Descartes, father of modern philosophy, pointed to both the distinguishing characteristic of human beings and to the biggest curse of human beings when he made his famous statement, "I think. Therefore, I am."
The fact that you and I can think, reflect on the past, imagine the future, even to be conscious of our own consciousness is what distinguishes humans from all other animals. The fact that you and I can think, reflect and so often regret the past, imagine and so often fear the future, even to be unconscious of our own capacity to be conscious is the biggest curse humans live with and so try to escape from almost continually.
In other words, "Thoughts can be our best friends and our worst enemies." Until what is on the inside -- that is, your mind -- is corrected, the external world, that is, how you perceive and experience the world around you will be a mere reflection of it. In other words, if the world around you is to you an unfriendly, hateful, scary, and judgment-filled place, why is this so? Have you ever sought to know why? Is this the way the world really is? Or, is this the way you really are? Often we project onto the world, as well as onto other people, the afflictive, negative thoughts and emotions that we cannot admit. Or refuse to acknowledge.
More and more, we create the world in which we live. Pop psychologists glibly suggest, "Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change." While this is true, the problem for most people is how to change their negative thinking and the afflictive emotions that are its inevitable consequence.
Want to change your inner world?
Here are three simple ways:
1. Meditate daily: If you're one of those persons who quickly excuses yourself as having tried meditation and discovering it does not work for you, that's the first thought you need to change. Meditation is one possible good way to change your inner world.
2. Observe your thoughts: Don't judge them, observe them. How many times has a thought popped into your mind, for example -- let's say some kind of judgmental thought about a colleague at work or even your partner at home and, instantly, you jump into judgment mode toward them, but then finding fault with yourself for even thinking something negative about someone else.
Instead of quickly dismissing them and then judging yourself harshly for having such thoughts, start from the premise that thoughts are neither right nor wrong. They just are. It's what you do with your thoughts that introduce the "rightness" or "wrongness" of them. In other words, in the purported words of Martin Luther, "You cannot keep a bird from flying over your head; what you can do is prevent it from building a nest in your hair."
How? By observing your thoughts. In the east, this is called acting as the "witnessing presence." Like witnessing an accident and then reporting on it to the authorities. Be the observer of your own thoughts, even the ones that frighten you.
3. Cultivate the space between thoughts: If there were no spaces between the notes on a sheet of music, the sounds you would hear would not only be unintelligible but meaningless, even annoying.
This space is the place of internal peace. It is what some call "pure consciousness."
The idea of emptying your mind of thought is terrifying. This is the core error, the error of thinking you are your thoughts, and we've got a "workshop" going on inside that is truly devilish. You are not your thoughts. You're not even the observer of your thoughts, although that is much closer to perhaps who you really are.
Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth says, "the problem most people have is not thinking; it is not knowing how to stop thinking."
Author of the source article: Steve McSwain