Your mind is using you

The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: ‘I think, therefore I am.’ He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being, and identity with thinking. The compulsive thinker—which means almost everyone—lives in a state of apparent separateness, in an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflict, a world that reflects the ever-increasing fragmentation of the mind ...

Thinking has become a disease. Disease happens when things get out of balance. For example, there is nothing wrong with cells dividing and multiplying in the body, but when this process continues in disregard of the total organism, cells proliferate and we have disease.

The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly—you usually don't use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over.