"Just Thoughts"

    During sitting meditation, there is a process where a person is seeing thoughts as "just thoughts", and this way of seeing is facilitated by the state of calm relaxation. But during the day, why is it that one cannot do the same thing with all their experiences? If a person realized that the life off the meditation cushion isn't that different from life on the cushion, they might be able to see life as just like a kind of retreat. At that point, one is interacting mainly with thoughts. And even if the thoughts are very powerful, there is a very relaxed and calm method of dealing with the thoughts themselves. Life would involve observing one's reactions with a kind of gentle and open spaciousness, realizing that they are temporary and bound to disappear with new conditions.
   How can this sort of insight benefit a person? I think that for one thing, it makes a person realize that they are not interacting with 'people' or 'minds' at all, but are mainly interacting with their own thoughts, based on the previous conditions. It is as though one were with people but having a separate dream. To give an example, I might see a person who reminds me of someone else and have a negative reaction to the person which has nothing to do with them whatsoever. But because I am engaging in some thought that seems unpleasant, I engage in an argument with it. Is this productive? It hardly is, yet how often do I engage in this kind of behavior and end up creating suffering to myself. At that point, it is as though I am in my own thoughts or world and not aware of suffering around me.
     I have a feeling that the mind is already naturally compassionate: it loves and swims in love. But I notice that from early times, I had developed a kind of mistrust in myself. As soon as the love I felt wasn't reciprocated, I would start to think that I did something wrong: it was my fault somehow, or maybe I need to toughen up and 'take it like a man'. In any case, there is a self created there: a kind of sense that something needs to be done about the feeling of rejection, and only "I" (whoever this "I" is) can do something about it. Had I not taken the experience so personally and simply let go of it, I would have gone back to the natural compassion that is always there: always feeling connected with others no matter what. Could it be that this feeling of rejection causes the self to arise and try to take control by asserting its identity? I will leave that to psychologists to mull over.