Not-Me Exercise #3
What happens if you try to disobey your own thoughts?
We have discovered you can learn to observe your thoughts, which implies at least some degree of separation between “thoughts” and “you.” If that’s true—if thoughts and you are somehow not quite the same—what happens if you try to disobey your thoughts?
Is such a thing even possible?
Another way to pose that question might be to ask how much power thoughts have over our behavior. If you happen to be a human being, ‘A lot!’ would seem to be a very reasonable answer.
In exercise #3, we will test that.
If you are sitting, stand up. If you are standing, sit down. Open your mouth, if it is closed, or close it, if it is open. Did these actions require you to first make use of words inside your head?
Whatever action you have chosen to perform, think about doing it as you actually do it. For example, if you have chosen to stand, as you do so, say to yourself, “I am going to stand…I am standing. Now I am going to sit…I am sitting…”
Do that a few times, to get a feel for it.
Sit, stand. Open, close.
Whatever action you’ve chosen to do, go ahead and keep doing it—and be sure to think about doing it. Think hard. Practice this. Make sure your thoughts and behavior are in perfect alignment.
Now: let’s try to disobey those same thoughts.
Just as you have been, think to yourself, “I am going to stand, right now. I am standing. I am now in the process of getting up and standing…”
But don’t move a muscle.
Stay right where you are!
Think very hard about standing (or whatever action you’ve chosen).
But don’t do it.
Don’t do it.
If you are standing, think to yourself, “I can’t stand. I can’t possibly do it. I am going to collapse. I am collapsing, right now, falling to the ground…”
But keep standing.
I would like you to notice, no matter how hard or intensely you think about doing so, your body will not go into motion unless you want it to. Your body will not move, which strongly implies some powerful separation between your thoughts and you.
Thoughts, on their own, seem to have no power whatsoever when it comes to setting your body into motion.
Maybe we’re getting this wrong somehow. Maybe “thoughts” described as “words inside my head” is just the wrong definition. Maybe this is all just some kind of misunderstanding.
Still: it’s kind of strange, disobeying those words, whatever they are. In other contexts, at least in my life, they often feel like they’ve got a great deal of power.
But maybe they don’t.
Here’s another way to think about it: perhaps our thoughts, experienced as “words inside our heads,” are just a tool. Like a calculator. We can use the calculator to solve problems, if we choose, but we’re not the calculator. We’re the one who uses it.
