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Behind every thought there is something that notices the thought. Self-awareness begins the moment you meet it.
5 min readPart 3 of 4
Behind every thought you have ever had, something has been quietly watching.
Most of the time we are so absorbed in our thoughts that we forget there is anyone having them. A worry arrives and we become the worry. A plan arrives and we become the plan. We live, for the most part, as the contents of the mind rather than as the one aware of those contents.
Self-awareness is the small, ordinary miracle of stepping back. It is the moment you notice you are thinking, rather than simply being carried along by the thought.
Pause for a moment and notice your next thought. Do not try to stop it or change it. Simply wait for it to appear, and watch it arrive.
Now ask yourself a strange question: who noticed the thought?
Whatever noticed is not the thought itself. It was there before the thought arrived, and it remains after the thought has gone. This quiet observer is what we mean by awareness, and meeting it — even for a second — is the beginning of the inner journey.
When you are lost inside a feeling, the feeling runs your life. When you become aware of the feeling, something changes. You now have a small distance, and in that distance lives every real choice you will ever make.
You can feel anger without becoming cruel.
You can feel fear without being ruled by it.
You can hold a difficult thought without believing every word of it.
You came looking for one answer. This is where it opens out.
Here is what many people discover as they practise: thoughts change constantly, moods rise and fall, the body ages — yet the sense of simply being aware feels strangely the same as it did in childhood. The scenery changes. The one watching the scenery does not.
You do not need to believe anything about this. You only need to look. The inner journey is not about acquiring new ideas. It is about becoming familiar with the one who has been here, watching quietly, all along.