14: You are not your thoughts

And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. —1 Kings 19:12

You are not your thoughts. Anything that can be observed is not the observer.

Ouspensky wrote somewhere that we are not responsible for what we think, only for what we do. It is possible to have fears or fantasies that we might do this or that which we ourselves recognise as cruel or criminal, or self-accusatory thoughts which come into our minds unbidden and unwanted. How can we work with such thoughts?

Anyone who has had recurrent unwanted thoughts or urges will have found that trying to get rid of them simply makes them stronger. It is near-impossible to stop thoughts by an act of will: it is like the instruction to stop thinking of elephants. Even the apparently simple exercise of trying to stop thoughts for one minute is almost bound to fail.

There is indeed a place of peace when unnecessary thoughts settle like dust after the rain. You have to go about it some other way. Better to accept them, as though watching interesting fish in a pond. There is no need to jump into the pond or to feed the fish if you don’t want to.

There is no need to struggle with unwanted thoughts and no need to give them the energy of undue attention. ‘I have seen you before,’ is one possible inner response. The same old stuff goes around again and again. We must of course not act on thoughts and urges that may be harmful, and if that is a struggle, so be it. But being in that quiet place of the observer gives us a much stronger place to work from than being in the thoughts themselves. Let it be, and do nothing. This is also voluntary suffering

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3.2: Influence C in the Fellowship

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The fourth way to nowhere

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