Many thoughts arise without you even knowing it. You usually end up identifying with these thoughts and that defines your experience. So you have many worries, many troubles which do not seem to be going away. Even though you are not conscious of your identification with your thoughts, you still suffer the consequences.
Say you have to get your car fixed. You know you have to get your car fixed but that thought keeps repeating itself asking to be resolved. You carry the thought which seems to have a hundred pound weight on your shoulders. Now your thought tells you life is not the way it is supposed to be and will not be as it is supposed to be until the car is fixed. All of a sudden the mechanic calls to tell you, “I cannot come until Monday.” This hurts you as you have to carry the hundred pound weight around until Monday. Many thoughts arise fast in your life – car fixing, appointment with the doctor, office work with deadline, rent payment. When you are asleep in the night, you are in a state of deep peace and you are free from all your identifications. You wake up. Boom! Mind activity resumes and the mind at a terrible speed looks for something to identify with and quickly finds the car to be fixed, the appointment with the doctor, the office work with a deadline, the rent. While you were asleep you were at peace but now you are awake and thanks to your mind, your life appears miserable.
It is not as if you do not have what you may call good thoughts. The presence of the “good” and “bad” thoughts creates conflict. You want one over the other and the result is stress. The remedy is not to have one thought over another but to stop identifying with your thoughts altogether. You can witness your thoughts by being the watcher of your thoughts. You can bring your attention to what is here and now. And by doing so you break the thought pattern and your identification with thought.
Right now you are breathing. It is happening in this moment but you are hardly aware of that. In your natural state of being you have peace. This peace is not some emotional experience which takes place on the surface. This peace is deep within you and you have it regardless of your life situation. The activities of your mind however obscures you from experiencing that peace. To experience that peace means you are no longer identified with thoughts. The car still have to be fixed, you still have to see the doctor, office work has to be completed, rent has to be paid, but you are no longer wearing these like a hat. The hundred pound weight is off your shoulder. What you may not know is this: When you lose your identification with thought and experience the peace that is an aspect of the nature of your being, you have opened yourself up to the creativity that lies within you and this brings up ideas and leads you to take steps that will be helpful in changing the situation you consider undesirable.
So we are hindered and kept down in many ways when we believe that our thoughts are literal representations of our circumstances, people, ourselves and things around us. That is an illusion. If I say, “Orange,” you know what I am referring to but the word “orange” is not what the thing is – orange. In the same way, your thoughts about your parent, sibling, friends, situation, or anything else, are not what those people or things are. The mind which produces thought is a wonderful instrument helpful in the creative process. It is also necessary for practical day-to-day living. But to use the mind as an interpretative tool for situations, people, and things can be highly misleading. It can trap you in an illusion where you think what you think is real.