The Voices in Your Head
On a silent meditation retreat a few years ago, the teacher asked us to imagine our thoughts being broadcast on a screen in the front of the meditation hall. Giggles of embarrassment and gasps of horror erupted among the (silent) meditators.
Thoughts are an intriguing mental phenomenon. Sometimes, they arise as light and fluffy words, and are barely noticed. At other times, they come together to sing an intrusive refrain from an old song we don’t even like. Or they may become little dictators in the mind telling us to “go here, go there”. There are wise and compelling voices, touting our greatness. Or the critical ones, surprisingly adept at convincing us that we are “too old”, “too young”, “not educated enough”, or “not creative enough”. The voices in our head can become cruel and harsh, leaving many of us saying, “I am my own worst enemy”.
Believing these voices in our head is a deeply conditioned habit. We’ve all heard the advice to not believe everything we think. This is surprisingly challenging! Through the centuries, these neural pathways of belief have been reinforced, forming deep grooves of conditioned behavior, leaving us feeling like we have no choice but to believe all our thoughts. However, we can achieve some distance and freedom from their grip when we learn to see thoughts as the natural product of the mind and learn to let them go. Just like the body feels and the ears hear, the mind thinks. The voices will come and they will go. It’s what we do with them that matters.
In meditation, we practice letting sensations, emotions, and thoughts come and go. We begin to see thoughts as just thoughts and words as just words. We get some distance from them, see them as impersonal phenomena, and learn to let them go. As the Buddha said, ‘let your thoughts come and go but don’t serve them tea’.
Having said this, we do need to apply discernment to the voices. When the voice in the head says, “watch out!” in reaction to real danger, we act accordingly. This is where wisdom and our intentions can guide us. Not only do we have a choice about which voices to act on, we also have a choice about which thoughts we want to cultivate. We can cultivate thoughts that lead to acts of kindness, compassion, wisdom, and courage.
I leave you with a quote by Milarepa
When you run after your thoughts, you are like a dog chasing a stick: every time a stick is thrown, you run after it. Instead, be like a lion who, rather than chasing after the stick, turns to face the thrower. One only throws a stick at a lion once.