Life is a bunch of experiences. You think about what’s going on “right now” and what might happen in the future. Very often, you’re thinking of the past in your memory. (Of course, all of these things are in the present moment, giving us an illusion of the passage of time.) You think about what you want for lunch and why someone ghosted you. You worry, feel, think, and judge. The mind is a whole world. But do these thoughts define you? Do they make up your life? Yeah, they kinda do.
All of your life is a myriad of experiences that are mental activities, therefore life is a mental activity. You live within your mind. Reality is consciousness.
So, if you decide that your experiences don’t define you, then maybe you can start to decide what does define you. Are you really just a bundle of thoughts? But they change so often. So, who are you? Who is the observer of thoughts?
Your thoughts aren’t you. But you are experiencing them, right? So who is “you”? Let’s figure that out.
Who or What Are You?
When I’m meditating, I notice that thoughts and feelings arise in me against a kind of backdrop, and then they also fade away. It’s like watching a theater production. The plot just keeps unfolding.
If your thoughts are changing and fleeting, then you can’t really say that’s you, right? You are always here. Your essential nature doesn’t seem to change. And yet, you can’t point to any one thing in your experience that makes this obvious.
There’s no way to prove that you are unchanging if you’re looking to experiences for this proof. There’s nothing you’re ever known except experiences.
But somebody must be the experiencer of the experiences. Who is the observer of thoughts?
This must be you. You’re the thinker of the thoughts. You’re the observer of thoughts – the experiencer that’s holding reality together. This is the thing that doesn’t change while all the experiences seem to be fluid.
Consciousness Is All
We’re swimming in it. It fills our experience of life. It creates what exists. Consciousness is what we are. There is nothing that isn’t consciousness because everything we perceive is within consciousness.
Perhaps we were born from consciousness and we will return to it when we die, or perhaps there is no transition here at all because we were and are consciousness all along.
Consciousness is where life takes place. You cannot step out of it. You cannot know what consciousness is not. It is everything.
Therefore, everything you experience is inside consciousness, so that is where the experiencer of thoughts is doing the experiencing. Who is the experiencer? Who are you? You may have many qualities, but essentially, you are consciousness. We all are. And we all co-create this reality. We are all connected through consciousness.
What Does This Mean For Us?
If this has sunk in for you, then maybe it’ll change your life. Maybe you can start to live as if all things are fluid and stop being so attached to your experiences. Letting things bog you down like daily stressors is just a symptom of a greater problem: you don’t realize who you really are. You aren’t embracing the fact that you’re consciousness.
All of these things can be changed with a change in your consciousness because a lot of our experiences are made of perceptions.
We can guide our perceptions of life. We can choose to see the world as a great experience within consciousness. The wonders of reality can pervade your daily life instead of the thoughts about what’s stressing you.
If consciousness is everything, then you are not separate from the world around you. Celebrate oneness.
Book one of my meditation classes or coaching sessions today to learn to experience the observer of thoughts and get into stillness.
