Back when I was a catechumen, this was one of the most deeply wonderful, transformative, and downright revelatory things I was taught-- that most of our thoughts aren't ours. In retrospect, it's so amazingly *simple*. But I'm not sure any single thing a teacher has ever said to me has been so life-changing. It had simply never occurred to me before-- I'd been rolling along my whole life on the assumption that I AM my thoughts. That's where "me" resides, right? It's hard to express how liberating it was to set that aside, and now, for the first time, be able to examine my thoughts and say "No, actually, that's not mine." It came from a book, a friend, an enemy, a TV commercial, a movie, a malign spirit...

It's a bit shocking to find how few of my thoughts have anything to do with me, but being able to chuck out some of the garbage thoughts does make more room for other things ;) And it isn't that "outside" thoughts are all bad! Why else would we bother with things like reading the Psalms, or using the words of our forbears' prayers? Why, to populate the space with better material-- to walk our mental and spiritual feet through the grooves worn by better people than ourselves, right? But so much of what we unthinkingly take in is just garbage. The fasts are a good opportunity to take out the trash.