Thought divides the present moment up into separate things, labels everything it has created, and then invents stories about how it all works. Thought tells us, “That is a bird cheeping out there. I am in here hearing it.” By describing what’s appearing in that way, thought creates the illusion that there is an “out there” and an “in here.” It suggests that “the bird” is some thing separate from “me,” that there’s an “I” separate from “the hearing” who is “doing” the hearing, that there’s “a bird” separate from “the cheep,” and “a sound” separate from “the hearing.” By the way that it describes and labels things, thought literally creates a mirage world of separate things, a world that comes to seem completely believable and real, just as a movie or a dream or a mirage seems real and believable. But this world created by thought is conceptual. It’s not what we actually perceive, but rather, it is what we’ve learned to think we are perceiving. Thought evaluates and judges everything, has all kinds of ideas about how things should be, how they could or should be different—how I should be different, how the others should be different, how the world should be different. Thought creates stories about where we think we’re going and where we think we’ve been.
The root thought is the “I” thought—the idea that there is “me” having all these thoughts and authoring them, “me” who is steering my ship down the waterway of life, “me” who hopes to one day “drop the self” and become an enlightened me.