Finding The Real You

FINDING THE REAL YOU

You think/assume you are you, that you are your thoughts, you are your body, you are you. But you already know there is more than one "voice" in your head. You may already have noticed there is a committee in your head. You could also think they are all different aspects of you but somehow they are all still you, maybe.

You are probably so accustomed to the chatter in your head that you may not realize how much time and attention you devote to it. You may not realize that this chatter/thoughts in your head have the highest priority for your attention.

In other words you will listen to or pay attention to the thoughts/voice in your head at the expense of everything else. When having a conversation with another you will probably give you own thoughts priority over the thoughts of others, or the person you are with. When you boss is explaining a new job to you, you may miss some of the explanation because you are "in your head, listening to your thoughts" or preoccupied with your own thoughts.

You have done this so often that it seems natural, normal to you or a "so what".

When I start working with clients, the first session can be a lot about this process. It is not that what I am saying is more important, it is that they are unaware of what they are doing, they are unaware they have a choice which one they want to listen to. This is the first level of loss of freedom. Being a habitual slave to your thoughts/chatter in your head go mind.

If you were more aware of this freedom to choose on a moment to moment basis, you would have more freedom in your life. Freedom to direct and focus your attention without being >>interrupted<< by your ego mind which you now assume you have to listen to. The news of course is you don’t have to listen to it, that this is a deep habit, actually an addiction.

BACKWARDS
You may believe that the ability to choose what to focus your mind on, like a single object, a book or a rose, symphony, or sunset is boring. But this is backwards, because it is the chatter or random thoughts that are boring and mundane and the ability to focus on a single object -totally- is like being one with it, it is very satisfying, exciting and the beginning of the experience of beauty.

Finding the real you
Finding the real you can be about while you are on the bus or at the cafe, just become aware of the stream of thoughts going through you mind. But instead of becoming involved with the thoughts, just watch them, detach from them and let them go. Each time you let go of a thought you will most likely immediately get/have another one. This actually describes life, physically reality proceeding outside and your mental thought reality racing along inside, consequently life feels hurried, pressured, etc.

Grand thought watching
This is one of the hardest and simplest process there is. Its profoundness is a measure of its difficulty, and it is very difficult.

GRAND THOUGHT WATCHING: Sitting in your room alone with no TV, music, food, window [unless it is looking into a quiet still garden], no distractions of any kind, for at least two hours.
You can have a pencil and paper and jot down one word descriptions of what is going through your mind.
During the process the first thing you will notice is the quantity of thoughts, then you may begin to notice the randomness of thoughts and how seductive they are and how difficult it is not to engage with them.
You will notice there is like a thought thinker generator or machine in your head.

My favorite analogy is to see the stream of thoughts as a ski lift, each passing chair is a separate thought and you can watch it go by or get in and go for a ride. Which is engaging, agreeing or disagreeing with a thought.
Some thoughts may be seem ridiculous, foolish, some important, some scary, some painful.

If the thought you are taking a ride on is:

Fun, your point of view/mood of the world at that time will be fun too;
If it is depressing, it is most likely that your point of view or outlook on the world will change to depressing.
Negative, your point of view/mood will most likely be negative.
Positive, you point of view will be positive.

The purpose of this exercise is for you to experience beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are not your mind. That you have a mind and it has thoughts and you are the one listening to your mind.

Grand thought watching will eventually convince you that what you focus your attention on creates your mood or point of view. In other words your random thought thinker machine is controlling your life. You of course are allowing this and you are probably not aware of the power of thoughts and their side effects. Grand thought watching also demonstrates another principle. That is "base line reality"

Base line reality is if you are sitting in your room alone and you are not thinking any thoughts, not needing or wanting anything different, you must be continent, OK, neutral.

If you were to practice grand thought watching for an hour a day, it will give you the tools to change your life.

For example once you become convinced that your mind chatter is random, not god or your higher self, and that you do not need its random observations to protect you, you will experience a level of freedom that is so delicious, so wonderful, feels so good, and is very empowering-it is hard to believe it is real.

However, it is probably your first taste of true reality. A reality not distorted by your ego mind or mental overlays. A reality that is not blocked or contrived, a reality that is not charged, a reality that simply exists.

Your thoughts in the form of judgments are just random thoughts too, but they add a charge to people, things in physical reality. This distorts your experience of reality because you are projecting the charge onto reality and then pretending it is real.

The freedom in this is beyond words.

It in fact may not make any sense to your mind, but it can be experienced by you, which is proof beyond a shadow of a doubt - to you.

Grand thought watching is like the least expensive and most powerful seminar you could attend.

After a week of grand thought watching for at least an hour a day, you will be amazed at the shift in your awareness.

After a month of grand thought watching you will be lighter, happier, and healthier than you can imagine. Because the root of most problems is being seduced into negative thinking by the random ego thoughts.

By constantly letting go of the thoughts they don’t take you for a ride, don’t distort your reality, don’t create problems.

This is the non-violent way to change your life.

So without force your life changes, not without effort because it requires great diligence and determination to keep from engaging with the thoughts and to remember to disengage when you notice you are engaged.
The emergency procedure is to stop thinking and be very, very aware and awake.

After a month of grand thought watching

Perhaps you are on a date and you thought thinker machine has a thought about getting fired last week. Before grand thought watching you would have grabbed that thought and gone for a ride. Perhaps, spoiling your attitude, point of view, smile and your date. But after a month of G.T.W. you simply let the thought go by, you don’t get in/on and go for a ride. Or it tells you what it thinks your date is thinking, now you can see this as a random thought, see that it is not your mind being clairvoyant-mind reading. At this moment you can disengage from your thoughts and be totally with your date, prospect, mate, etc.

To me this is freedom. This ability is the only true power, or real security. The ability to disengage from your thoughts is magic, powerful, enlivening and enlightening.

When you get, beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are not your ego-mind, you will be truly free.
This is the basic freedom, freedom from your mind.
This is also the basis of enlightenment.

Sitting in stillness
Eventually the thoughts will cease, perhaps for only short moment, then longer ones and it is in this space between the thoughts that you will experience peace.

The peace that passes all understanding because understanding is an ego mind function .

Being willing to sit in stillness will reap rewards for you heretofore unimagined. It will relax your muscles. It will disappear wrinkles. It can heal your body. Brilliant ideas and solutions will appear in your quiet mind, you will just know them when you resume your daily routine.

You will also feel a sense of connection, a connection that your mind will not understand and will most likely question. This connections to your higher-self, your god-self, your sub-conscious that is the infinite intelligence that created and maintains your body. This ultimate power that is hiding deep inside you can be harnessed to create whatever you need and want.

G.T.W. is also akin to mediation.

It is a form of meditation which I loosely define as "stopping thinking".
In my opinion, it is not formal meditation and it is not far from it.

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