One Thought at a Time

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In this moment, only one thought can be arising, followed by another. There is only room for one thought to arise at a time. People often feel overwhelmed by their negative thoughts and feel victimized and controlled by them. They have difficulty detaching from them. They feel their thoughts, at least some of them, are too compelling to ignore, and some are very compelling. Fortunately, in learning to detach from the egoic mind (i.e. the negative, ego-driven mind), you don’t have to begin with the most difficult thoughts; begin with the less compelling ones. This will increase the ability to ignore the egoic mind. Learning to detach from the mind is a skill, and like every skill, starting with something easier and then moving to something harder is the way to build confidence and competence. The most important thing is not to get discouraged because the egoic mind will try to discourage you when you do attempt to free yourself from it.

Once you see that you can detach from, or ignore, some thoughts, it will be easier to believe it’s possible to detach from all your thoughts, even ones laden with negative feelings. When you are learning to do this, please be gentle with yourself. It isn’t easy to ignore the egoic mind. You have been paying attention to it all your life and believing it for the most part, so it has been reinforced nearly constantly. Besides, we are programmed to pay attention to it, and this programming isn’t easy to overcome. So breaking the habit of paying attention to and believing the egoic mind can be a slow process, and there’s nothing wrong with this.

Whatever efforts you make in this direction matter. Every time you successfully ignore a negative or irrelevant thought (which is most of them), you strengthen your ability to do this. Irrelevant, or unnecessary, thoughts are, of course, much easier to ignore than negative ones because negative ones are entangled with our identity. Irrelevant thoughts are, therefore, a good place to start. They are any thoughts that don’t actually serve your functioning in this moment. Notice how often your egoic mind just chatters about irrelevant things, in cluding the past and the future. You can easily see that you don’t need those thoughts, so to start with, try ignoring those. This practice will also accustom you to noticing what your mind is up to, and you will discover how unnecessary or negative most of what you think is. This can be very enlightening! Most people don’t evaluate what they’re thinking because they’re so absorbed in it. When you learn to step back from your thoughts and just observe them, you are well on your way to becoming free of the egoic mind, its negativity, and the suffering it causes.

Once you see what your egoic mind is thinking, you can evaluate that: Is that true? What is able to be aware of and evaluate your thoughts is essence, your true Self, and this is one way essence liberates us from the tyranny of the egoic mind, or the false self. You notice your thoughts and you see how untrue, irrelevant, and negative they are. Once you see this about your thoughts, it’s much easier to ignore them. If they are untrue, irrelevant, and negative, why would you give them your attention? Seeing how your thoughts are untrue and don’t serve you naturally frees you from them.

Nevertheless, some thoughts are laden with emotions and identity, and we identify with and believe them automatically and unquestioningly, and we aren’t even aware they are affecting us. These are the most difficult ones to ignore because they seem true. We believe them. Thoughts that have fear or other negative feelings attached to them seem particularly real and true, even though they aren’t, and if you really examine them through inquiry, you can discover this. Any thoughts that have produced negative feelings need to be unmasked. The negative feelings need to be accepted and explored, and the negative beliefs behind them need to be uncovered and seen as false. This is the hard work of getting free. But don’t let this discourage you from getting free in easier ways. Practice noticing your thoughts and ignore them, and see how this becomes easier and easier over time. Freedom may not come easily, but it is so worth it. Besides, the alternative—entrapment in the ego—is just not unacceptable.