“I am not my thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and experiences. I am not the content of my life. I am Life. I am the space in which all things happen. I am consciousness. I am the Now. I Am.”

Eckhart Tolle
(The Pitfall) Mistaken Identity, The Most Common Cause of Emotional “Indigestion”:

Looking back at the process of how it works (from the last page) remember that there are 3 parts of the brain that are involved in this process of “digestion.” All 3 of them are strengthened like a muscle. Each part needs to be balanced in strength relative to the others to create harmony and balance and each part “gets stronger” when you use it.

The most important part of the brain is the “Shen” or self-aware/conscious part as it is the “parent” of the other 2 and is in charge of the actual balancing and integration process.

When the self-aware/conscious brain is not sufficiently strong for the task required you can develop “states of mind” that are dis-eases of the mind/body that are diagnosible in Traditional Chinese Medicine. This also dramatically weakens your ability to “digest” your emotions.


I AM THE THOUGHT VS I AM AWARE OF THE THOUGHT:

There is a HUGE difference between “I am thinking…” and “I am aware of the thought…” and this difference is KEY to integrating and digesting your emotions.

Mistaking the thought “I am happy, I feel happy” with the awareness of that thought is the most common cause of “emotional indigestion” I see in private practice. Let’s explore this…


When we look at the “I am” statements listed above we are actually referring to 2 different functions of the brain:
  1. “I am thinking” is referring to the thinking/emotional brain. This part of the brain is described as an infinite ocean of thoughts, ideas, images, and emotions that “washes over” the self-aware/conscious brain.
    1. There is no conscious control or identifible order to these thoughts, they simply arise from an ocean of infinite possibilities.
    2. We could say that this area of the brain is similar to the western concept of your subconscious (although I hesitate to make any direct correlation)
    3. So the thought “I am thinking” is actually a creation of the thinking/emotional brain
    4. Note that if your self-aware/conscious brain does not exercise some degree of control over the thinking/emotional brain you would become completely lost in thought and quite literally drive yourself insane.
  1. “I am aware of the thought” is referring to the self-aware/conscious brain. This part of the brain is described as the “parent” of all other parts of the brain and in charge of integrating and balancing them into a cohesive whole.
    1. This part of the brain recognizes and interprets the thoughts and other input from the thinking/emotional brain and body brain.
    2. This part of the brain is silent and empty, it “holds space” for the thoughts and emotions much like a strainer would.

To put this into the simplest terms you could say that the thought you are aware of comes from the thinking/emotional brain (Hun), where-as the fact that you are aware of it comes from the self-aware/conscious brain (Shen.)


why is this distinction important?

Most people live in their thinking/emotional brain “I am thinking…”. The more you use a particular part of your brain the stronger it becomes which means that this part of the brain is very overdeveloped in most people.

Remember that it is called the thinking/emotional brain so when you think “I am sad” and then go into story mode “I feel this way because…” you are actually still in the same part of your brain! You have just moved from 1 end of the thinking/emotional spectrum to the other end but haven’t actually left this part of your brain at all!

If you feel a bit lost right now that’s ok. To paraphrase one of my favorite teachers “That is the feeling of the mind (thinking/emotional brain) being checkmated.” The thinking/emotional brain is taught in further detail on the “Thinking/Emotional Brain” page. Feel free to swing over there before moving on to the last page here if needed.

Up Last: Tying It All Together (How to Avoid the Pitfall)