You are not your thoughts

We are taught since childhood to identify ourselves as thinkers and to always be thinking about something, so we miss the fact that who we truly are is the awareness from which the thoughts originate. You cannot be your thoughts, because your thoughts are seen by you and not the other way around.

This understanding is deceptively simple, and so it is often underestimated. The mind thinks, “This is too simple; that just can’t be the answer,” and so the mind will want to dismiss the idea altogether. When this happens, we are back off running around again searching for answers.

This postponement is a tactic of the mind to delay any dis-identification with thought, because then the mind would have no purpose or job to perform. So the mind continues to fabricate all kinds of images of what “it” will be like when “it” finally happens, and all the while the reality of the situation remains hidden.

This presence/awareness is what you are, the true self, and it remains unaffected regardless of ideas, emotions, and beliefs that might appear in it or be projected onto it by the world. Awareness is what has always been here, perceiving through your body-mind.