Investigate Thoughts: What Are They? How Do We Wisely Relate to Them?

When we live from ordinary consciousness, our mind assumes the thoughts it thinks are truthful, important, and personal. This is the my-thoughts-are-true bias of the mind.

However, false thoughts are not truthful or important, and no thoughts are personal. When we mistake false thoughts to be truthful and personal, we identify with them, and this generates mental and emotional suffering that leads us to engage in unskillful behaviors that harm ourselves and others.

When we mistake false thoughts to be important, we develop aversion towards them, and this causes us to suffer.

Thankfully, mindfulness consciousness, which sees things nonconceptually, helps us see thoughts as “just thoughts.” And what are thoughts? In this activity we will mindfully investigate a thought to better appreciate what they are.

Instructions

In this activity we will investigate an obviously false thought that has no emotional charge for you. We recommend you use the thought, “I am a giraffe,” or a similarly untrue thought that you can think while remaining peaceful. By investigating this one thought, we will learn about the nature of all thoughts.

Take a 10-breath-cycle mindful pause to boost your mindfulness, then use your direct experience to observe, feel, and intuit the answers. Answers may come wordlessly or as words based on your direct experience.

Investigating Thoughts Questions

1. Think “I am a giraffe” and notice how long it lasts in your mind.

2. It is permanent or temporary?

3. Did you need to do anything to make the thought go away?

4. Is it the nature of thoughts to go away on their own?

5. Is the thought tangible or intangible?

6. Is the thought material or immaterial?

7. Can this thought physically push, hit, kick, or pull you?

8. Can this thought make you do anything against your will?

9. Think “I am a giraffe” and allow the thought to be. What is the feeling tone of allowing a thought to be (did it feel pleasant, unpleasant, or neither pleasant nor unpleasant)?

10. Is this feeling tone worldly (sense-based) or relational (not sense-based)?

11. When you mindfully allow a thought to be, how long did the thought remain in your head?

12. Think “I am a giraffe” and generate some hatred, fear, or dislike towards this thought. Did generating aversion towards the thought cause the thought to remain for more, less, or the same amount of time as when you allowed it?

13. Did generating aversion towards the thought help return the mind to peace, stability, and contentment?

14. What is the feeling tone of the aversion you generated (did it feel pleasant, unpleasant, or neither pleasant nor unpleasant)?

15. Is this feeling tone worldly (sense-based) or relational (not sense-based)?

16. Given what you’ve learned in questions 5-15, does it make more sense to relate to thoughts with allowance or aversion?

17. If you tell your mind to generate only loving, kind, wise, and skillful thoughts for the rest of your life, will it obey?

18. If you don’t control your mind, and its contents, what does?

19. Do the natural and biological laws of the brain and body determine how your mind works, which thoughts it thinks, and when?

20. Did you create those natural laws?

21. Where does the content of the mind come from?

22. Does the mind’s content come from past experiences? This includes what you learned from your parents or guardians, teachers, peers, books, movies, and other media, and the wider culture, both from what they said, and from what they did.

23. Did you dictate what those who educated you said and did?

24. Did you dictate the content of the media that you consumed?

25. Did what you learn from these sources strongly influence how your mind interprets your experiences?

26. Given your answers to questions 17-25, is it wiser and more accurate to view the mind’s thoughts as personal, investing them with a sense of “me” and “mine,” and identifying with them, or to view them as impersonal, conditioned by experiences we didn’t control, operating according to natural laws we didn’t make, and disidentifying from them?

27. Have you ever thought thoughts that caused you to experience mental or emotional suffering?

28. Did you believe the thoughts (See them as a truthful representation of reality)?

29. Did you relate to those thoughts with aversion (fear, hatred, dislike, wanting them to go away)?

30. Did you identify with the thoughts (Did you take them personally, invest them with a sense of self, see them as “my” thoughts)?

31. When mindful, can you choose to allow a thought to be?

32. When mindful, can you investigate a thought to see how it is not truthful, kind, or helpful?

33. When mindful, can you view your thoughts as impersonal, a product of cultural and biological conditioning that you had no control over?

34. Can an intangible, immaterial thought harm you if you don’t believe it, resist it, or identify with it?

35. Does an intangible, immaterial thought, which can’t punch, kick, scratch or bite you, require your cooperation for it to harm you?

36. Do you want to keep giving thoughts your power so they can keep harming you?

Journal activity

Answer the following questions in your journal:

1. What did you learn from this investigation?

2. What is a thought? What are its basic characteristics?

3. What is a wise, kind, and compassionate way to relate to our thoughts?

Review Periodically

Once a week or when needed, review these journal answers to keep your insights fresh in mind. As they become your new way of relating to your thoughts, you will no longer need to review them anymore.

Celebrate and Track!

Congratulations on finishing this mission! Please check it off of your Mindfulness Mission checklist. Then give thanks and celebrate!

Additional Resources

1. This article is part of our Mindfulness Fundamentals 3.0 course. If you are not taking it, please consider doing so.

2. Consider investigating your self-judgmental thoughts using these questions.

Additional Resources

Banner photo credit: Keenan Barber @keebarber