Thoughts, Perception, and the Self

When you meditate, your thoughts will eventually wander. We have covered that more than enough already. It becomes interesting at the moment you notice: I was just lost in thought.

We can do more than think. We can also notice that we are thinking. This ability is known as meta-awareness.¹

Our own thinking can therefore itself become an object of awareness.

A Thought Is Not a Fact

Thoughts often feel immediately true. Yet a thought is, first of all, a mental event. It can be right or wrong, helpful or nonsensical.

Meditation can train us to notice this distinction more consciously. In psychology, one term for this is decentering: ‘That is how it is’ can first become ‘I am having the thought that this is how it is.’¹

Who Is Actually Observing Here?

This brings meditation into contact with an old philosophical question: what exactly is this ‘self’ that can observe its own thoughts?

From a neuroscientific perspective, there is no single place in the brain where a fixed self resides. Our sense of self emerges from the interaction of different processes such as memories, body awareness, emotions, and attention.²

That does not prove any Buddhist philosophy. But it makes the question of how self-evident and unchanging our sense of a ‘self’ really is rather interesting.

We Do Not See the World Like a Camera

Our perception is not an objective recording of the world either. The brain combines sensory impressions with experiences, memories, and expectations.

A sound during meditation can make this visible: first, there is a sound. Then, ‘that annoying car’. Soon afterwards comes irritation that it is disturbing your meditation, or anger with yourself for allowing yourself to be disturbed. A sound has turned into an entire story. This happens constantly in daily life without us giving it even a single conscious thought.

Meditation can give you the opportunity to observe processes like these more closely. So the point is not to think less, but to notice more consciously that you are thinking and what arises from those thoughts.