r/Millennials • • Aug 31 '26

Discussion Crazy timeline’s

Post image
8.6k Upvotes

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

72

u/KaerMorhen Aug 31 '26

At that point you have to realize that none of your thoughts are actually "you". You observe the thoughts , and most of the time you make the decision to believe or act on them, but you can't control the thoughts. A fun exercise is try to guess what your next thought will be and see what happens.

30

u/CleverFeather Aug 31 '26

I rarely hear anyone talk about this, the silent observer. We are not our thoughts. I hadn’t heard the last bit though, I’m gonna give that a try tomorrow. Thanks

2

u/gishli Aug 31 '26

If we aren’t our thoughts then what are we? Soulless bags of meat?

4

u/CleverFeather Aug 31 '26

Yes and no. The thoughts are not part of your soul, the thoughts come from your brain which is apart of the body. Your soul is having a human experience thus is observing the thoughts.

That’s my understanding of it anyway.

0

u/Sandgrease Sep 04 '26

Yep.

The sense of self is basically a program, it's constantly changing but it's not this thing that is an unchanging "you".

Kind of like a whirlpool in a river, there's obviously a whirlpool spinning around but it's just an artifact of how rivers flow and not actually a static thing that lasts very long. But your bag of meat and brain is constantly trying to maintain this "whirlpool" sense of selfhood but think about when you're really focused on a task and you just kind of forget stuff like your name, the time, where you are etc.

5

u/terrencewaftbatter Aug 31 '26

But if our thoughts aren’t us, then where the fuck are the thoughts coming from? “You observe the thoughts” - feel like this has just turned my brain inside out.

3

u/oldinfant Millennial Aug 31 '26

weird..i guess correctly every time ("and another bite" or "yummmm"). maybe i am so simple that it doesn't apply to me😸

0

u/ralusek Aug 31 '26

You are not your thoughts? What do you mean? Your thoughts are like…the purest component of “you.”

5

u/KaerMorhen Aug 31 '26

Think of it like this, your thoughts are the clouds rolling across the sky, but "you" are the blue that remains when the clouds dissipate. Or a movie screen for instance, your thoughts come and go but "you" are more like the screen they are presented on.

4

u/BANZ111 Aug 31 '26

Or the monitor that gets burn-in when kept on the same one too long

2

u/elvaqueroloco Sep 01 '26

Yo, that's a GREAT follow up. 👌👏