Evan Renaerts

Thought-Full

November 22, 2007

Bright sunlight glitters on heavily frosted roof tops, sidewalks and parked cars. The light brings all of the colours alive, pink-white blossoms on the magnolia, pale blue sky, white and black streaked birch trees; everything is radiant.

In order to notice anything one must be aware; aware of self, aware of life, aware of inner and outer. To be aware includes the capacity to be the observer, you notice what is outside you and at the same time you notice your own thoughts and feelings; even the sensations in your body.

We walk around in our lives with our heads full of thoughts! If you are honest with your self you will notice that you have an almost uninterrupted flow of thoughts: discernment, appraisal, judgement, criticism and praise, along with snatches from old songs and various other bits of nonsense.

My guess is that most of us are also walking around with any number of thoughts that we “shouldn’t” have – greedy thoughts, selfish thoughts, angry and resentful thoughts; even homicidal and suicidal thoughts. The real problem with these thoughts is that while we walk around thinking them (or even just watching them flit through our minds) we are also pretending to ourselves and to the world that we don’t have these thoughts.

Everyone knows that only bad people and crazy people have angry, hurtful thoughts, right? Wrong! I have talked to hundreds and hundreds of people about their thought processes; they often begin by denying these kinds of thoughts but ultimately everyone who has a capacity for self-honesty acknowledges having unwanted thoughts. Often they qualify this by saying, “well, they aren’t really thoughts, they’re just a kind of daydreaming that my mind does.”

Yes, that might be true, but they are happening in your head. These thoughts, that aren’t really thoughts, are causing tension in your body and triggering reactions of impatience and frustration or conversely, passivity and withdrawal. The point is that the content of our minds affects our lives in very real and concrete ways whether we want it to or not.

One proposed antidote to this mental pollution is “positive thinking.” In the positive thinking approach one trains themselves never to think negative thoughts; a kind of mental diet plan. This method has an upside and a downside.

The upside is that we become much more aware of the minds content, and because of this we become much more discerning about what we feed the mind – what we read, what kind of movies or television we watch and even the kinds of conversations we are willing to take part in.
The downside is that we may begin to attack and judge our minds and our selves and from this we may begin to feel all those unpleasant feelings while we pretend to only think good thoughts. Instead of cleaning up our thoughts we’ve just driven them further underground.

The most helpful and compassionate method I have found for working with thought and the mind is what I call radical self-honesty and radical self-love. In this approach we become willing to see what is in the mind, understanding that the mind has a mind of its own. Thoughts flow through the mind like water through a tap and no thought, regardless of its nature, can harm me or another unless I either deny the thought or identify myself as the thought.

When we identify as the thought then having an unkind, cruel or even criminal thought means that we must be unkind, cruel or criminal. When we deny the thought we begin to lead a double life; we fear our own thoughts and to maintain our denial we project these unsavoury thoughts on to others. We begin to see evil people and evil institutions all around us while failing to see what is within us.

Radical self-honesty means that we simply notice what is in the mind: lust, jealousy, greed, kindness, patience, anger, frustration – it doesn’t matter. We notice the content and embrace our “Self” in unconditional love and acceptance. Nothing frees us from thought faster or more completely than loving acceptance.

Working in this way it is possible to come to the realization that, “I am not these thoughts.” Thoughts and feelings occur and none of them are “who I am;” they do not cause us to do or to not do anything- choice is always ours.

This is the realization of freedom when one can honestly say I am living the life that I choose to live.

Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com