Who Needs Thoughts?
Dear Friends,
After a month travelling ‘down under,’ I am now back home. What a rich trip! From completing the foundational level in the mind-blowing Transference Healing training, to hiking in Tasmania, to meeting up with old friends and new along the way, the culmination was a meditation retreat in rural New Zealand. Although I may be ‘back home’ now, life is anything but the same.
We don’t have to take an epic journey to transform ourselves, although detaching from our normal surroundings, activities and relationships can shake up habitual routines of thinking, of reacting, of believing. Habits where we see or respond to someone or something (or an aspect of ourselves) the same old way, regurgitating exactly what we’ve been thinking and saying for years. Yes, out of sight can temporarily mean out of mind.
But – what if we can’t remove ourselves physically? Is there still a way to change the less-than-satisfying paradigms we find ourselves recycling about certain people or situations? How to start feeling kindly towards someone who always irritates us? Find new fulfillment in our work? Enjoy our living situation, even with the dysfunctional whatever? Appreciate our body, regardless of what it looks or feels like? Feel grateful for our lives, even in the midst of an imperfect-looking world?
That, my friends, is the deeper process of the human journey. Not outward success, although that’s always fun (if ephemeral). What if we could find harmony within and without? What if we could look with fresh eyes of kindness out into the world? At ourselves?
Here is a little experiment. When you have a few quiet minutes, set a timer for 10 minutes. Or 5. Or 1 minute! Then sit with your eyes closed, and watch your thoughts. With each one that comes up, be it about a person, a situation, a future expectation, whatever, look at the thought and see it as something you are making up. For this short time, consciously dis-engage from believing anything you are telling yourself about – anything. Especially if the thought is negative, simply suspend your belief in it. Imagine a space between yourself looking at the thought, and its contents.
Watch your thoughts as mindless chatter. Even about things that seem to have global agreement (which is nothing – nobody agrees about everything!!). Take this short time to approach any thought, no matter how true it feels, as being just a soundtrack playing from a fictional story. Observe with curiosity, but don’t believe in it.
Once the timer goes, you are free to return to anything you are attached to, but for this short time, accept that nothing your mind says is true.
If you tried this, how did it go? Ridiculous, I can hear you say (that’s my mind projecting your response, by the way). Everyone know THIS, surely, is true! (notice what that “this” is for you). Well, maybe… but maybe not.
Here is a thought: maybe everything we think, every assumption, every reaction, every story we tell ourselves, is how we create our individual realities. You create yours. I create mine. Sometimes there are places of agreement, but often we literally are worlds apart. When we believe something absolutely, our experience is compelled to confirm it.
So – that’s my little offering, to help you soothe any uncomfortable apparent reality you feel trapped within. For a mental vacation, take a few moments, close your eyes, and stop believing your mind. Experience what a different view can look like, without even leaving home!
Home