Want to play a game?

Think the following thoughts:
I want to stomp a pineapple.
I am going to stomp a pineapple.  
I am stomping a pineapple.

Are you stomping a pineapple?  Um… please say no. Ok, good.

And now that these thoughts have come along, do you have a burning urge to run out and stomp a pineapple?

‘Course not.

Know what this tells us?

It tells us it doesn’t matter what we think.

Shut up. This is an outrage! How can the Mind-Tickler be so wrong?

Hopefully your indignation at this heresy is not so great that you run for the unsubscribe button, leaving behind a sad Mind-Tickler, who loves you and wants only good things for you. ​

Ok, ok, so... back to our thoughts of stomping a pineapple… notice all I have to do is write that, and you think it, imagine it, see it happening in your mind’s eye. And yet, no pineapple stomping is actually happening.

Why not?

Because those thoughts do not have the power to make you stomp anything. If they did, you’d be craving some pineapple slush right now. But no.

Same you, sitting in the same chair. Absolutely nothing going on.

Thoughts… those traditional spiritual bad guys in urgent need of rehabilitation and cessation via meditation, inquiry, therapy and drugs...?

Harmless. Powerless. Meaningless.

And now think of an orange triangle. Or a gun. Or a child. Or a puppy. Or a mean person. What differentiates the thought of a triangle, gun, puppy or meanie from the pineapple?

Nothing. They’re all the same.

All thoughts are the same. No matter what they’re about, they’re all made of the same stuff.

Which happens to be a whole lotta nuthin. I mean, what are they anyway? Puffs of air, space, unicorn tails, what?

Some words, mental pixels, sensations. That’s all. Just a collection of sounds, letters, shapes and spaces.

And sounds, spaces and shapes have no inherent meaning.

Still, it does feel like they have meaning, yes. And what exactly would be supplying this meaning?

More thought. Nothing, on top of nothing, on top of nothing.

Now of course I realize that in this day of mass shootings and natural disasters and worldwide suffering, even bothering to pay attention to whether thoughts matter can seem like a frivolous esoteric nonsense exercise. “Who cares?” may well be the thought of the moment.

But rather than too-much-time-on-our-hands BS, what if our seeing that 'thought is a bunch of harmless nothing'  could actually be what sets us free of the need to escape thinking in the first place? And therefore more free to deal with things that do matter?

I mean, all that time and inward-gazing devoted to acquiring less-painful rumination…

Can you see how freeing it might be instead to not have to monitor every fleeting mental lashing, to not have to correct it, hate yourself for it, or turn it a “positive?”  

What a relief.

A relief that comes not from fixing thoughts, but by seeing that they come, they go, and they just don’t matter.

Which means maybe we could finally leave them alone. To run free! To blow through and then out. To live their brief little thought-lives un-attacked by the sharp wagging fingers of supposed-to’s and get-betters and not-good-enoughs.

That might leave us free to help others, or to figure out how to airlift supplies, or to be available to new solutions. Or maybe we could spend an afternoon with loved ones or working out or just staring at the ceiling, without hating ourselves for being unproductive or lazy or overwhelmed with pain.

Seeing that thoughts don't matter just might make the world a better place for everyone.  And interestingly, might also provide exactly what we wanted fixed, inquired and meditated thinking to accomplish in the first place...

A quieter mind, easier feelings, and the grace to not be owned by some meaningless words.

It might be worth finding out.

Don't you think?

(No pineapples were harmed in the writing of this message.)