We all have thoughts that pop into our head about how bad we are. Dark thoughts - I’m actually a failure, I’m going to end up in financial ruins, I’m actually not a good businessperson, I am actually the flaws I don’t want to admit about myself.
This is the real danger of living asleep - that we ‘know’ all the dark things about ourselves are true, so we’re either spending our days denying those truths, avoiding them, or covering them up by overcompensating, etc.
A real eye-opener is to consider: what if that’s not true?
An easy way to check if you’re living asleep or consciously living is to answer the following question truthfully: do I accept that my thoughts about myself are true?
The answer is that thoughts do not equal truth. So if my thinking goes something like this: I have -$10 in my bank account (fact) and the reason for that is I just can’t get it together. I’m always struggling and it’s just the truth of the matter. My life is harder and actually, I’m a loser.
What’s so easily misleading here is the initial fact: I have a bank balance of -$10. Because this is true, the unconscious self accepts the following thoughts as true, as well. However, they are not. They are just thoughts. A powerful exercise at this moment is to imagine the voice that says those comments as a friend sitting next to you in the couch (a powerful exercise from Michael Singer's incredible book, The Untethered Soul). Would you accept what that friend says as true? Probably not, because they are almost never right. Thus, that voice very rarely produces information that is true.
This can be a first step to disengaging who you really are, your Self, from the voice in your head. It takes practice and commitment to noticing the voice without blame or judgement, just noticing. This is the work required to become a conscious being.
This concept is greatly expounded by Bryon Katie in "The Work" - read more here: https://thework.com/2017/10/four-liberating-questions/
