Question.

Do you ever go outside, see that it’s a cloudy day and say to yourself, “Dammit, there goes my happiness, productivity, and effectiveness for the day!”

I’m guessing not.

Because you realize that the clouds ultimately have no control over who you choose to be, how you choose to feel, and what you choose to accomplish.

You understand that you are the witness to the clouds. That they are objects of your awareness. That they have no control over you.

If you thought that the clouds controlled you, you would likely be diagnosed with psychosis.

Yet many of us do allow ourselves to be controlled by our thoughts and emotions—or more broadly, our internal state.

We have negative thoughts or emotions and we do think “dammit, there goes my happiness, productivity and effectiveness for the day!”

And I’m here to say: That. Is. Crazy. 

We are crazy people when we allow ourselves to be controlled by stuff that has nothing to do with who we really are.

Our internal state is an independent happening, constantly being affected by infinite unseen forces. We are the witness of our thoughts and feelings.

We are not our thoughts and feelings. We are not in control of our thoughts and feelings.

Our thoughts and feelings actually have nothing to do with who we are and what is possible for us in any moment.

We know the clouds aren’t us, because we are the witness to them.

We know our thoughts and feelings aren’t us, because we are the witness to them.

Anything we witness is not us.

Here is a video from The Shift retreats in which I explain this simply:

We are the pure awareness in which the thought, feeling, sight, sound, sensation, belief, taste, or smell arises.

Nothing that we can observe can be what we are, because we are the subject and whatever we witness is the object. We ourselves are not objects.

As Ken Wilber states, “You can feel bodily feelings because you are not those feelings—you are the witness of those feelings. You can see thoughts float by because you are not those thoughts, you are the witness of those thoughts.”

This process of dis-identifying with the object of one’s attention is the practice of making subject into object until there is no more subject left, and all that remains is the vast spaciousness of ever-present awareness. In this spaciousness, there is no separate self.

So…stop being a crazy person that thinks you’re controlled by sh*t that ain’t you. 😉

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Author: Brandilyn Tebo
Image: YouTube still
Editor: Travis May
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