She defines two ways of perceiving — narrow attention and wide attention — with the latter one described as “to attend to something and yet want nothing from it”, because expectancy might be an obstruction to one’s power of seeing which was particularly active in the sphere of emotion. Expectation stems from implicit standards we automatically aggregated after blindly picking up cues from our social and cultural environments. And it could take a long time for you to realize any standard was there and you’re judging your reality against measurements not formed on your own (“in the face of the hard facts of imperfections it set me all sorts of impossible standards without my knowing it”). Only by sweeping all those ideas from your mind can genuine, real experience flood in.

The observation of her own thoughts revealed that the de fault position of human thought is childlike thought, characterized by taking things at their face value (“I seemed very liable to assume that because something was said it must therefore be true”), mistaking symbols for reality they represent (think the word “chair” is actually chair the thing itself), equaling thinking with doing (“as if by thinking hard enough what I ought to have done, I could undo the mistake and make it as though it had not happened”) and inability to see the existence of other point of views (“oneself is something absolute and special”). The transition from childlike thought to a more mature position takes place as the result of opposition. You eventually find the world doesn’t proceed as you wish or plan.

On the imperative to talk, speak, express thoughts in words — not only because talking is thinking, but also it’s curative (“with the deliberate speaking of my thoughts to myself, in words, they lost their obsessive quality and also my boredom had entirely disappeared”). She was thus convinced of the necessity of “continually admitting to myself in words those thoughts I was ashamed of”. “It was only when I had admitted to myself deliberately in words what I wanted, that I was able to accept the fact I had not got it”. But then, you need to overcome a general dread of putting things in words for fear of what might be disclosed.

The suggestions she made for herself take into account the great, yet underestimated role of the unconsciousness.

(i) The cause of any overshadowing burden of worry or resentment is never what it seems to be. Whenever it hangs over me like a cloud and refuses to disperse, then I must know that it comes from the idea of blink thought and the real thing I am worrying about is hidden from me.

(ii) To reason about such feelings, either in oneself or others, is futile. The only way to deal with those obsessive fears or worries is to stop all attempts to be reasonable and to give the thoughts free rein. In dealing with others, this means just listening while they talk out whatever in their minds, in dealing with the self it means letting my thoughts write themselves.

The recognition of the autonomous unconscious mind relieved the urge (to some degree at least) for compulsive planning and doing. “I was afraid that if I didn’t think, do something according to my own little plan, I’d be lost, sink into a coma of inaction”. And then gradually, “It struck me as odd that it had taken me so long to reach a feeling of sureness that there was something in me that would get on with the job of living without my continual tampering. I suppose I didn’t not really reach it until I had discovered how to sink down beneath the level of chattering thoughts and simply feel what it meant to be alive.” Healthy humans have an intuitive sense of how to live. The right attitude is a continual readiness to look and readiness to accept whatever comes.

The emphasis on the importance of first-hand, direct experience compared to the learned knowledge — I wanted to keep rigidly within the bounds of my own actual observation, to try as far as possible to forget everything I had read, everything I had been told, and to assume nothing that did not emerge out of my own direct experience. ..I had come to the firm conclusion that reading must come after one had learnt the tricks for observing one’s mind, not before; since if it comes before, it is only too easy to accept technical concepts intellectually and use them as jargon, not as instruments for the real understanding of experience.

“I could not by direct effort feel love towards someone, or by direct effort make myself happy.” There is a natural rhythm in development, and it’s not a matter of determination or willing. One could not make oneself grow, one could only by careful observation find out the conditions of growth and attend to these rather than to the hoped-for results.

In the final chapter she concludes “happiness came when I was most widely aware”. Then the task was to become “more and more aware, more and more understanding with an understanding that was not at all the same thing as intellectual comprehension”.

This means “seeing through my own eyes instead of at second hand”.