What happens when you observe your thoughts?
They disappear.
Thoughts often loop back. I call them looping dreams when I'm asleep.
But during the day, walking around lost in thought, it's like a waking dream.
How we feel about ourselves depends on these thoughts. But when we observe the process of thinking—not the content—we realize something:
We can’t control our next thought.
That’s a paradox. If I binge a netflix series, the main character’s voice lingers in my mind. If I listen to Lex Fridman interview Sundar Pichai, I hear an Indian voice in my head. Great interview btw.
I can’t control my next thought, but I can control what I feed my mind.
What I choose to listen to before bed. That shapes the thoughts that follow.
But most of it? I can’t control.
I didn’t choose where I was born, who raised me as a child, what first school I went to, which friends lived nearby.
I don’t choose conversations I overhear, content in my feed, or the sounds outside my window.
All this is out of my control and it influences my thoughts.
But I do have control over how I frame my thoughts. What I make them mean.
That context changes how my thoughts make me feel, no matter what they’re about.
This kind of awareness is a powerful alternative to thinking your way out of thinking.
When you observe your thoughts like this, you can actually liberate yourself from them. You can free yourself from mental suffering.
So, what else are thoughts like?
Writing on water
A snake untying itself from a knot
Thieves breaking into an empty house
^ these are Tibetan teachings “The 3 stages of self-liberation.”
Sometimes this wisdom hits all at once, randomly, unexpectedly. Some call it enlightenment.
But you can also stabilize this awareness through systems, protocols, or practices. This is formal meditation.
Here’s 10 minutes of powerful thoughts in my latest youtube video.
Let me know what you think ;)
—Jake Twomey
“Unexamined thoughts are everything .. examined thoughts are nothing”
- Joseph Goldstein