“Why do you have thoughts? This question concerns two things. Purpose and habit. Originally, when born, we did not have thoughts. As shocking as this sounds, it is a fact: we had direct experience without thoughts, largely because we had not been trained to think in terms of language, identities, concepts, and cause/effect scenarios.

Over time, we became infected with reasons and purposes that generate forms of thinking, speech… and action. But the purposive origins of the frameworks we are exposed to are largely toxic. Many of them represent something more like a violation than the intelligence they advertise as.

When we think things, we are acting out purposes that were imposed upon us by our parents, peers, and societies. Yet none of those sources were dependable in the sense of being true, and for this reason, nearly none of our thinking is useful or trustworthy.

I encourage you to ‘backtrace’ your thoughts to purposes, and to trace those back to their origins. Speaking or writing is similar: we begin with a purpose that we are rarely aware of, but one that can be derived either by perceptive others or ourselves if we are motivated to do so. When you speak, why are you speaking? Does the purpose find effective expression in your speaking? When you examine the purposive origins of thought, speech, and activity, you will learn many surprising things.

One of the first things may be that nearly none of our purposes are intelligent or effective: they are disease-like. Most of what motivates our thought, speech and action is untrustworthy. Part of this is due to the context in which it is taking place (our roles were falsified to ourselves and others from early childhood, and this process is further developed into toxicity in our life phases).

Another aspect is due to habits we have developed that at once deprive us of creativity and intelligence, while at the same time impressing their necessity upon a kind of false consciousness that is nearly the opposite of awareness. Why do you have thoughts? What are the purposes that underlie your speech and action?

These questions, properly pursued, are more valuable than success or popularity. They form the basis of a doorway that can lead to liberation, wonder, joy and awakening from forms of slavery that we have become addicted to re-enacting. Examine this matter carefully at least a few times a day, and you will soon be surprised… and rewarded… by the results.”

— an anonymous informant