This group has been designated for adults age 18 or older. Please sign in and confirm your date of birth in your profile so we can verify your eligibility. You may opt to make your date of birth private.
More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
When you finally realize that you aren’t your thoughts, you’ll have seen through the most profound illusion of all: the Illusion of Thought. You are not your thoughts. Those thoughts exist to serve you.
Imagine what a waste it would be if you were given the fastest sports car in the world and the only part of it you used was its audio system. Or imagine if you took it off-road, where it got stuck because this is absolutely not where it’s built to go. Or, even worse, if you never received training as a racecar driver and drove like a maniac, so you hurt yourself and everyone around you.
We commit all three of these errors when using our brain. We use it for the wrong reasons; we don’t utilize the best of its abilities; and we allow it to spin out of control with our thoughts—letting it ruin our lives and those of others’.
When the thoughts are presented, you should never lose sight of the question Who is working for whom?
Taking the best possible action, regardless of the result, is an obvious way to disrupt the cycle. Once an action is taken, our minds focus on the executional elements of what needs to be done, a different part of our brains is engaged, and our thoughts shift to monitor the result of the action rather than incessantly focusing on the same thought.
you can command your arm to carry a weight when you so please. Even if it is heavy, you can push your muscles to perform a bit better. You have many such systems in your body. I call them controllable devices. This is a fundamental difference. Your brain belongs to the category of controllable devices because you have partial control over it. You can tell it what to think about, how to think, and even to stop thinking altogether. You just need to practice that control until you master it.
Once, when Aya was around five, she was crying while I was deeply engaged trying to explain to her why she shouldn’t cry about the issue that had upset her. In the cutest way she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, “Papa, when I’m crying don’t talk to me about the things that make me cry. If you want to make me happy, just tickle me.” Of course! This simple nugget of wisdom has stuck with me. We believe we need a solution for our unhappiness to go away, but often the reason we’re unhappy isn’t justified, and therefore there is no real solution for it, just as there wouldn’t be for a
...more
Happiness is always found in the positive side of every concept.
Maybe you are your emotions, as in I am “in love.” That’s a funny one. Who were you before you fell in love? What if your love grows? Will there be more you? What if it stops? Do you vanish? You’re not your emotions.
Your attention, for the rest of your life, shifts away from your reality to your image.
Many of us go down a sad path when we let our egos make us suffer.
