The Power of Off: The Mindful Way to Stay Sane in a Virtual World

by Nancy Colier

Did you ever stop to notice that everything going on in your mind — every thought, feeling, sensation, everything you are aware of — is in fact happening only in your private internal world? Your thoughts appear only to you; they’re not being heard or witnessed by anyone else. As many Eastern wisdom traditions teach, there is one physical world here on earth, but billions of different internal worlds. We are all in our own separate theaters, witnessing different shows on our giant individual projection screens, and yet we behave as if we were all in the same audience watching the very same event we call life. Why is it important to contemplate this truth? Because it is liberating to realize that what we are personally living inside our heads is not real. We are aware of our thoughts, so in that sense they are “real,” and yet our thoughts do not exist outside of our awareness. There is nowhere else where the thought that is appearing to you at this moment is actually occurring. Our thoughts are not solid, like trees or rocks that exist outside of us in some tangible way. If at this moment you hear a thought about a friend — say, something specific that your friend did to you and what you want to say in response — and you don’t engage that thought, it will literally cease to exist. How freeing is it to know that if we don’t attend to a thought, answer it, change it, identify with it, and all the rest, it will subside? If we let a thought be nothing, then that’s what it will be.