Thoughts are designed to be very convincing. As soon as we think a thought, we believe it. We have to learn to stand apart from and question our thoughts before it becomes clear how few of them are actually true. “I’m not pretty,” “He shouldn’t have left,” “I can’t do that,” “I can’t take any more rejection,” “She doesn’t care”—such thoughts are felt to be true, and so they are believed and therefore spoken convincingly, as if they were true. And because we are convinced when we speak them, others become convinced as well.

The funny thing, though, is that being convinced of something doesn’t make it so. Con artists and salesmen convince people all the time of things that aren’t true because they know how to sound believable. The best salesmen are the ones who believe in their product, but a salesman can be just as effective by pretending to believe in a product. If that person is so convinced, then, we are likely to be convinced too. But believing something doesn’t make it so. Many contestants on the TV show “American Idol” believe they are going to win, but only one actually wins.

However, in the world of the ego, believing makes it so. Believing is how the ego creates its reality. Its reality is based on beliefs and ideas, not necessarily on what is real and true. Our beliefs create our mental reality (not necessarily reality itself). For the ego to create a mental reality, thoughts have to be believable. If thoughts weren’t felt to be believable, then the ego’s mental reality couldn’t be sustained. So part of having an ego is having thoughts that are felt to be believable, no matter how untrue they are. Even when our thoughts contradict each other, they can still seem believable, unless we consciously question them. Once we have begun to see how untrue our thoughts actually are, the ego’s mental reality begins to fall apart. It can only be sustained by believing that our thoughts are true.

Something we believe to be true that isn’t is called a delusion, and people who believe something that isn’t true are said to be deluded or delusional. That would describe most of humanity, since most people are deeply identified with their egoic mind, the voice in their head, and its mistaken ideas and limiting beliefs. When we believe that voice, we are deluded. The mental world created by the ego is a delusional world. That is why spiritual teachers often refer to the world as an illusion. The world, itself, isn’t an illusion, but the mental world created by the ego is. The world experienced through the lens of the ego is an illusion.

Waking up out of the ego’s illusory world requires seeing that no matter how convincing our thoughts are, they are mostly untrue. And the same goes for feelings, which make thoughts even more convincing. For instance, when you feel sad because you believe something (a story the egoic mind is telling), that makes the thought that caused you to feel sad all the more believable. Thoughts create feelings, which are felt physically, and then those physical sensations lend credibility to the original thought, which had no truth or basis in reality. Brilliant! Who thought this up? Well, the Oneness is pretty clever!

Yes, thoughts are very convincing. The ego is the penultimate con artist, and we are meant to catch the ego at its game. Once we have seen the truth, we can’t be fooled anymore. We are too wise to keep falling for the same tricks, except maybe occasionally! The ego is tricky, and it gets trickier the wiser we get. It doesn’t fully disappear, and it doesn’t have to as long as we continue to remember that all thoughts about me are false, every last one of them. They tell a story about the false self, and there is no one here that those stories are true of.

Who you really are can’t be described in words and has no past or future. Who you really are is the consciousness that is looking out of your eyes and experiencing the words on this page. You are just This: nameless, formless, empty nothingness and everything-ness, pretending to be you for the time being. And the way it pretends to be you is by making your thoughts believable. That is how the false self—the you that you think of yourself as—is created. That’s fine, until it’s time to wake up and see what is really going on.