What Is A Thought?

What is this thing –this experience– we call thought?

Don’t use more thoughts, concepts, or definitions to explore this. Explore it in direct experience. How does it show up? Are there images? Sounds? Sensations?

It seems that the experience of thought is absolutely obvious and also totally unfindable, empty, and mysterious. It’s fascinating that thought feels so powerful and victimizing at times. We can’t even find this thing that seems to victimize us.

There can be so much freedom in exploring this mystery.

Transcript

I'd like to look at something that you've maybe never looked at in quite this way before yet I feel like it's extremely important to look at because of the impact it has on our our moment-to-moment experience and that is this question of what is a thought. So let's look at what is a thought but without using more thoughts because we can't really answer what is a thought by bringing in more thoughts and concepts that's not really going to get to it. So without adding in more thoughts and definitions and ideas how can we look in direct experience experientially at what is a thought? What is this thing this experience that we call a thought? You really have to kind of pull it very close and examine it I think with a lot of curiosity to get any kind of sense of what the heck even is this? So we can think of anything and think of a squirrel now when I say squirrel maybe you feel like you have a thought of a squirrel but what is that and where is it? You might you might see a squirrel in some sense even that is a strange thing because you know maybe your eyes are open and you're looking around and you don't see a squirrel in what we call the world out here but you see a squirrel somewhere in your mind so maybe there's some visual image of a squirrel maybe you hear a squirrel little squeaky squirrel sounds I don't know maybe you see the word squirrel written just get curious about what shows up and move closer to it pull it close to you and check it out what is this thing that we might call a squirrel thought what's it made of and when we ask these questions what is it and what's it made of and how is it represented it's not to to arrive at some final answer I mean try you can try to arrive at a final answer and see see what you see in my experience pulling this stuff closer and really looking and and getting so curious about what is it is it an image is there a sound is it a feeling do I feel something when I think squirrel am I thinking squirrel there's so so many pieces in this when you pull it closer and just get so curious what I've found and I've done this a lot is it's more and more mysterious the more and more you look it seems like maybe like even as I'm speaking to you right now I can I kind of have this little brown caricature of a squirrel somewhere in my mind I don't even know what that means in my mind it's somewhere in here it's being sensed in some way this little gray cartoon squirrel looking thing but what is that and when I get closer to it even as as we're speaking right now and I try to pull it closer it kind of starts to vanish I can't pull it close enough to really feel like I know what this is and that is something that I've heard from many people who have played with this it's kind of Mirage like it's like the closer you get and more you try to pull it closer the more elusive it is so it's very very curious that that the experience of a thought is absolutely obvious we all know what it means to think something and even to imagine something let's say to imagine something that is not I mean there's a lot of assumption in this even but that is not in our real life physical experience right here let's say we're imagining a squirrel we're thinking of a squirrel we know we know what that feels like and it's absolutely irrefutable and that's just imagining a squirrel I mean we live in a sea of thoughts and thinking and narratives and stories all the time that are completely obvious we we know that there is an experience there yet we know remarkably little about that experience and all you have to do is move closer and check it out talking with a teacher of mine I don't know year or two ago and talking about an experience that I was having of insecurity and it was an absolute obvious experience I could feel it I could imagine it I like it was just so real it was a real experience and I remember her asking me what what is that made of what is insecurity made of and I had some answers of course it's made of thought and feeling and I don't know energy I don't know it's some some answers and for every answer I gave she kept asking well what's that made of what's thought made of what are the images of you being insecure or not good enough or whatever what are those made of what about the feeling of insecurity where you feel it what is that what's it made of what's energy made of I mean it got it got to a point really quickly where it completely broke down and I was it's weird because I knew this but at the same time until I really walked through it and looked I had to arrive at this sort of conclusion which I wouldn't even call a very firm conclusion but it was just so obvious in the looking I have no idea I have no idea I'm sitting here feeling this feeling of obvious insecurity heavy not nice feeling and when I look I have no idea what that feeling is what it's made of where it came from the closer I get the more it kind of changes form or moves or is harder to nail down and that is interesting like that is so important because look at how we feel about thought how we feel about thought is often that it's true first of all that it's accurate that it's telling us important things yet we don't even know what it is also how we often feel about thought is that it it victimizes us that it's hurting us in some way that it's unkind that it limits us we feel like a victim of something but we don't even know what is victimizing us we when we look closely we don't know what it is and I think I think that is really really like the point of this it's so huge to see that that we're we're running around afraid of things kind of don't want to think this don't want to feel that trying to manipulate things and hide from things on many levels not even in a conscious level but I think there's so much of that happening so much of what we do to try to avoid a thought or avoid a feeling or what someone else's thought or feeling it gets so complicated in our lives yet what are we running from what are we even feeling victimized of from we don't know I mean I don't know you look and see look for yourself and see what even is this thing I'm calling a thought what even is it when we don't look and we don't look because we're scared and no one taught us to look and people around us don't seem to look we just don't look we take it at face value it feels real again it is an obvious feeling so when we don't look it has this assumed truth and reality to it when we look you get to see beyond that you get to see how true and real it is and how much you can really say about it and there's so much freedom in not knowing in in any area of life but man thoughts feelings experiences so much absolute freedom in the mystery when we really look and we see how little we actually know about what this stuff even is

Reviews

Such a great reminder of how little we know about what this experience is. Amazing what happens when we start questioning what we think we know and deconstructing occurs. Thanks!

Exploring thoughts asking questions and staying curious.... Love it!

Good, short talk on a very ephemeral subject. I mean, what is more fleeting and hard to capture than a thought? Amy provides a lot insight into the nature of thoughts but no ultimate answer to the question: what is a thought? I am still searching.

Yes that's it..just be curious and rest in the mystery of life..the not knowing 🙏😌🌟

Such an interesting question, one we rarely entertain, but so very freeing when we do. Thanks for sharing.