The book of thought
When we were very young they started reading a magical book to us.
This book contained the combined cultural conditioning of the society we were born into. It was read to us every moment of the day, teaching, explaining, warning, helping, motivating, and programming us with information about experience.
This book of thought was deemed more important than anything we saw, tasted, touched, smelled, or heard. It was more true and authoritative than anything we could experience.
And so, perhaps at the age of 4 or 5, we started to listen almost exclusively to what thought said about life, losing touch with the direct experience of life.
We couldn’t question the book, we were too young. By the time we could, it had already irreversibly created our very identity.
The book taught us to believe that we are individual selves, that we can consciously and independently control our thinking and will, and that we are who we think we are.
All these thoughts swirling around are not ours — we certainly didn’t create them, and we can’t get rid of them.
Our “minds” are the result of the collective conditioning of our species. They make us human. They are not the enemy.
But thought is an overlay onto direct experience.
THIS is still right here, waiting for us to notice.
Just be
Like a kat 🐯
You named it. The Book of Thought was forced on us before we knew what reading was. By the time we could question it, we’d already forgotten that the sun on our skin was scripture, that laughter was older than any creed.
The commentary isn’t the thing. The echo isn’t the voice. The footnote isn’t the story.