For the most part, our thought process is involuntary, automatic, and repetitive. It is just a kind of mental static that serves no real purpose. Strictly speaking, we do not think: thought is something that happens to us. When we say "I think" the will is implicit.
It implies that we have a say in the matter, that we can choose. However, in most cases this is not the case. The statement "I think" is as false as "I digest" or "I circulate my blood." Digestion happens, circulation happens, thought happens.
The voice of the mind has a life of its own. Most people are at the mercy of that voice, which means that they are possessed by thought, by mind. And since the mind is conditioned by the past, it pushes the person to relive the past over and over again. In the East they use the word karma to describe this phenomenon. Of course, we cannot know that when we are identified with that voice. If we knew, we would cease to be possessed because possession occurs when we confuse the possessing entity with ourselves, that is, when we become it.
For thousands of years, humanity has allowed itself to be possessed more and more of the mind, failing to recognize that this possessing entity is not our Self. It was through complete identification with the mind that a false sense of self arose: the ego. .
The density of the ego depends on our degree (that of our consciousness) of identification with the mind and thought. Thought is just a minuscule aspect of the totality of consciousness, the totality of what we are.
The degree of identification with the mind varies from person to person. Some people enjoy periods of freedom, however short, and the peace, joy, and zest for life they experience in those moments make life worth living. They are also the moments in which creativity, love and compassion flourish. Other people remain trapped in the egotistical state. They live separated from themselves, from others, and from the world around them. They reflect the tension in his face, in his frown, or in the absent or fixed expression of his gaze. Thought absorbs most of their attention, so they don't really see or hear others. They are not present in any situation because their attention is on the past or the future, both of which obviously exist only in the mind as thought forms. Or they relate to others through some kind of character that they represent, so that they are not themselves.
Most people live outside their essence, some to such an extent that almost everyone recognizes the "falseness" of their behaviors and interactions, except those who are equally false and those who are alienated from what they really are.
Being alienated means not being comfortable in any situation or with any person, not even with oneself. We constantly seek to get “home” but we never feel at home.
Some of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, such as Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, TS Eliot, and James Joyce, recognized in alienation the universal dilemma of human existence, which they probably felt deeply, in such a way that they were able to express it masterfully through Of his works. They do not offer a solution, but they show us a reflection of the human predicament so that we can see it more clearly. Recognizing that predicament is the first step to transcend.
(A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle)