Nicolas Boulenger - Welcome

What we think and what we do isn't a given.

Just because it comes from us doesn't mean we agree with it or that it serves us.

It's one of the first things meditation teaches you:

I don't choose my thoughts. They arise.

And then:

I don't choose my actions. Impulses come up, and I choose to follow them or not.

Or sometimes, I build the action purely intellectually and choose to carry it out.

And who makes all those choices? My thoughts – which I don't choose.

I'm convinced that much of our daily anxiety comes from an unconscious desire to gather all of this under a single umbrella.

We can't stand the idea of being a stack of things.

We want to hold on to the picture in which, at the top of our inner pyramid, sits thought – the part that would really be us – running everything else.

And we spend our days meticulously erasing every piece of evidence to the contrary.

I am not a patchwork! I am Jean-Pierre! 😭

Many studies have shown that the brain doesn't actually work that way.

A huge number of decisions are made well before the prefrontal cortex, the seat of conceptual intelligence, gets involved.

Result: logic serves more to post-rationalize than to choose.

We work hard to explain why we did that.

If needed, we invent stories. About ourselves. About the world. To justify some action. Stories we end up defending tooth and nail, and which, when challenged, become a new source of anxiety.

Anything rather than admit we might not be 100% consistent.

Letting go is recognizing this mechanism.

It's accepting that we're a stack of currents we don't always control.

It's understanding that we can watch what happens inside with the same interest and curiosity as what happens outside.

The thought that arises is as beautiful and unexpected as the bird taking flight.

The action we take is no less mysterious than our neighbor's.

We watch ourselves the way we'd watch the sea or a storm: fascinated by a mix of complexity and beauty that's beyond us.

No more difference between an inside we'd control and an outside we'd fall victim to.

Just the world dancing.

And we're part of it.