without even realizing it until later. We set walls with our thoughts that limit our true potential and the true potential of our surroundings. Instead of viewing things how they are, we compulsively use our minds to judge them by our past experiences and our past emotions. We pretty much think about everything that happens to us, and we even think about the things that haven't even happened yet! We think about fantasies, regrets, dreams, wishes, wants, frustrations, and roles.
You are not the roles you play. Some examples of roles are: "I'm depressed", "I'm a bad friend", "I'm bad at math", "I enjoy this", or "I hate this". I'm not saying you should quit the roles, because roles are important to play out, like being a mother or being a husband or being an employee. The important thing is to realize that they are just roles. A lot of people argue against this by saying that they are a mother, or they really are depressed. But that's not true. All of these things are roles, and once you realize this, you will be able to determine which roles are good to continue playing and which ones need to be stopped.
You are not your past story either. Don't be attached to the things that happened to you in the past. "Past" can mean your past life story, what happened yesterday, or even what happened two seconds ago. Every moment is a new beginning, and it's important to be and feel this newness of every single moment. Throw away every idea and thought you once had about yourself; these ideas are the very things that cloud your true self from appearing.
Most people don't use their mind; it uses them. If I asked you to just sit there and stop thinking altogether, you probably couldn't do it.
It's better to start off slowly. To gain back the freedom from thought, the first thing you need to do is try to watch your mind. This isn't the same thing as thinking about your thoughts. It's observing them from the background. This observer and this background is you. Slowly, your thoughts and the watcher of the thoughts will begin to separate until you can recognize the difference between them immediately. You will be able to stop thinking at will, and instead of being used and controlled by your thoughts, you will be able to use them to better your life and everything in it.
The human mind is an amazing thing, capable of so much potential. I guess it's like Spiderman says: "With great power comes great responsibility", haha. Let's get responsible. (:
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