Imagine a three car collision.
You are in the middle.
You hit the car in front of you, of course.
Do you blame yourself for having hit the car before you, even though the car behind you started the domino effect?
Now imagine a two car collision.
You are the car in the back.
Your conception of blame is probably accurate.
You caused the rear-end collision.
You drove your car into theirs.
Now think of your thoughts.
Some voluntarily come crashing into you.
The crash causes a domino effect, and you begin dwelling, ruminating, and catastrophizing upon the original (involuntary) thought. You assume you're bad for having these thoughts. Not only do you feel bad about the line of thinking, but you then feel guilty for having started the thinking. The thoughts must be you, right?
Sure, we have the ability to think voluntary thoughts too. And for voluntary thoughts, ideas, & rationalizations— maybe we feel appropriate guilt for conjuring up something that we do not like. A "bad thought" per se.
But at other times (& I may argue most times)— thoughts simply come to us, more or less automatically. Yet we forsake ourselves for those instantaneous & automatic appearances in consciousness.
It's mad really. And harsh.
Be more forgiving.
Realize the mind is chatty and sometimes sinister and many times miscalibrated.
Due to this miscalibration, we needlessly beat ourselves up for great durations of time and inaccurately admit fault for our mind's chain-reaction of colliding cars…
when we are simply the middle car.
Have a thought or let a thought have you, but know the difference and move onward.
