Getting rid of tormenting thoughts - From thinker to observer
"You have to go into the here and now."
This is a very common statement in spiritual literature. Something similar is meant by
"Moving from the I to the Self." Or "Moving from thinker to observer" or even with the now so modern "being mindful".
And I want to give you in the following a whole training program, which enables you already after a short time to experience a greater and greater distance to the thinker, and thus to really go through life as an observer.
As the witness of all things, as it is so flowerily called in Buddhism.
Exercise number 1:
Greet the next thought. In this exercise, imagine you're strolling down a pedestrian mall and watching who comes up to you next. Instead of a person, however, you pay attention to your next thought. As soon as one appears, you stop briefly and say: "Hello"!
Now perform this exercise for 3 minutes.
We are not the body - most of us can come to terms with this statement relatively quickly. The body has developed and grown through biological processes.
That I as a subtle being go in there - and eventually go out again - is understandable.
So it stands to reason that a subtle being is not bound to the body.
But the thinking, that comes from myself, doesn't it?
"I think, therefore I am" said Descartes and expressed with this quotation the being attached of the self to the thinker, thus the identification of man with his mind.
But, one must see: This quotation comes from a time when science had made a great leap forward and thus succeeded in eliminating quite a lot of superstition and quackery of the past. From this context it is understandable that thinking was immediately put into the driver's seat of a human existence. But in spite of all the advantages which an awake mind brings with itself, thinking belongs in the tool box and not on the driver's seat.
Because the truth is: I am not the mental body either. It develops just like the physical body, but instead of food, the mental body is shaped by the thought environment to which I am exposed during my first years of life.
That means at my birth I come into the world with a blank hard disk and little by little data are written on this hard disk by my environment. And it is exclusively these dataThe following is a list of the resources that my mind has at its disposal to work with.
From it follows: I can think only with the material, what someone has "fed" me before. There are cultures which do not know a word for "guilt". So they can't think this word either, it doesn't exist in their reality.
However, this inherently useful database that we receive in the first years of life becomes a curse for most of us.
Because the thinking of most people takes on a life of its own, happens involuntarily and compulsively.
Who does not know the eternally same stories that the thinker tells in a never-ending stream of thought.
The Indian Sadguru calls this self-enslavement. He says:
"It's bad enough to be constantly told what to do by someone else - we call that slavery. But it's even more tragic when the slave driver is inside myself."
sadhguru
And Eckhart Tolle compares the compulsive inner chatter with a person who suffers from palilalia, which is a personality disorder where the affected person constantly and compulsively babbles something out loud, such as Tourette's patients do. And exactly such a Tourette's patient sits in our brain and babbles away. Inaudibly.
And if it is at least uplifting stories would act...
Quality of thought qualitative:
As I pointed out in my book, of our approximately 50 to 70,000 thoughts each day, 72% are fleeting, 25 % are negative, and only 3% are positive. So every positive thought is overlaid by eight negative ones.
So it becomes clear: positive thinking alone can hardly do anything if the negative part is not reduced at the same time.
"Thoughts are the radio program for the cells I once said elsewhere." Since thoughts also generate our feelings, it is not surprising that many people often do not feel so good.
Exercise number 2:
Repetition:
You know how a simultaneous translator works. He listens and shortly afterwards reproduces what he hears in another language. Now imagine that you are a simultaneous translator.
The speaker in our case is your inner thinker. The simultaneous translator is the observer. This means that you now consciously perceive what the thinker says next. Instead of translating it into another language, you simply repeat it. And like a simultaneous translator does not interfere with the content, you do not judge the heard in any way but repeat it word for word.
As an example, if it thinks inside you, "Well, that's a funny exercise."
Then you repeat, "Now that's a funny exercise."
Now perform this exercise for 5 minutes.
Why is it actually desirable to identify with the observer rather than the thinker?
The observer is usually covered by the constant flow of thoughts of the thinker. The thinker holds on to the eternally same contents and mostly also to undesirable behavior patterns - and that hyperactively, too.
If you let the observer emerge, then suddenly a higher intelligence becomes visible that exists beyond normal thinking. Tepperwein calls this "going online with the boss".
You realize that your thinking ME is only a very small part of the intelligence available to you.
You realize that creativity, intuition, joy, flow and inner peace, have their origin beyond the thinking self.
This is when consciousness rises above the thinker.
But to achieve this, the thinking I must be brought under control.
This is especially important when I am under a lot of stress, such as after a serious diagnosis.
Exercise number 3:
The Educator:
In this exercise, imagine you are a kindergarten teacher and you have to supervise a colorful bunch of 3 to 5 year old children. Now, it is well known that children of this age want to test limits on the one hand, and on the other hand they have to learn to abide by certain rules that are essential for a harmonious togetherness in a society.
And you as an educator, at least during the time when you are responsible for the children, have to ensure a harmonious coexistence.
And so you cannot tolerate it if one of the children acts destructively or aggressively, and certainly not repeatedly. Because then the other children are negatively influenced and the mood in the whole kindergarten could tip. Be a strict educator and point out to a particularly destructive child that he or she could be expelled from the kindergarten if the rules are not followed. This is how you ensure discipline, this is how you embody YOU the necessary authority in the kindergarten and not those who shout the loudest or behave the most conspicuously.
Now consciously think of an unpleasant thought that arises in you more often. After the thought has been formulated, enter the educator and say to this thought: Your statement is inappropriate and disturbing. I point out to you that a repetition of it will not be tolerated. To make this clear to you, write the opposite of your statement on the board 5 times. (We assume that the children can write).
Example: the child blurts out, "What if cancer kills me?"
You turn to him sternly and with an appropriate gesture. In the next scene, you watch the child write 5 times one below the other on the blackboard: "Cancer helps me to recognize and implement an important life task."
Now allow your most common negative thought and educate it in the way described.
Now perform this exercise for 10 minutes.
You could also modify this exercise as follows:
Variant 1:
You are a doorman in a big beautiful mansion and your job would be to decide for whom you open the front gate. Now you go back to consciously observing the thought stream, but this time you evaluate the thought with the question, "Do I want to let this thought energy in?" If the answer is NO, then consciously let in the opposite of the unwanted visitor - similar to the example above.
Variant 2:
You are a pigeon breeder. Your goal is that the peace-loving pigeons with the most beautiful plumage multiply and the aggressive, disturbing and other tyrannizing animals tend to die out. You could make it difficult or forbidden for such an undesirable pigeon to enter the pigeon loft and let it fly away deliberately.
During all these exercises you could find out that it is possible to think and at the same time to observe this thinking.
So, besides the thinker, there must also be an instance that is responsible for observing. And with the continuous performance of these exercises, you will succeed in creating an ever-increasing distance between the thinker and the observer.
Secondly, you may have observed that it takes a while from the time when you put yourself in lurking position, so to speak, until the time when the first thought arose. So, by consciously observing the stream of thoughts, it is possible to interrupt this stream of thoughts, to provide for rest and to be solely the observer during these rest phases.
And the more consistently you practice, the longer the rest periods become. Thinking becomes more and more a tool of the mind and less and less the Tourette's sick blabbermouth that never gives peace.
The more often you practice, the longer the normally automatically flowing stream of thoughts is interrupted. For a short moment there is a break and you get a possibility to look back consciously on the thought for a short time on the one hand and to enjoy this break on the other hand. And to perceive: even if it does not think, I am. Or just when it does not think, I am. Or maybe even:
ONLY when it is not thinking, I am (with me).
Finally, 2 exercises where I don't "talk" to the thinker, i.e. answer in my mind, so to speak.
- Listen to some classical music for at least 30 minutes. After that, listen to your inner concert in your mind. You will be amazed what great symphonies sound there!
- Go into nature. Get into a meditative mood and then perceive how the boundaries within which you usually define yourself become blurred and you merge more and more with your environment. You become, so to speak, everything.
