Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Philippians 4:8
Every thought has an Origin. And every thought has an Assignment.
You are not your thoughts.
You have thoughts, but you are not your thoughts.
The thoughts come in your voice, speak in the first person, because the thoughts want you to accept them into your Soul (Soul = Mind+Will+Emotion).
Think of it as a form of Inception (planting the thought in your mind) that can lead to Deception (making you believe that the thought came from you), and then Conception of all sorts of things in your life…things planned by the Origin of the thought.
Still with me?
By the way, this is just the mechanism of all thoughts: “good” or “bad”.
And it’s important to understand this mechanism. Because whilst you are not the thoughts you are thinking, those thoughts will determine the way you feel, the way you see life, the way you see yourself, and what you believe.
Again: those are not “your thoughts”. They are just the thoughts you are thinking.
Again: reject the idea of any thought being “your thought”, no matter how that thought makes you feel.
Instead, embrace the reality that any given thought is just “something that you are thinking”. But who you are is completely distinct from anything you happen to be thinking.
This isn’t semantics or nitpicking. This is extremely important.
Because if “your thoughts” are really just “things you are thinking about”, then you have the power and leverage to change the things you happen to be thinking about.
I’m fat.
I’m ugly.
I’m dirty.
I’m unworthy of love.
There’s no point being alive.
None of these are “your thoughts”.
They may feel like your thoughts, because of how events, people and traumatic experiences have validated and underscored these thoughts.
But regardless of how any of these thoughts feel…they are not “your thoughts”. They are just mental seaweed, drifting through the ether, looking for a mind that will let them in, and adopt them into its way of thinking.
And once that clueless naive mind has let them in, these thoughts will take control and program that mind with deep-seated beliefs and ideologies that leads to Death and Destruction in the life of the person who owns that mind.
You are not the thoughts you are thinking.
Instead, they are just the thoughts you happen to be thinking.
And if you just happen to be thinking those thoughts, then you have the power to decide to whether you want to keep thinking them or not.