Where Do Our Thoughts Come From? with Eckhart Tolle

I love you. So in talking about thinking, I know this has an obvious answer and I'm actually asking beyond this, but where do our thoughts come from? So oftentimes I'll have thoughts and I recognize them as even not my own. Or possibly patterns that have existed for years and years. Jealousy thoughts, or competitive thoughts, or the thoughts of being threatened, fear. But truthfully as this, something is waking us up in the middle of the night that you were just talking about. What is that? Is it just part of the condition of being alive?

Thank you. The Buddha was asked a similar question. I'll tell you what he said, but then I will answer it because he didn't. Thank you. Somebody asked him a question like that and he gave a parable. He said, you've got. Somebody shot you with an arrow. You've got an arrow stuck in your body, and before you remove it, you're trying to find out, where did that arrow come from? Before I remove it, I need to know who shot it and why and where it came from. Let's examine this in more detail. And that was his answer. What he was saying was our main concern should be to remove the arrow instead of trying to find out where it all started, how did it all start? Where did it all originate? His teaching was very practical, totally practical. Not all of Buddhism is that practical anymore. Some of it still remains practical compared to other traditions. But in the very beginning of the Buddhist teaching was just totally practical. Remove the arrow. The arrow of course stands for suffering. Any form of suffering that is self generated through the mind. And okay, so that was his answer. Now, of course I agree with that and I'm sure we all do thought going a little bit beyond it. Thought is. There's such a thing as a collective mind. And so many thoughts are not your thoughts really. They arise in the collective mind. They are energy fields or energetic entities that one could almost think of them as little bubbles floating around. It may not be literally true. I haven't actually seen any bubbles, but little bubbles, thought forms floating around. And if the thought form discovers any resonance with anything inside you, for example, any form of negativity, and then there's a thought form in the collective mind, an even heavier thought form of negativity. Just a slight irritation about what somebody said today. And then there's another thought form that resonates with that negativity. And then that little, that bubble comes, plop. And before you know it, the irritation has become something bigger. So you connect with the universal mind and it moves through you. So when we Deal with our so called our own minds, which is far more than our own minds. And whatever awareness arises in you is not just your benefit. It has an impact on the totality of the collective mind. When awareness arises in you, it means awareness is arising in the collective mind of humanity. So it's not just a personal thing in the same way that any thinking that takes possession of your mind is not really personal. There is no personal thought as such. It pretends to be personal. It's the human collective mind. In the same way, of course, an emotion generated by that is not. It looks like my emotion, but it's either it's anger or it's sadness, or it's jealousy, or it's whatever this. And that's basically, it's the same in everybody. When it arises, it attaches itself to slightly different stories in the mind of why I'm angry. But the anger is anger, human anger. So again, it's not yours. You pick it up and then it gets hold of you. And then many humans live virtually with a mind that has taken possession of them, pretends to be them, and they're stuck with it without even knowing it. If they knew it, there would be the beginning of freedom. They don't know it. And if you tell them they are, they get angry, but they don't, the mind does because it feels threatened. So there are still humans who won't hear this. They can't hear this because immediately they would feel threatened by it, because they are in total, totally possessed by the mind. You can see how, for example, certain collective thought forms can take possession of an entire country. Such as happened for example, during communism, Soviet communism in Russia, Maoism in China, millions of people all thinking the same thing. And. But even in our society, it's not necessarily one monolithic thought form such as that, but different. There are different thought forms through the media become perpetuated and without knowing it. Often they are our most basic assumptions, how we interpret the universe and the world around us. Our basic assumption are thought forms that come out of the collective have taken possession of us. And they're all forms that consciousness takes in the mind. And that's all fine in itself. It's fine if there is an awareness, but if thought is all there is, it becomes destructive and insane without awareness. Of course, your next question, if you want to carry that, is why? How did it all start? Where does it come from? And that's the arrow again, right?

Yeah. In fact, my friend Jen and I use the phrase when you ask why that is the lie just the need to let it go. But the thing that occurred when you shared your answer. Thank you. Is that the thinking isn't something I need to war against, but rather it's a tool, and it's showing me where I'm allowing myself to identify with something that I'm not and thus identify with being separate from this one.

Yes.

It's a wonderful tool.

Yes.

That is ultimately powerless in the face of consciousness. Is that correct?

Yes. If you are identified with thinking, you say powerless. Yes. Because you are not there. You are absent, virtually absent, or completely asleep when you identify it with thinking. So you are being run by patterns on the karmic collective patterns, mental patterns. And so your true power comes as you wake up out of that.

Thanks, Eckhart.

Thank you.