The Joy of Not Thinking: A Radical Approach to Happiness

by Tim Grimes

Thought created all this suffering—and thought itself was not real. Without thought, all was grace—always. It was all blissfully and blatantly simple, yet totally illogical. I sat on that beach, thunderstruck. It was laughable. Whatever you thought, it didn’t matter. Thought had nothing to do with anything real.

If everything already is perfect, what are we trying to transcend anyway?

When our mind really quiets down, we inadvertently drop into profound stillness and peace. We automatically realize that everything is already fine exactly as it is. Everything is fine already. Everything is perfect. There’s nothing you need to do.

Thinking less and becoming more relaxed is, surprisingly, enough to positively change things.

The constant negativity we feel is largely a false projection that we create for ourselves. Fearful, depressing beliefs were something fed to us when we were younger, and we ate them up unknowingly. These beliefs then went on to shape how we think about things. But these beliefs are not actually true. It’s just that we think they are.

Hearing about everyone else’s troubles overwhelms us. It makes us suffer unnecessarily and painfully overthink things that we probably shouldn’t be thinking about at all. We can’t even solve our own problems, and now we’re somehow supposed to expertly solve the issues of others? Please! There’s clearly a time and place for listening and helping others with issues they may have, but the truth of the matter is that we have to focus on our own well-being first in order to help others with any sort of real success.

Peace is to be found in this moment. It isn’t something we attain. When we go out looking for it, we miss the point. It isn’t meant to be sought out, at least in the way we traditionally believe. It’s what we allow ourselves to be. It’s what we fall into when our overthinking mind is absent. And you can fall into it right now more easily than you think you can.

“What is your philosophy of life?” “Think as little as possible.” – Charles Bukowski, Hollywood

We realize, when we stop being so serious, that the problems we have don’t really exist. They’re all made up in our heads. Without the conscious thought of a problem, there is no problem. Nothing is real in the way we normally think it is. It’s just thoughts passing by, with no deeper meaning to be found behind them.

Thought is limitation. – Lester Levenson

Those negative mental judgments about your body, if you take them seriously, will make your physical suffering worse—while positive thoughts will likely help improve your physical condition. Think positively about your situation as best as you can, if at all possible. This seems obvious, but we have a tendency not to do it.

Sometimes, the most important thing you can do to improve certain problematic aspects of your life is not think about them.

If you test this out, even for a short period of time, the results will probably surprise you. A significant emotional burden is immediately lifted off your shoulders when you stop thinking about your problems all the time. In the very least, this sense of relief will allow you to approach things more mindfully—and it will usually do more than just that. That’s because not thinking about our problems allows them to be resolved without our direct, conscious intervention.

Most negative thoughts shouldn’t be treated seriously, let alone acted upon. We should be less reactive towards their presence. It’s like spending all week worrying about going to a doctor’s appointment. We’re only actually with the doctor for ten minutes, but we worry about it all week! And then he tells us everything looks okay and to come back in six months. Do you see how much unnecessary worrying we did? It seems silly in retrospect. Well, if you consider it, you’ll probably realize that almost everything is like this mentally when it comes to things that bother us. As Mark Twain joked, “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”

Neville Goddard, another great teacher on this subject, advised, “To dissolve a problem that now seems so real to you all that you do is remove your attention from it. In spite of its seeming reality, turn from it in consciousness. Become indifferent and begin to feel yourself to be that which would be the solution of the problem.”

Yet another advantage of doing this is it frees you to imagine what the solution to your problem could possibly feel like, as Neville touched upon.

Being playful and unserious allows you to not think and be in this present moment where nothing needs changing, where there are no real problems. If your bothersome thoughts about a particular situation don’t disappear, at the very least you become far more indifferent towards them, and they lose their emotional power over you.

All we do is notice and say, “Whatever.” Nobody ever says, “Whatever.” No one just shrugs and says, “Ah, whatever.” To quote the Zen monk Kodo Sawaki, “A thief breaks into an empty house. There’s nothing to steal and there’s no one to catch him.” That’s kind of what we’re talking about.