As a Teenager I Made A Fascinating And Life-Changing Observation
“Some people never forget the first time they disidentified from their thoughts and thus briefly experienced the shift in identity from being the content of their mind to being the awareness in the background. For others it happens in such a subtle way they hardly notice it, or they just notice an influx of joy or inner peace without knowing the reason.”
A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle
When I was a teenager, I made an observation that blew my mind. Little did I know how big and meaningful and true it was.
Our class at high school had a pretty traditional sub-division of kids. We had the cool kids, the pretty girls, the class clowns, the nerds, …
Some of them I found annoying and some of them I pretended not to like.
And I certainly had a lot of thoughts about most of them.
Let’s take the class clown and call him Tom. Tom was doing something silly, trying to make the other kids laugh and the teacher despair.
And I would think “God, Tom is so annoying!”
(At the time my thoughts were very much all over the place and not very considerate of the feelings of others… I learned along the way.)
Or let’s take my crush and call him Dean. Dean would walk past me real close and not even look at me.
And I would think “Dean will never like me”.
Or take the ‘class princess’ and call her Jeanie. Jeanie would make silly eyes at the most popular boy in class and put on a certain behaviour to make him interested in her.
And I would think “God, have some self-respect”.
As I said – my thoughts were different then. Also, I don’t remember the exact thoughts, but let’s play with these for the sake of this post.
One day, I realised that when I would think, “God, Tom is so annoying!”, “Dean will never like me”, or “God, have some self-respect”, I would feel a certain way in my body.
I didn’t notice the exact sensations but I could tell that I didn’t feel good.
I felt embarrassed, fearing that someone may have heard my thought.
I felt resentful for not being loveable.
I felt awful for having thought these words about a fellow girl in class, thinking we girls should stick together.
I didn’t feel great having these thoughts.
But that’s not the mind-blowing observation I made.
This is:
I always loved playing with words and numbers. I was good at interpreting poems and stories, I loved writing in my free time and wrote many stories for my mum for various occasions. When driving somewhere, I would check out the number plates of the cars around us and make words out of the otherwise somewhat meaningless concoction of letters and numbers. I would even make whole stories out of them. Let’s say, I had a wild imagination (still do). I also studied literature down the line.
And so, I started to play with some of my thoughts.
And somehow, I played with thoughts like those above.
So, one time, I thought, “God, Tom is so STOP”.
Hu?
I was baffled. I remember this clear as day.
I tried another one.
“Dean will never … [silence]”
Oh?
And another one.
“God, have some …”
I was dumbstruck.
This is when I realised that I can control my thoughts.
Don’t laugh at me – I’m not trying to boast or show off. Kids are often way smarter than we realise or remember ourselves to be.
I realised that I could stop my thought whenever.
And then it was like the thought never happened.
Or, at least the part of the thought that I didn’t think didn’t happen.
Then I realised that “God, Tom is so …”, “Dean will never …” and “God, have some …” could all easily be followed by different words than what this teeny tiny voice in the back of my head was whispering.
Because that is the thing. The words “annoying”, “like me” and “some self-respect” were still floating somewhere in the very back, or in the deep depths of my being, but my thought didn’t pick them up – because I stopped it.
And then I realised something else.
When I stopped these thoughts, I felt lighter. I felt so free. I was so utterly perplexed, I couldn’t put it into words.
And here is the best thing.
I then realised that I was no longer feeling embarrassed, fearful, resentful, unloveable or awful.
That’s the first time I realised that when I stopped my thought, I felt different.
Later I would catch my thoughts at times and notice how I was feeling, then I repeated the thought but cut it short at the end and it was like the thought was never thought because, really, it wasn’t even a sentence anymore. And I felt different. I felt lighter. I felt kinder. I felt happier.
It’s crazy to think that I observed this so many many years ago and only these days do I realise how proper wise and what a wonderful observation this was.
What I don’t know is how I actually journeyed to apply this. What I do know is that for at least a decade now, I have been saying ‘no’ to negative thoughts (my own or those of others) where I could. This includes gossiping, negative self-talk and negative thinking about others (at least where I could!).
Because I quickly realised that thoughts like that made me feel un-good.
I realised that my natural equilibrium was actually to feel good and I didn’t want to disturb that.
Well, I didn’t think about it this way but I acted upon this idea.
And it’s only a few months ago that I remembered this very beginning – the story I just told you.
And here are some of the nuggets of wisdom that I now see were within my teenage realisation that I didn’t dare to share with anyone because I thought it was too weird.
You have thoughts – you are not your thoughts. You are the one observing and having the thought. That means you can control your thoughts. Life gets tricky when you either identify with them, judge them, or follow them blindly.
Your thoughts can impact and cause your feelings. You can control your emotions by mastering your thoughts (and other things). The thoughts you create in your mind can make you feel good or bad. Your mind doesn’t know the difference between reality and imagination and it sends signals to your body to create the appropriate response which shows in all sorts of sensations and emotions. From anger to joy, resentment, peace, love, hate, …
Your thoughts create your reality. They don’t objectively change the world around you but they change 1) the world you see, 2) how you see the world and sometimes 3) how the world sees you. It’s like a rainbow. No-one sees the same rainbow. And when you act on your thoughts, you create the thought in reality. Most things and situations that exist in your world have been a thought first.
The moment you experience such an occurrence is the moment you wake up (out of the Matrix?!). In A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle writes “Most of the time it is not you who speaks when you say or think ‘I’ but some aspect of that mental construct, the ego self. Once you awaken, you still use the word ‘I’, but it will come from a much deeper place within yourself.”
This was a life-changing experience for me. I don’t know how my life would have unfolded without it. Sometimes, we have a single insight that changes everything and then you can no longer un-know it. There is no going back. Sometimes we forget about such an insight, but when we slow down and become present, we remember our own wisdom.
PS. Whenever you’re ready…
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I’ve seen it time and time again. I’m ready when you are.
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