It Can’t Be Thought - Understanding Our True Self - Part 15
From an early age, we learn to rely on thoughts for understanding. We are trained to believe that conscious decision-making is the key to living a good life. On a practical level, this approach makes sense, but life is far more than just organization or accomplishing tasks. Additionally, we are often told to define ourselves through our thinking. However, this is a dead-end road. Thought alone can never truly reveal who or what we are. Life does not fit into mental boxes; it resists all categorizations and constructs of the mind. If we wish to uncover the deeper truths of life, we must go beyond thought.
Life is a multidimensional happening—a dynamic event unfolding simultaneously on all levels and states, and this in no time. Thinking, on the other hand, is a linear process, allowing us to focus on only one thought at a time. To illustrate the limitations of thought, we will compare the human body’s processing capacity to the capacity of conscious thinking.
It is estimated that the brain processes about 50 bits of information (bit) per second. A bit, short for binary digit, is the smallest unit of data. Meanwhile, the human body processes approximately 13 to 15 million bits per second. This means that conscious thinking accounts for only around 0.00038% of what the body processes.
Clearly, 0.00038% is insufficient to capture the fullness of reality. It cannot possibly tell you who or what you truly are.
Almost everything what we are exists beyond thinking. Our problem is that we have reduced ourselves to our thoughts. We identify with roles such as father, mother, carpenter, or doctor, or we define ourselves by temporary emotional states such as happiness, sadness, depression, or joy. While these roles and states are real, they are like drops in the ocean. The tragedy is that we live as if we are just the drop, the personal self, when in truth, we are the entire ocean.
The work lies in transcending this limited perspective and recognizing our true nature. Thoughts can be helpful to a certain extent, but ultimately, it is the experience of oneness that reveals what we have always been.
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