How to Stop Identifying With Your Thoughts?

This article is in response to two questions asked by a reader on Instagram. The questions were:

What does identifying with thoughts mean? How does one stop identifying with thoughts?

Thoughts, much like clouds or birds, are simply passersby floating or flying in and out of your awareness. That’s why there is a common saying in the Orient, especially in the Buddhist lineages:

Thoughts are like passing clouds. You don’t run after them. Instead, you observe them pass by.

Your thoughts are usually connected to where you are at this moment in your life, i.e., your current circumstances or surroundings, the sensations in your body, and, of course, your beliefs.

Notice I highlighted “where you are at this moment in your life,” which also means where you are right now in this present moment mentally. Are you dwelling in your memories (in the past) or are you anxious/excited about something that may happen in the days to come (future)? Which means your thoughts are connected to your past or your future.

If you are fully present in the Here and Now, you are the awareness, unconcerned with the thoughts flitting around. You are aware of being the space where thoughts come and go, not of the thoughts.

Identifying with Thoughts

Identifying with thoughts means you are swayed by your thoughts because you unconsciously believe them to be real and true. You run after thoughts much like a dog in a park excitedly follows different trails of various scents.

The thoughts momentarily arise, and out of habit, your attention automatically goes to the thoughts as a reflex action. This is a gained habit over the years since childhood. Because of this habit, if you have negative programming, you also establish a relationship with certain types of thoughts, which results in recurring thoughts of a similar nature. 

Recurring negative thoughts give birth to beliefs such as, “I am not enough, there is never enough time, why do I never get what I want, etc.” 

Beliefs are essentially recurring thoughts that you have accepted as your truth. By themselves, they are not true. No thought or ‘be-LIE-f’ is true. Your perception and repeated attention make a thought your belief, your truth, your looking glasses, your way of perceiving and giving meaning to life and its experiences, which in turn carves out your life experiences.

The negative beliefs or the disempowering mental programming or conditioning stem from the foundational belief that the outside world is the only reality, you are at the mercy of circumstances, and your thoughts and beliefs are the ultimate truth.

In believing so, you lose awareness of the fact that you are not your thoughts. You’re under delusion and asleep, not conscious or aware. Because of that, unconscious behaviours based on your past programming run your life.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.

Carl Jung

In this state, a person goes through life as a victim of circumstances or, as Jung puts it, “Fate.” With every circumstance, the person gets more deeply entangled in the world of senses, feelings of uncertainty, helplessness, and disillusionment.

If you judge after appearances, you will continue to be enslaved by the evidence of your senses.

Neville Goddard

This cycle continues until the person, tired of the same patterns repeating in his/her life, decides to bring about a change consciously.

How to Stop Identifying With Thoughts?

1. Observing

Usually, the first step towards a change is observing the thought patterns and becoming aware of the fact that thoughts are not true. They are not the ultimate reality.

2. Identifying the Untrue and Unreal

From there, the process involves identifying what else is untrue or unreal. Stripping away what is unreal, leaves you with what is real. And reality is that which never comes and goes, is never born or dies, and is that which is eternally present.

Early on in this practice of breaking the identification with thoughts, it helps if you observe an unpleasant thought and say out loud, “No! This is not true or No, this is not real!” You can do this with all your thoughts impartially and objectively.
Because if you do this only with the thoughts that seem unpleasant to you, you’re still under the power of the thoughts you perceive as ‘pleasant.’ The idea is to break free from the hold that thoughts have over you. (This can appear scary to some, because the common perception is positive thoughts empower, feel pleasant, and therefore you should focus on them. In the beginning, this practice is essential. But after a point in time, what I’m suggesting is going beyond thoughts… beyond thoughts which feel good or bad. Because beyond the passing clouds of thoughts is the vast expanse, the Continuous Presence, which is Who You Are.)

So, the practice of dis-identifying with thoughts can break your habit of giving thoughts undue attention or focus.

Not everything that comes into your mind requires your attention.

3. Realizing the Transient Nature of Things

Next, bring your focus to the fact that thoughts change moment to moment. They do not last in you eternally. Therefore, your thoughts are not the ultimate truth or reality. They change whenever you choose to change them.

What else is unreal? The words, opinions, and judgments of people. People’s words can often start a chain of thoughts in you that is not true, because people’s words or opinions may change at any time, as can their moods. Above all, people themselves change!

So, you need not believe what other people say, which means that they, too, are not the ultimate reality or truth! In fact, if you notice when your behaviour or reactions towards people change, they change!

Others only echo that which we whisper to them in secret.

Neville Goddard

This means people are mere reflections of what you are!

Everything is a reflection of our minds.

Gautama Buddha

The whole vast world is no more than man’s imagining pushed out. I must qualify that by saying that the world outside of man is dead, but Man is a living soul, and…Everything is responding to an activity in man which is Imagination.

Neville Goddard

4. Focusing on the One Constant

Amidst all the change, though, there is one constant. Here is how you can go about unravelling the constant:

Thoughts may come and go. But I AM.

My beliefs can change. But I AM.

Feelings and emotions come and go through me, but I AM.

Experiences come and go, but I Still AM.

So I AM not my thoughts, feelings, emotions, or experiences. They come and go, and I am not them. So who am l?

You are responsible for how you react to thoughts, not for them arising. And the best reaction is no reaction. It is then that you realize that you have successfully detached from and have stopped identifying with ‘your’ thoughts and all that you’re not (that body pain, the anger, the jealousy, etc.). In fact, stop referring to thoughts as ‘your/my’ thoughts. That itself cuts off their power.

This is how you observe yourself, ‘the’ thoughts, become a witness, and become mindful.

All identification is false. The only truth that shines out from amongst the illusions is I AM. That is You, the Presence…the Awareness…The One Constant amidst the change. And it is into this presence that experiences come and go.

This is meditation.

Meditation is not controlling your mind or thoughts. On the contrary, meditation opens up a space within you and allows everything to arise, and come and go as you watch it all, undisturbed like a silent witness. And if you haven’t realized it yet, You are the Space. The Presence. The Existence. You are That. You Are. “Tat Twam Asi.”

You Are. And yet who in you is aware of the space? Of the ‘You Are/I Am?’ Who is the witness of this space? In other words go even beyond the thought “I AM.” For even the awareness – “I Am” – is a thought! So who are You?

Only you know the answer to that. And you have to experience it YourSelf.

To experience Your’Self’, focus on the presence I AM, the Beingness not the thought… and watch what happens…. 

 Look at yourself steadily – it is enough. The door that locks you in is also the door that lets you out. The ‘I AM’ is the door. Stay at it until it opens. As a matter of fact, it is open, only you are not at it. You are waiting at the non-existent painted doors, which will never open.

Shri Nisargadatta Maharaj

(The featured artwork above is by Yuumei. You can view her artwork @ https://www.yuumeiart.com/)