The reason we find thoughts about ourselves and others so compelling, besides the fact that we are programmed to pay attention to them, is that we believe we need them to function—and we enjoy thinking. Nevertheless, such thoughts come from the ego, and we don’t need those thoughts, and we are better off without them.

We think that if we don’t pay attention to the voice in our head, we will miss out on something, but what we miss out on when we give our attention to that voice is real life, the life beyond the ego’s mental world. The ego doesn’t have a very high opinion of real life, and neither do we when we are identified with the ego. Life without thoughts seems boring, uninteresting. But that’s only because we don’t stay in real life long enough to really experience what it has to offer. We often have one foot in and one foot out of our present moment experience: One foot in the mind and one foot in what is real.

We tend to believe that thinking supplies everything we need: wisdom, insight, information, guidance, planning, and fun. What more could you ask for? If paying attention to the egoic mind could really provide these things, then this voice in our head would be indispensible and a true friend. However, it fails miserably at this; even the fun often comes at quite an expense. The egoic mind pretends to be able to provide these things, and we are programmed to believe it can, but it doesn’t deliver what it promises. Even once we see this, we may still give this voice in our head our attention, just in case it comes up with something good: Maybe the next thought is the one that will change everything!

Everything we really want to know—what will happen, why things have happened, and what to do next—the mind just doesn’t know. Let this sink in a moment, because we are deeply conditioned to believe that the egoic mind has those answers. What if you really knew that it doesn’t have any of the answers you are looking for? Instead, it is what raises those questions and wants so badly to know the answers—but it doesn’t have them.

If you take a look, you discover that most of your thoughts are an attempt to figure out what is going to happen, what to do in the future, or how to deal with the past, either by trying to understand the past, take a position on it (tell a story about it), or change it, which is impossible. All these thoughts are fruitless. We can’t know the future, we can’t figure out what to do in that unknown future, and we can’t do anything about the past because it no longer exists. Just stop a moment again, please, and really take this in. These thoughts only waste our time and energy and take us out of real life. When you really see that, then you can begin to be done with them. But there is one more thing you need to do.

Once you have seen how pointless your thoughts about the past and future are, you need to fall in love with the present. If you don’t, you will go back to your thoughts about the past and future out of habit and because there is some enjoyment in them. Before we are able to leave those thoughts behind, we have to have a very good reason to do something else. The egoic mind won’t give you a reason to pay attention to the present because the ego (the mind-created self) disappears when you are in the moment, and it doesn’t want to disappear. You—the real you, the you that is awakening—have to find a reason to pay attention to the present.

The reason to pay attention to the present is that the present is the only thing real. The past and future are just thoughts, and thoughts about them are just more thoughts. The past and future are not real because they don’t actually exist when our mind is still and we are just present to what is arising now, in the moment. When we do that, we discover how pleasurable it is to be present. But it can take a lot of practice to stay present long enough to experience the pleasure of being present. Is that pleasure worth giving up your thoughts about the past and future, your worries and fears, your plans and your fantasies?

When you really see the truth about your thoughts and the truth about being present, the choice is clear. But it can take a while before we are convinced that thoughts are not what they seem to be and that the present is not the boring experience our mind assumes it is. Awakening is the process of waking up out of the imaginary world created by our thoughts and living in the here and now, free of the domination of those thoughts. What an amazing transformation of consciousness that is, and what a blessing it is that you are experiencing awakening in this lifetime.