... you could read minds?

This article might be a little bit different from what you are expecting from its title. Reading minds; most of you probably have telepathy in mind, which is mostly presented to us in form of science fiction novels and similar mediums, like TV shows, books, etc. But that is not, what this articles content is going to be. It will however focus on a completely different aspect, one that many of us most likely never gave a thought to. What could we learn about ourselves, if we would possess the ability to read and listen to other people’s thoughts? Has anyone of you ever thought about that? As I presume most of you haven’t, let’s do it together now.

I am quite confident that if we had the ability to read each other’s minds, we would realize pretty soon, that our minds can be rather chaotic places. We usually don’t have only one thought at a time or in the order we expect them to be. Instead they are all over the place and everything but linear, confronting the person trying to read our mind, with an endless and complex mass of thoughts. But that’s not even all we would be able to notice. Memories, imaginations, sounds, even your inner voice, which normally only you can hear, would now be exposed and overwhelm anyone who is trying to make sense of it.

Now that we came to the realization that reading another person’s mind might not be as easy as we initially thought, would you still want the ability to do so, or are you satisfied with how it is right now, without another person thoughts crashing down on you like meter high waves?

That minds can be kind of chaotic places is however not the only realization we would be able to come to, therefore let’s move on and discover what else there is to figure out.

Irrational; just one word but something that would become apparent relatively quickly is that not all of our thoughts are rational. Every one of us has some kind of irrational thoughts or ideas that make absolutely no sense, if you properly think about them, every once in a while, we normally just don’t share them with others as we now that they are inappropriate. Many of our instant reactions are however driven by our emotions and therefore inextricably linked to our egos. Once the initial emotions subside and a more reasoned thought processes, only then we realize how ridiculous the first thoughts actually were.

The third thing we would probably notice is that people think a lot about themselves and we are not talking about thoughts like what or how I am going to do something. But when it’s not your own thoughts you are listening to, you quickly start to realize that the remaining thoughts revolve about vanity, narcissism and selfishness. If you would take your time and observe a mind in action, you would find the ego trying to protect and strengthen its position, providing you with a better understanding of how much influence your ego actually has. You would figure out and finally understand that your ego is the one responsible for all the worry and anxiety you feel and the enormous amount of thoughts you dedicate to these feelings.

To come to a conclusion I am pretty sure that reading another person’s mind would actually allow us to learn a lot about ourselves. For example it would reassure us that we are not any different form anyone else and we don’t have to be ashamed of our thoughts, as other people have them as well. It would also give us the chance to better understand that irrational behavior often results of irrational thoughts.

But now to really end this article, just keep in mind thoughts don’t define a person, as the person itself is not the thoughts, they are thinking. Furthermore don’t stress too much about irrationality, fear, anxiety and the ego as you are not the only one having to face and deal with them. So all in all being able to read another person’s mind might just be the biggest eye-opener all of us need.