We don't usually think to ourselves that we're asleep and that our entire identity is the moment to moment fabrication of what we are reacting to in that instant. Until there is something that rides the waves of these reactions and sees them crest and fall, we will appear and disappear with every last wave. In watching the waves we will not mistake ourselves for being the waves.

Most of us like sitting by a river and watching the water or anything else come downstream and then disappear in the distance. When watching a river, we don't usually focus on one thing in the stream and then resist it as it floats by. We are intended to be the observer of the stream of our interior life in much the same way that we would enjoy watching a river.