Since you were about eighteen months old, thought has been masquerading as you.
It began labeling and naming things and people, including a very special label called “me”. Anything felt to be arising around “your” particular bodymind became you and yours, me and mine. Sensations felt in the body were called “my feelings”. Thoughts in awareness were called “my thoughts” about “my life”.
Because the mind talks in first person rather than in third person, and it says “I” instead of “you”, we come to believe that voice is us.
Thought arises, feeling arises, and a narrator says “I think this”, “I feel that”. Without that “I” attached, there’s just thought and feeling arising, no “I” to whom it supposedly belongs.
WIthout “I” there would be no suffering. “I” suffer. Thought and feeling without a “me” is just thought and feeling–there is no one to suffer.
The narrator in your head works so hard slapping those I’s and me’s to everything, predicting the future, making sense of the past. It really seems to think it’s running the place. But you don’t need to listen to it the way it says you do. It narrates life as life is already happening. The narrator isn’t doing anything necessary, but loves to sound like it is.
Maybe it’s time to see it’s redundancy. Life is the actual mastermind.
(Yes, this image is a bit random. But the mind thinking it’s running the show is a little like Jelly thinking she’s writing something profound).
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