Take your thoughts with a grain of salt

Thoughts are often wolves in sheep’s clothing. -Alan Watts

The most unique human ability is being aware of thoughts and emotions. It’s the only thing, we think, that separates us from other species.

This awareness of thoughts and emotions can be experienced on two levels. On one level, the level we grow up knowing, we deeply identify ourselves with thoughts and emotions. We’ll call this the primal level.

The primal level has served us well for many millennia and this is why it comes so naturally. Our deep identifications to thoughts and emotions propagated our genetic survival. Emotional reactivity was a virtue because it kept us safe from threats. If we were to pause slightly to become aware of an emotional reaction, it could’ve been the end. Needless to say, after many centuries of this, it’s deeply ingrained into our human nature.

Then, there’s the other level, which is being a mere witness of thoughts and emotions. We’ll call this the equanimity level. This is when you are witnessing your thoughts like you’d witness the sound of a dog bark. Both of these (thoughts and a barking noise) are external.

In today’s environment, threats we emotionally react to do not actually threaten our survival but our brain and body perceive them as threatening to our survival. A personal attack from someone, a condescending email, that smug look, a polarizing topic of argument, or an anxiety-ridden social event are all innately perceived as threats similar to many millennia’s ago.

This is the wolf in sheep’s clothing that Alan Watts warns about.

Thus, equanimity serves us best now because our current environment requires an unwavering sense of awareness and composure.

There is a great Eckhart Tolle quote that eloquently describes this transition from the primal level to the equanimity level:

What a liberation to realize that the “voice in my head” is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that.

Not a single day, actually not a single hour goes by where we do not become lost in thought or emotion. To remain equanimous when waves of thoughts and emotions flow through our day is something monastics take an entire life to master.

This is a remarkable fact about the human mind. We are capable of astonishing feats of understanding and creativity. We can endure almost any torment. But it is not within our power to simply stop talking to ourselves, whatever the stakes. It’s not even in our power to recognize each thought as it arises in consciousness without getting distracted every few seconds by one of them. Without significant training in meditation, remaining aware — of anything — for a full minute is just not in the cards. -Sam Harris

Being lost in thought and emotion can keep us removed from the present, and fixated on the past or future. A fixation on the past is where depression can thrive. A fixation on the future is where anxiety and stress can thrive.

Peace, aka equanimity, can be found behind the curtain of thoughts. The problem is getting behind the curtain and staying there.

To better communicate this, let’s hear it from two greats:

Insights come when we stop just siding with good thoughts and going against bad thoughts, but we allow ourselves to simply see the nature of thought and not attach to these thoughts. We begin to realize there is a sane, awake quality inside of us. -Chogyam Trunpa

The process is to dislodge ourselves from inordinate attachment to our own thoughts. Because, as long as we are locked into our own thoughts, we are always just one thought away from here. -Ram Dass

Your thoughts and emotions are not your identities. In fact, getting beyond these perceived identities is the only place that growth happens.

Therefore, take them with a grain of salt.

After all, if you don’t get beyond who you think you are and the way you’ve been conditioned to believe the world works, it’s not possible to create a new life or a new destiny. So in a very real sense, you have to get out of your own way, transcend the memory of yourself as an identity, and allow something greater than you, something mystical, to take over. -Joe Dispenza, Becoming Supernatural