Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Freedom

When each thought absorbs your attention completely,
it means you identify with the voice in your head.
Thought then becomes invested with a sense of self.
This is the ego, a mind-made "me."
That mentally constructed self
feels incomplete and precarious.
That’s why fearing and wanting are
its predominant emotions and motivating forces.
When you recognize that there is a voice
in your head that pretends to be you
and never stops speaking,
you are awakening out of
your unconscious identification
with the stream of thinking.
When you notice that voice,
you realize that who you are
is not the voice — the thinker — but
the one who is aware of it.
Knowing yourself as the awareness
behind the voice is freedom.