Thoughts.
I was under the illusion that I controlled my thoughts. Like most people, I guess, I assumed that I originated them.
I was the author.
The problem was that the I that I thought I was was not the I that I really am. I was but a figment of an imagined being imagining himself being.
To bolster this machination I could only interact, the majority of the time, with other figments.
I couldn't stay too long in the space of those who were not figments or were aware of their figment status and were working on re-establishing their reality.
Otherwise I would have had to acknowledge that something was wrong. And since thoughts never leave their source that would mean that something was wrong with me.
Looking back I see that keeping up appearances was a lot of work and pain and struggle - which was necessary only in the context of I was trapped and needed to get free but not in the context of the reality of being.
The outcome was inevitable in spite of me and who I aligned myself with. The idea that I had a means to prolong that inevitability was part of the illusion.
In true being there is no choice but to let go because there is no other way of being.
Every now is but an instantaneous moment that is gone the moment it is brought to awareness.
I do not know where thoughts come from. But they must come from somewhere because I have them.
Meditation seems to be the best method I have found for letting go and allowing thoughts to freely flow from wherever it is they originate.
Not to control them. Not to silence them by force. Not to make myself holy by having fewer of them.
But to see them come and go without mistaking them for myself.
Maybe that is the beginning of freedom: not the end of thought, but the end of believing every thought is mine, or true, or necessary to obey.
The illusion was that I was the author of every thought that passed through me.
The awakening is realizing I can watch them pass — and remain... me, the observer.