Not Buying The Thought

by Gregory Allen Butler

The tern, "not buying the thought" has to do with not buying in to all the negative thoughts the mind puts out. That's one of the things I’ve been reading in a book that showed up in my mailbox unsolicited. It is titled Get Out of Your Mind & Into Your Life. What a wonderful gift from the universe.

It covers a lot of the ground that you will read in The Power of Now but it also covers some new ground. It also incorporates a lot of exercises to enable you to experience first hand what the authors, Steven C. Hayes, Ph.D. and Spencer Smith are explaining.

What it has in common with The Power of Now is the notion of the mind limiting our experience as human beings, particularly in regards to the mind keeping us out of the present moment.

But in Get Out of Your Mind & Into Your Life, the authors introduce a term they calls cognitive defusion. The book tells us defusion is a made up word that you won’t find in the dictionary. “We use it because in normal contexts words and the events they refer to can be treated almost as if they were the same thing: the two are ‘fused’ (from the Latin root meaning ‘poured together’).

For example, a hurricane can be a terrifying event to experience. But I know one person here in South Carolina who reacts with fear if I just mention the word hurricane. It has become the "H" word. So even though there are no hurricanes here right now, it doesn’t matter. The word hurricane and the physical phenomenon of hurricanes have become "fused."

That is an example of what cognitive defusion would address. Hurricanes are destructive. The word "hurricane" is harmless. No need to be afraid of that which is harmless.

And they have a series of exercises or techniques that are methods for learning how to be present in the here and now in a broader and more flexible way. For example, the person I was mentioning would not have to leave the room if someone turned on the television to the weather channel and they were talking about hurricanes.

I tried some of these exercises and found that they do indeed work. What they are intended to do is give you the means for seeing words and labels as mere words, not reality. They take the “power” away from labels we have given ourselves labels and words that do not serve us in constructive ways.

These cognitive defusion techniques allow us to have perspective and distance from ideas and concepts that we cannot otherwise get away from.

This is all addressed in a chapter of the book called, Having a Thought Versus Buying a Thought. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book. At the end of the chapter they gives their readers some cues that will show you when you are fused with your thought.” In other words, when you need some distance. Here they are:

Your thoughts feel old, familiar, and lifeless

You submerge into your thoughts and the external world
disappears for a while

Your mind feels comparative and evaluative

You are mentally somewhere else or in some other time

Your mind has a heavy “right and wrong” feel

Your mind is busy or confusing

The cognitive defusion techniques are excellent tools for bringing consciousness into our thought processes. It fosters awareness. It serves the purpose of a scissors cutting a rope that has us bound in captivity.

Not only does it help undo the past conditioning, but it also shows ways of thinking and how to observe the thought process so that you don’t create further entanglements. The harsh things we say to ourselves can be so believable unless we can get some distance.

If you are the type of person that is patient enough to do these type of exercises you can’t go wrong with this book. You’ll find that your life begins to unfold in experience rather than in mental concepts.

When you get to the point where you can clearly see that thoughts are not reality, that they are merely thoughts, you can begin to live a life of freedom, a life of mindfulness.

But it is a hard obstacle to overcome. When we have self-conceptualizations, we in effect have created an identity for ourselves. To break free of this self-conceptualization would amount to a sense of dying, although it is a dying to a false self. But that is a scary proposition for most people. The ego and the mind love to hold on to the familiar, even if it is painful.

One of the authors, Steven Hayes, recounts in the book the story of a client who was wrapped up in a series of negative self-conceptualizations. After making progress with the client, the client began to tear up and express with a sense of fear in his voice, “If I am not my thoughts, then who am I?”

Going from the finite world of the mind into the infinity of the unknown can be daunting. It’s a metamorphosis, like the caterpillar turning into a butterfly. So liberating, and yet, so frightening.

It’s a dying before we die. And that is holistic personal development at its best.