How to wake up from the dream of life

 Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily life is but a dream…

Most people walk through their lives as if they were living in a dream.

They try harder and harder, day after day, racing around within the confines of the dream, but making limited progress when all they need to do is wake up, realize they’re in a dream, and start to fly.

As the dreamer doesn’t realize the dream isn’t reflective of reality, so most people don’t realize their thoughts are not reflective of reality.

Of course, this is not always true.

But as you can’t evaluate the dream until you’re aware you’re in one, so you can’t evaluate your thoughts until you become aware you see your life through them.

The thoughts you have define the reality you live in, for better or worse.

And by learning to step outside of your thoughts, you can see your thinking patterns, keep the ones that help you, and get rid of the ones that don’t. 

In short time, you can rapidly accelerate the path to confident, calm, clear patterns of thinking from which possibilities seem endless. It makes you feel like you have finally “woken up” in the dream of life.

Enter Metacognition. 

Metacognition is “thinking about thinking.” It’s a crucial component of learning science, educational psychology, and increasingly general psychology & therapy.

It’s also something the sages, philosophers, and kings have been doing throughout history.

When you boil it down, there are really just two steps to it:

A. Separate “yourself” from your thoughts

B. Modify your thought patterns

Easy right?

In this article, let's focus on A:

Separating yourself from your thoughts

The “meta” in “metacognition” relies upon you stepping outside of your own thoughts & observing them as if from afar. This is easier said than done, because most of us grow up experiencing the world through our thoughts.

Furthermore, your brain, and your ego in particular, is not always fond of you meddling around in the inner workings of your own thought processes.

Your brain wants you to survive, not to thrive. It thinks you’ve got a good thing going as is. It doesn’t want new management coming in. So it’s not going to make stepping back & observing so easy.

But with a little practice, anyone can do it. 

Here are five simple practices to start with. Choose one or mix & match:

1. Cultivate observing ego

This is the practice of trying to literally observe your own ego. From time to time throughout the day, just take a few minutes during which you don’t do anything but watch thoughts as they come into your mind. 

Let your mind run free and watch the different strains of thought that come and go – dreams, desires, questions, judgment, resistance to trying to do the exercise.

2. Practice mindfulness

Most people practice mindfulness to feel better, which it does help with. But it’s also a great way to separate yourself from your thoughts. This is why Zen masters make monks wash the dishes & sweep the floors.

Practice by focusing your complete attention on what you’re doing at the present moment, whatever it is. As you do so, you’ll notice your thoughts occasionally trying to drift away to other things. As you notice your thoughts doing this, it creates separation between your thoughts and your “self.”

3. Meditate

Meditation in its simplest form is just a more formal way of practicing mindfulness. Start with just 5-10 minutes and either focus on an object in front of you or close your eyes and focus on your breath. Simply continue to bring your thoughts back to your point of focus.

When my thoughts are really getting away from me, I like to imagine them as a hurricane swirling around me and I am the calm in the eye of the storm. 

4. Practice non-reactivity

This is just what it sounds like. Make an intentional point of not reacting immediately to things that you normally would whether it’s words, actions, or anything else. Practice hesitating for a just a few seconds so that you can see what automatic thoughts and feelings arise which normally propel you into reaction. Then react, but work on doing so intentionally.

5. Practice non-judgement

This is similar to non-reactivity, but it takes it a step further. After creating space in which to observe your instinctual reaction, start making a practice of not putting a value judgment on it at all. Don’t say whether you should or shouldn’t have thought that or had that feeling. Don’t think about whether it’s good or bad.

Eventually you will do these things, but in this practice make a point to withhold judgement, no matter how unnatural it feels. Just look at it like you were an explorer gazing upon a new discovery.

As you begin to separate yourself from your thoughts, you’ll realize that your ego’s grip on the wheel will start to loosen, and you will have an opening to take back control of the ship.

Read on right here to learn how...