I’ve been thinking about the difference between critical thinking and the kind of intelligence that has to sit beside it.
Critical thinking gets a lot of the limelight. Fair enough. It is the part of the mind that asks for evidence, spots the loose plank in an argument, and refuses to be charmed by every shiny claim that comes down the road. In a culture thick with sales pitches, outrage machines, and synthetic certainty, we need it. It is the Yang move: active, discriminating, separating what holds up from what does not.
But I keep wondering what its Yin counterpart is.
My best name for it, today, is receptive thinking. It is not the same as switching your brain off. It is not believing everything you feel, or treating a hunch as a court ruling. It is the capacity to sit with something before you pull it apart. To listen before you judge. To notice tone, context, relationship, body language, the strange image that arrives while you are making coffee, and the fact that an idea may still be half-grown.
Critical thought asks: is this true? Receptive thought asks: what is this showing me?
One works by distinction. The other works by attunement. One tests the map. The other notices what the map has left out: the texture of the ground, the person standing beside you, the nagging feeling that the question itself has been framed too narrowly.
I recognise the Yang reflex in myself. It wants to get hold of a thought quickly, put it through its paces, and decide whether it deserves to stay. Useful reflex. It has saved many of us from bad arguments, dodgy gurus, and the kind of certainty that falls apart the moment you ask it a second question.
Yet an overworked critical faculty can become a little border guard behind the eyes. Every new thought has to produce a passport before it can enter. Some ideas need questioning; some need a little room. A walk. A notebook. A few days of being carried around in the body before language catches up.
The opposite trap is real too. Receptivity without discernment can turn into absorption, where every feeling becomes a fact and every coincidence becomes an instruction. That road can get very strange, very quickly.
So I am not looking for a winner. I am looking for a rhythm. Receive the signal. Let it form. Then test it. Put it into words. See what remains when it meets other people, actual life, and the awkward furniture of reality.
Maybe thinking well is less like holding court and more like a good conversation between two old friends. One says, “Hang on, does that really stand up?” The other says, “Yes, but have you properly listened yet?”
Here’s the core idea: we see the world subjectively. We look at facts, but we create stories between those facts. When facts are absent, the mind fills in whatever it needs to make sense of things so we can get on with life. Hillman calls these “useful fictions.” They can be completely made up, but that doesn’t matter to the mind because the mind’s job is to help us live and get things done.
Vaihinger spends considerable time on this theory of “as if,” but what struck me most was his perspective on knowledge and thinking. He argues that knowledge and thinking exist to help life work, not to uncover some perfect objective truth.
Now, I’m someone who loves books. The idea of seeking knowledge for knowledge’s sake has always appealed to me. But Vaihinger says that’s not what the mind is for. It isn’t there to seek objective truth. Its job, as a tool, is to make life work for us.
The Purpose of Thinking
The mind helps humans (and animals) survive, plan, calculate outcomes, and deal with whatever situations arise. Because of this, we judge thinking practically. An idea is right if it works in practice.
The purpose of thought isn’t to mirror the world exactly as it is. It’s to help us predict what might happen and decide what to do next given our circumstances. Thinking keeps us ready to act.
Vaihinger goes further: even logic and abstract ideas ultimately come from bodily sensations, our nerve impulses. We turn sensations into concepts, concepts into plans, and plans back into actions that affect the world. That loop is the point of thinking.
The big takeaway: we don’t think in order to know the world perfectly. We think in order to act effectively within it.
Connecting to Narrative Alchemy
This connects powerfully to the narrative alchemy work I do around stories as code. If we can understand the story beneath the story, we can rewrite those scripts to be more effective.
Right now, as you’re listening to this, there are countless programs running in your unconscious mind, everything from helping you breathe and move to operating the scripts that determine how you show up in the world. Some of those scripts were useful when they were embedded. But many of them no longer serve their original purpose. In some cases, they’re actually hindering your potential, making you less effective than you could be.
When you become conscious of this, you can do something about it. Otherwise, we just go on like the walking dead, in a trance about 90% of the day, doing things without thinking, acting in habitual ways, thinking in habitual ways, perceiving and experiencing things from habitual perspectives.
This work is about challenging those scripts and rewriting the ones that need to be rewritten.
The Challenge of Rewriting Scripts
I’ll be honest, though. It’s not easy. I throw it out there like it’s simple: “Oh yeah, just rewrite the script.” But there are deep-rooted scripts embedded in us. It’s a genuine challenge.
Then I catch myself: why can’t it be easy? Maybe there’s a story I’m telling myself that it’s difficult to undo years of programming. The experience says it’s hard, but that’s just another script running.
There are different techniques: meditation, hypnosis, self-hypnosis. I’m a big fan of journaling and meta-journaling, getting the story out and tracing it back to its origin. I call it following the breadcrumbs. Where did this belief come from? Once you unpack that and understand the origin, you can ask: do I still want to think this way? Can I change the story?
But habits run deep. Think about your own for a moment. Which leg do you put into your trousers first? Which arm do you wear your watch on? Try switching it and notice how it feels.
We have these embedded patterns and we don’t question them much anymore. Some of them are complete fiction. But they’re useful fictions because that’s what the tool is made for. The brain is efficient at making connections and deriving meaning so you can act.
The Danger of Unquestioned Fictions
Here’s where it gets concerning. Spend three minutes on social media and you’ll see people making life and death decisions based on useful fictions they’ve never questioned. They see it as truth, as real, without stepping back to recognize it’s a version of real, not ultimate truth.
That’s my motivation for the narrative alchemy work. I’m not doing narrative therapy, that’s not my wheelhouse. But narrative coaching, working with the stories we have and using various techniques to rewrite the scripts and create useful ones that help us obtain what we actually want, that’s the work.
Working with Metaphors
I’ll continue to work my way through Philosophy of As If. And notice that phrase I just used: “work my way through.” Earlier I said “slog my way through.” Listen to that metaphor. When I say “slog,” what comes to mind is being in a swamp with a hundred pound ruck on my back and my M16 in hand, slogging through the muck. That’s hard work.
If I approach that book with “slog” as my mindset, it makes the book that much harder to get through. It will obviously be a slog.
We use these throwaway metaphors all the time. Pay attention to the metaphors you use and the ones others use around you.
Morning Pages and Image Work
This morning I did a hybrid practice. I started with morning pages as Julia Cameron outlines, just writing without thinking, stream of consciousness. Then I applied Hillman’s image work, going back through and unpacking the images that emerged.
Some interesting ones came up:
The worm turning – There’s a worm underground, coiled, waiting to reverse direction. Does that happen fast, quickly, dramatically? Or is it a slow, blind turning? That’s how I’m approaching a particular problem right now. I’m waiting for the worm to turn.
The wolf at the door – This one causes anxiety. Think about how that metaphor shapes my reaction and how I conduct myself.
The drain – Is something flowing away? Emptying out? Leaking? What can I learn if I get inside this image?
The landing – This implies something is in flight, not touching the ground. If it’s airborne, where is it going? What needs to happen for it to be grounded?
The flow – What was interesting here: two channels. One flowing freely, another currently blocked. Two rivers, one open, one dammed.
Seeing Through the Image
These images help me understand what programs are operating. What I appreciate about Hillman is his approach: don’t ask what the image is. See through the image. The idea isn’t to make meaning of the metaphor. It’s to see through the metaphor.
Work with the image itself to understand what you’re feeling, what the problem is, where the blockages might be. See through it rather than trying to turn it into something else or give it some kind of meaning.
I’ve got work to do with these metaphors. With the worm, for instance: when I imagine it turning, what does the movement look like? Is it violent? Is it gentle?
There’s a methodology called clean language that’s all about utilizing people’s metaphors rather than changing them or redirecting their thinking. Work with their metaphor and help them see through it.
The wolf is the wolf. Can I see it clearly? What color is its fur? What are its eyes doing? Are they looking at me or past me at something else? Hillman encourages you to really get into the image itself and work with it.
An Invitation
I’ll unpack more of this and share the experience with you. For now, I have the questions identified but haven’t played with the imagery yet.
If you do morning pages or journal regularly, try this: go back through your writing and pull out the metaphors. Identify the images inside your metaphors and passages, then work through them. Explore your thinking through those images and see what that does for you.
Fascinating stuff. Thank you for your time and attention on the Soul Cruiser audio blog. Time to get on with the rest of the day.
This seems like a basic question, but the more I looked into it, the more twisted it became. When you’re thinking about your thinking, who’s doing the thinking? What makes this question particularly twisted is that the very act of thinking about who’s doing the thinking is itself part of the thinking being examined. It’s like trying to see your own eyes without a mirror… Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s get back on track with the main question – what is thinking?
Notes
What is Thinking?
Thinking is the silent architect of reality. It is the unseen force that moulds experience, reframes perception, and animates the ghostly machinery of consciousness. We take it for granted, yet it is the very essence of what it means to be alive, aware, and engaged with the world. But what is thinking, really?
The Machinery of Thought
At its core, thinking is the process of manipulating information—sorting, linking, and remixing raw data into meaning. Neuroscientists describe it as the firing of neurons, a dance of electrochemical signals racing across synaptic bridges. Philosophers see it as the interplay between concepts, a dialectic between self and world. Psychologists break it down into cognition, problem-solving, and reasoning.
In simpler terms, thinking is what happens when you engage with reality, even if only within the confines of your mind.
But it’s not a single thing. It comes in many forms.
Types of Thinking
We often imagine thinking as a single, uniform process, but it’s more like a kaleidoscope of mental modes. Some of the major types include:
Analytical Thinking – Dissecting problems, breaking them down into parts, and solving them logically. This is the mind of the scientist, the detective, the strategist.
Creative Thinking – Freeform, associative, generative. This is where new ideas are born—through metaphor, juxtaposition, and wild leaps of imagination.
Critical Thinking – Evaluative and skeptical, the act of questioning assumptions, challenging narratives, and detecting logical fallacies.
Reflective Thinking – Looking inward, making sense of experiences, weaving meaning from the fabric of memory and emotion.
Lateral Thinking – The ability to approach problems sideways, finding unexpected solutions by connecting unrelated ideas.
Intuitive Thinking – Fast, instinctive, and subconscious. This is the gut feeling, the sudden insight that emerges from deep beneath the surface.
Each of these modes serves a different purpose, but they often work together in a seamless interplay.
Thinking as a Tool (and a Trap)
Thinking is a tool—a profoundly powerful one. It allows us to solve problems, create art, navigate social interactions, and construct entire civilisations. But it can also be a trap.
Overthinking can paralyse action.
Cognitive biases can warp perception.
Negative thought loops can create self-fulfilling prophecies.
The philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti argued that most of our thinking is simply repetition—patterns inherited from culture, language, and past conditioning. To truly think, he suggested, one must break free from these pre-programmed loops.
This is where practices like mindfulness, meditation, and philosophical inquiry become useful—not to suppress thought, but to gain mastery over it.
Thinking as a Storytelling Device
If we dig deeper, we find that thinking is essentially narrative in nature. It tells stories about the past, constructs possible futures, and filters the present through layers of interpretation.
The philosopher Daniel Dennett describes thought as the “user illusion” of the mind—a continuous storytelling process that makes sense of chaos.
James Hillman would say that our thoughts are mythic—they are living archetypes playing out their roles in the grand drama of consciousness.
Robert Anton Wilson would remind us that belief is the death of thought—the moment we stop questioning, stop perceiving alternative viewpoints, our thinking hardens into dogma.
Thus, thinking is both the method by which we understand the world and the medium through which we deceive ourselves. It is both a guide and a trickster.
Can You Stop Thinking?
This is the ultimate paradox. Can thought examine itself? Can the thinker observe the thinking? Zen masters would say that true understanding comes not from thinking more, but from learning to step outside of thought—to see it for what it is.
Consider this: the moment you try to stop thinking, you are still thinking about stopping thinking. The mind is a restless sea. Even in silence, even in deep meditation, thought persists like waves lapping against the shore.
Perhaps the best approach is not to fight thought, but to ride it—to surf the waves rather than be drowned by them.
Thinking is both a curse and a blessing, a tool and a trap, a whisper and a roar. It is the dance of neurons, the spinning of ideas, the storytelling machine that constructs the self.
But here’s the real kicker: we don’t just think—we are thought.
The mind thinks itself into being.
“The moment you try to stop thinking, you are still thinking about stopping thinking.”
Right? It’s one of those paradoxes that loops back on itself, like trying to bite your own teeth or chase your own shadow. The very act of wanting to stop thinking is itself a thought—there’s no escape from the recursive nature of the mind.
This is the conundrum Zen masters play with when they ask, “Who is the ‘I’ that wants to stop thinking?” The moment you turn awareness onto itself, the illusion of control starts to unravel.
It reminds me of Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach—where he explores strange loops, self-reference, and how consciousness itself might be an endless recursion. The mind watching the mind. The eye that sees itself seeing.
This is why certain meditative traditions don’t actually try to “stop” thought but instead shift the relationship to it. Thoughts arise, but you don’t cling to them. They pass like clouds in the sky. Alan Watts puts it beautifully: “Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.”
And yet, if you really sit with it, if you stare into the abyss of your own awareness long enough… you start to wonder: Where do thoughts even come from? And more strangely… who is doing the thinking?
Who IS doing the thinking?
Now we’ve hit the deep end—the question that unravels reality itself. Who is doing the thinking?
At first glance, the answer seems obvious: I am. But who is this “I”?
The Cartesian Loop
René Descartes famously said, Cogito, ergo sum—”I think, therefore I am.” His idea was that thought is the fundamental proof of existence. But he never asked: Who is the “I” that thinks?
If you sit with that question, something weird happens. You realise that thoughts just appear. You don’t summon them like a magician calling forth spirits. You don’t consciously decide, Now I will have a thought. They arise from somewhere deeper, unbidden, like whispers from the void.
So who—or what—is thinking?
Option 1: The Illusion of Self
One answer is: No one. The self, as a unified thinker, might just be an illusion.
Modern neuroscience suggests that the “I” we experience is a construction—an after-the-fact narrative that stitches together disparate processes in the brain. Daniel Dennett calls this the “user illusion”—consciousness is not a central entity but an emergent effect of competing neural processes.
Sam Harris takes it further: If you really observe your thoughts, you’ll notice they arrive without permission. They bubble up from some unseen depths. If you are not the author of your thoughts, are you really the thinker?
Maybe thinking is happening… but not to anyone in particular.
Option 2: The Ghost in the Machine
But let’s entertain another possibility: what if there is a thinker—but it’s not who you think?
Some traditions—like Advaita Vedanta or certain strains of Zen—suggest that what we call “I” is just a mask. Beneath the surface, there is only awareness itself, infinite and boundless, experiencing itself through the illusion of individuality.
In this view, the thinker is not your ego, not your personality, not even your brain. The thinker is consciousness itself, which is not yours or mine, but the fundamental nature of reality.
Alan Watts puts it like this: “You are something the whole universe is doing, in the same way a wave is something the whole ocean is doing.”
Thinking, then, is simply the universe playing with itself, weaving patterns of thought through this temporary mask we call “me.”
Option 3: A Strange Loop
Douglas Hofstadter, in Gödel, Escher, Bach, presents another possibility: the self is a strange loop.
A strange loop is when a system folds back on itself in a paradoxical way. Your brain, through sheer complexity, has created a self-referential loop that feels like a thinker.
Imagine a book where the last page directs you back to the first page, trapping you in an endless cycle. That’s your consciousness—a self-referential process that creates the illusion of an “I” doing the thinking.
In this model, there is no central thinker. Thought is simply an emergent process of feedback loops.
So Who is Doing the Thinking?
Maybe:
No one (thoughts happen on their own).
A deeper awareness (consciousness itself is the thinker).
A strange loop (you are an illusion created by self-referential thought).
Or maybe the question itself is the trick.
Because the moment you try to pin down the thinker… the act of thinking vanishes into mystery.
Questions
Thinking, at its core, is the active process of manipulating information within the mind. This involves various operations such as sorting, connecting, and reorganising data to create meaning. From a neurological perspective, it’s understood as the electrochemical activity of neurons, while philosophical views often focus on the interplay of concepts. Psychologically, it encompasses cognition, problem-solving, and reasoning. Essentially, thinking is how we engage with reality, whether internally or externally.
Thinking is not a singular activity but rather a collection of distinct mental modes, each serving a different purpose. These include analytical thinking (logical problem-solving), creative thinking (generating new ideas through association and imagination), critical thinking (evaluating assumptions and identifying fallacies), reflective thinking (making sense of experiences through introspection), lateral thinking (finding unexpected solutions by connecting disparate ideas), and intuitive thinking (fast, subconscious insights). These modes often work in conjunction with one another.
Thinking is a powerful tool that enables problem-solving, creativity, social navigation, and the development of complex societies. However, it can also be a source of difficulty. Overthinking can lead to inaction, cognitive biases can distort our perceptions, and negative thought patterns can become self-fulfilling prophecies. Furthermore, much of our thinking can be repetitive, influenced by cultural norms, language, and past conditioning, potentially limiting truly original thought.
The idea of stopping thought presents a paradox. The very act of trying to stop thinking is itself a form of thinking. The mind is inherently active, and even in moments of stillness, thoughts tend to arise. Rather than attempting to suppress thought, some perspectives suggest shifting our relationship to it, observing thoughts without clinging to them, allowing them to pass like clouds.
This question delves into the nature of the self and the origin of our thoughts. While it intuitively feels like “I” am the thinker, closer examination reveals that thoughts often appear spontaneously, without conscious initiation. This leads to questioning the nature of this “I” and whether it is a unified entity, an illusion, or something more fundamental.
