Who Would You Be Without This Thought?

It may not be true right now, but if I sit in it, allow stillness to meet these thoughts, I can see the truth rise.
~ Byron Katie

A practice that brings great equanimity, balance, and discernment into my life is Self-Inquiry.

In the Buddhist tradition, it’s a dialectic between witness (Self-awareness) and ego that allows all that we defend to peel away and reveal the unconditional nature that "I am".

It's like being the first one at the party and having others pile their coats on top when you're the first one leaving - we have layers upon layers of subtle thoughts, beliefs, behavior, meanings, and emotions that we need to take off one by one in order to get to our own, or Original - "the face before your mother and father were born" ... before the idea of who you think you are.
 
Being aware of the layers means being able to see ourselves getting caught in the ideas of who we think we are, noticing how the thoughts that they are based on become a hall of mirrors that distract us from the Original.

How do we know which is the Original?

To locate ourselves, and see/sense through the body, by relaxing the mind. 

In order to respond, we must externalize our thoughts – write them out, speak them out, investigate their validity, flip them upside down, turn them around and allow them to Self correct.

Take the experience I had just before opening this page. I am sitting on the edge of lake Champlain, Vermont, listening to the sounds around me: the water lapping onto the stony shore, the woodpeckers on the cypress, the hum of the ferry crossing, my husband in the airstream talking in a meeting, Henry barking, hammer tapping, birds tweeting - it's all happening simultaneously, but I can only pay attention to one sound at a time.
 
I can scan through the sounds, label them as good or bad, and, in doing so, separate them. And I use my attention to focus on the "good" sounds that further the way I want to feel, and also to block out the "bad" sounds that don’t fit the way I want to feel. But this type of process limits me from the potential of all the sounds.

I recognize this limitation.
 
I decide to meditate and begin by bringing my attention to the tip of my nose. I concentrate my attention like a laser beam, focusing on the sensation of cold air coming in and warm air going out my nostrils. Not before long, thoughts begin to seep into my field, mostly teacher voices telling me to "mark the spot, this is good stuff". I notice the “hook”, take a breath, find myself behind the eyes, and am then prompted again to take another lunge with razor-sharp focus and bring attention to the tip of my nose once again; it’s my anchor.

Mind is used as an instrument - sonar and maps come together to locate me and I confidently drop anchor, relax and look around.
 
As I do so, awareness awakens the subtle layers of sensation that I didn’t notice while scanning sounds and writing internal dissertations. I notice the breeze on my cheek, on the hairs above my lip, and how the sensation outlines the edge of my upper lip. As I do, those sensations rise, and more is felt, my lips, the folds around my mouth, my forehead … like some veil lifting, before long I am aware of parts of my face that I normally don’t notice.

These areas are alive, integral, and subtle chain links to my person, yet, until I directed my attention to them, I was unaware.
 
In a similar way, direct inquiry brings awareness to the surfaces around the subtle layers of our thoughts that fade in the background, but which are just as integral. We bring attention to a thought, this is "good" or this is "bad", and we block out any awareness of anything else around that thought.
 
Being aware of our thoughts, and investigating their reliability and loyalty to serving our family, allows us to detach from their power over our experience and, instead, be present in the experience.

One has a conclusion and one is pure possibility.