The Right Side of Thought - More To That

Reflecting on the nature of thought may not come naturally, but it can be trained with consistent practice. In the same way our muscles don’t bulk up without physical exercise, our minds won’t sharpen up without adequate mental training. Contemplative practices like meditation and prayer contribute to this type of project, but much of it starts by ... See more

When you notice the unique texture of each thought, it becomes easier to identify it when it arises, and to view it objectively, without reacting to it. The thought is exactly where it needs to be, and there’s no need to interpret it in any way. It’s kind of like the difference between seeing a bug in your home vs. seeing a bug in nature. In the fo... See more

Thoughts are so powerful because each one offers a deeply compelling interpretation of our reality. It has the unique ability to assign meaning to a given event, as the event itself doesn’t intrinsically come with an associated emotion. For example, if we get laid off from a job, the layoff itself is simply an objective event with no innate, emotio... See more

Interestingly enough, these two perspectives act as the universal endpoints of a see-saw representing our quality of thought – with Rumination on one side, and Reflection on the other.

However, I have a feeling that most of you are not wrestling between using thought for good and using it for terror. The issue of choosing between enlightening ideas and toxic ones may certainly represent a struggle for us, but I’m pretty sure that this battle wasn’t what my mom was referring to when she was telling me to stop thinking so much.

Reflection can mean many things, but at its core, I think it comes down to our ability to strip these emotional charges from our thoughts. Instead of allowing each thought’s emotional baggage to dictate our every action, what if we can strip away that energy and observe the thought itself, without any judgment?

At this point, some of you may be asking, “Being on the right side of thought is great and all, but is it really that important to spend your time thinking? After all, reflection doesn’t put food on the table, it doesn’t get the world’s businesses moving, and it sure as hell won’t drive my ass to work. So what’s the point?”

The very smartphone or laptop you may be using to read this is the result of thousands of minds, all thinking together about what it takes to extract raw materials from the Earth, assemble everything into the singular shape you see now, imbue it with the properties of computational power, and cleverly market the resulting device so your hard-earned... See more

A great response to that question comes in Simon Blackburn’s book, Think, which has a whole section devoted to answering it. In it, he offers this reply: