Thinking About Self Doesn't Serve

THINKING ABOUT YOURSELF DOESN’T SERVE

Have you ever noticed how useless your thoughts about yourself are? Many of them are an attempt to define you as this or that: I like this, not that; I want this, not that; I feel this, not that; I believe this, not that. Thoughts about yourself define yourself—at least for the moment, since they are often changing: Sometimes you like or want or feel or believe something, and sometimes you like or want or feel or believe something else. Your sense of self changes with thoughts about yourself. You create your sense of self through thoughts about yourself, but this sense of self is always changing. It isn’t stable or consistent. Moreover, it’s made up: One day, you define and imagine yourself one way, and another day, you define and imagine yourself another way.

Do you need thoughts about yourself to exist or to function? You obviously don’t need them to exist because you still exist even when you are not thinking about yourself and when you are asleep. Do you need thoughts about yourself to function? It’s a little trickier to see that you don’t need these thoughts to function either, but if you look closely at this, you discover that many of your actions are spontaneous and do not stem from a thought first. In fact, a lot of thoughts are thoughts about action that has already taken place (the past) and thoughts about actions that have yet to take place or may never (the future), none of which are relevant to now. The rest are primarily thoughts that accompany your actions, that evaluate what you’re doing, remind you of what to do next, complain about it, argue about how to do it, and any number of other thoughts.

Do you need these thoughts to accomplish what needs to be done? They often make you less efficient because you are less present to what you are doing, or hinder or complicate rather than facilitate what you’re doing. They may cause you to doubt yourself as you’re doing something or question why you are doing it or give you pros and cons to doing it that can confuse you. When you really begin to notice what’s going on, you see that thoughts about yourself, including what you should or should not do and when and how, are not necessary and are, in fact, often problematic.

Thoughts about yourself create the false self, and you don’t need the false self to function, although you are programmed to believe you are the false self and that these thoughts are necessary to function. You are programmed to believe a lie! What an amazing thing this is! That is why this world is called an “Illusion” by those who see through this Illusion. The illusion is that you are this self and your thoughts are true and helpful. The Illusion leads you to believe that the false self is what is living your life, when in fact, what is living your life is responsible for creating everything, including the illusion that you are who you think you are. The key to seeing through the Illusion is noticing your thoughts and how inconsistent, untrue, useless—and negative—they actually are. You use the capacity to be aware of your thoughts to free yourself from the illusion that they are true.

Seeing that thinking about yourself doesn’t serve is a crucial step in seeing through this Illusion because that is all the false self is—thoughts about itself. Once you start ignoring your thoughts about yourself, that is, once you stop thinking about yourself, you discover that you never needed these thoughts and that they only take you away from what is true and real—the experience of your real Self living in this moment and moving spontaneously and naturally through life. You never needed any of these thoughts about yourself. You have always been living this life in spite of these thoughts. This that you are has allowed you to believe the Illusion while it has continued to be alive through you and move you in its own way through life. There comes a point in everyone’s evolution when it is time to wake up from this Illusion and experience the truth of who you are. This must be the time for you.

Gina Lake
www.radicalhappiness.com