Sometimes I have to remind myself how little my thoughts have to do with reality. And, of course, when I’m tired, my thoughts have even less to do with reality than usual.
It can be odd to disassociate oneself from such a seemingly real experience. But really, once self-awareness comes up, that’s exactly what we start doing, isn’t it? We are forced to start peeling off our thoughts, which have somehow stuck themselves onto the way things are. And through the tinted glasses of Thought, the way things are often show up distorted.
It seems to me that if there is any proof of God, self-awareness must be it. Once we become aware that we are, in fact, human – that, for example, humans have a tendency to make predictions based on past events – we are distancing ourselves from ourselves. This is how the Universe evolves, or becomes more conscious. And if that’s not God, I don’t know what is.
The trouble is, we’re not always in this miraculous state of consciousness-evolution. Most of the time, we’re caught up in Thoughts. And as I’ve already pointed out, Thoughts make it quite difficult to see the forest for the trees.
Our brain is inestimably powerful. Just pick up any book on neuroscience or psychology and you’ll see the countless scientific and practical cases of just how much in our lives and our world is affected by this piece of flesh in our heads. Our brain can serve us, or it can sabotage us. It can help us to see reality, or it can drive us into the Ditch of Distortion.
I really don’t know where Thoughts come from any more than I understand how the human brain works. But the best part of all of this is that we have a built-in system that allows us to acknowledge when we’re being tricked. And sometimes all it takes is noticing.