“I think, therefore I am,” doesn’t mean I am my thoughts, nor does it mean that you are yours. Even though Descartes believed, “If I am thinking then I must exist…” other philosophers later pointed out that the thoughts might be coming from somewhere else (although I’m not sure where that somewhere else is) so all we can really say is: “there are thoughts.” If you’re not your thoughts—a terrifying idea for some, a gift to others—what are you? We’ve been trying to answer the question of what it means to be human for centuries.
A couple of ways of thinking about what it is to be a sentient mammal in an increasingly secular world can be found within contemplative psychology or in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT). The former describes us as a “heap” or aggregate of body (form), feeling (the tone of experience before thinking begins: pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral), as perception (naming or memory), as mental formations (thoughts, emotions) and consciousness (defined as contact with the senses and the objects of their awareness). CBT looks at us as a composition of thoughts, emotions, body, and behaviours. Thoughts, then, are simply one part of what it is to be…
