Our thoughts are the lens through which we see the world. If we feed them long enough, they become beliefs. Beliefs that are often harmful and distort how we see reality.

What if our thoughts were the fundamental cause of our suffering?

Recently, I got lost in negative thoughts many times. Confinement increases the possibility of falling prey to our thinking. But I had a breakthrough during a coaching call. I realized that I could stop feeding my harmful thoughts if I just noticed them and asked myself if they were true.

“A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It is not our thoughts, but the attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring.”
Byron Katie

Contrary to common beliefs, we are not our thoughts. There isn’t any self that controls them. Indeed, all our thoughts are created automatically inside our minds. They flow in and out according to laws that we don’t understand.

Once we get familiar with our thoughts, we can learn to love them as they are and to be free from their influence. To befriend these thoughts all we have to do is inquire about their true nature: Are these thoughts true? Are they helpful?

The simple act of questioning whether a thought is true or not is liberating. We get insights about ourselves and how we see the world.

Since that realization, I feel much more peaceful and free. I am more aware of the seeds I plant with my thoughts. There are no actual problems, there are only misperceptions of how our minds work. Everything we believe should be a certain way is harming us. But thoughts prevent us from seeing the truth.

The same natural law affects the people around us. As Sydney Banks rightly put it, “everyone is doing the best they can, given the thinking they have that looks real to them.” We are all trapped in our created realities. Knowing this, you also have more compassion for others.

Once we start to see reality as it is and accept it, we are able to step out of the matrix. Our behavior changes naturally and our painful feelings die out. Our thoughts have nothing left to feed on. We experience what lies beyond them. Full presence.

Until we see that we have a choice between two scenarios, we are prisoners of our minds. We can either believe our thoughts blindly or inquire into their reality. We have a choice to be free.

Who would we be if we didn’t believe this thought, this lie, this apparent truth? What is the absolute truth?

Again, what I wrote here are my own thoughts. You do not have to believe them to be true. It is up to each of us to inquire whether these thoughts are true or not.

More resources to check out:

• Coaching sessions with my friend Jason Deppen

• The Work by Byron Katie and her book Loving What Is

• The Inside Out Revolution by Michael Neil

• An amazing talk by Dicken Bettinger, uncovering the Three Principles of Sydney Banks