You Are Not Your Thoughts: Gently Entering Non-Dual Awareness
When Thoughts Feel Like the Only Reality
Before meditation gave me even a hint of spaciousness, my internal world was a tidal pool of stories—memories, hopes, catastrophic movie trailers flickering behind my eyes. “You are not your thoughts” sounded, honestly, like spiritual marketing. How could I not be my thoughts? They dictated my moods and my morning, the song stuck in my head, the tone of every argument.
I felt there were only two settings: lost in the fog or trying desperately to control the fog. Neither promised any escape. Back then, I didn’t spend time wondering about what is consciousness, or whether there could be some ground deeper than my thoughts. I just felt trapped inside my mind.
The First Time I Noticed a Gap
Meditation teachers told me to “witness my thoughts.” Instead, for years, I just got tangled in new knots: “Am I witnessing right? Should I be stiller, emptier, more... non-dual?” I envied anyone who seemed to speak from some exalted level of consciousness—as if they were floating above ordinary suffering. Yet, weirdly, there was sometimes a silent pause, a millisecond after an anxious thought, before the next wave crashed in. It wasn’t enlightenment. But it was real.
That silent pause is the closest I’ve come to something like non-dual awareness—an inner okayness where thoughts float by, neither grasped nor pushed away. My old story was that non-duality was for monks or yogis, not for someone whose nervous system jolts at the mailman’s footsteps. Only later did I really begin to explore non-duality explained in a way that felt personal and real.
Non-Dual Awareness Isn’t a Performance
I used to think “levels of consciousness” meant some distant hierarchy—one I’d climb if I could just shed all my human messiness. Now, I suspect it’s much humbler, rooted in the body, not in forcing out thoughts but trusting that awareness is already here, beneath and around whatever mind-content arises. Sometimes, I get curious about the difference between awareness vs attention—and how often my struggle is really about where attention is landing, not whether awareness itself is missing.
If you’re asking “what is non-dual awareness” and hoping for a lightning bolt, maybe let yourself be tender. For me, non-dual awareness is the sense that the mind’s noise is weather, not the sky. I don’t have to pretend the storm isn’t there. I just don’t have to live entirely in it. Over time, learning even a bit about advaita vedanta meaning helped me feel less lonely in this struggle, and more allowed to be exactly as I am.
If Your Thoughts Won’t Leave You Alone
There are days when practicing “you are not your thoughts” just feels pointless. My body is braced; old triggers resurface. If this is you, please know: you’re not failing at consciousness. You can notice just one breath, or the weight of your body in a chair, and let that be enough. Sometimes, gentler practices that involve the senses or movement support this—touching your arm, listening to sounds, letting your gaze soften. If you’re curious about the feeling of “watching yourself,” you might resonate with the observer self concept, which describes just that gentle stepping back.
If your system is in survival mode, you don’t have to chase non-dual states. Curiosity is the only requirement, and even that can be small. Sometimes, just brushing up against the idea of pure awareness definition is all that happens, and that’s absolutely enough.
The Science (and Mystery) of Stepping Back
Sometimes, the research reassures me: mindfulness—just noticing thoughts without buying the whole storyline—has been shown to calm the brain’s default mode network, that restless mental narrator. But no study can fully describe the slow opening that happens in lived experience, the softening of self-criticism when you realize awareness is not just one more thought, but the space containing them all.
Finding Your Own Form of Freedom
Maybe you long for one perfect glimpse of pure consciousness. Or maybe you just want a little less war with your mind. I no longer believe there’s only one right door to non-duality. At times, the most honest thing I can do is acknowledge: even if I am not my thoughts, sometimes that’s just a nice story—and that’s okay, too.
You might try pausing when you remember, feeling the chair beneath you, or letting the next thought pass by without naming it as “me.” But you don’t have to force any shift. You don’t have to perform awareness or leap to higher levels to belong here.
May you meet each fleeting thought with a little more space, and when that isn’t possible, may you know you are already enough.