In Buddhism, they talk about thoughts self-liberating, and by looking at it, we see that this is already happening anyway. They arise from and as the void, and vanish back into it, no matter what else is happening… whether they are recognized as awake void, or believed in and their content is taken as real and substantial.
All that is needed is to notice that this is already happening…
Thoughts self-liberate by being transient, by coming and going. Even when the content of a current thought appears to be the same as a previous one, it is a brand new fresh thought. For each one, its departure is inherent in its arrival.
And thoughts are inherently self-liberated since they are nothing other than the void itself… translucent, insubstantial. They are the void itself, mimicking the sensory fields without input through the senses. They are nothing more real than that.
Both are pretty easy to notice, just by bringing attention to the thoughts themselves, to thoughts as thoughts, instead of to their particular content (and having the attention absorbed into their content).
When attention go to their content, and the content is taken as real, a whole world is created and this is what creates a sense of a prison (of an I trapped inside of a world where suffering is inherent) and an urge to be liberated from this.
Recognizing thoughts as thoughts is one way to find that liberation.
And what is liberated is really the thoughts themselves… they are liberated from being believed in, from being identified with, taken as real and substantial. Through that, the final “prison” of taking the idea of a separate self as true can also, eventually, fall away.