Quieting The Overthinking Mind

This is an excerpt from a talk and meditation David recently gave on relaxing the mind and learning to separate consciousness from thought. If you are ready to truly create mental space and find peace in your being, come sit for this meditation.

Transcript

All right,

Let's meditate,

Everybody.

Okay,

Close your eyes,

Drop your shoulders away from your ears.

Hopefully some of that laughter got you to release some tension.

Yeah.

Somebody wrote,

You need a promo code to get the last five minutes of the meditation.

Oh,

Too much.

Okay,

Okay.

On that note,

Just draw your awareness behind your eyes,

Drop your shoulders.

Yeah.

I think when I sent out the reminder email,

There's I put a quote in there,

Which was,

Don't just do something,

Sit there.

I love that.

Don't just do something,

Sit there.

There's this Indian guru who I loved,

Whose name I'll butcher,

Nisargadatta Maharaj.

He sold little beady cigarettes his whole life on the street for like five cents.

And he went to a guru and his guru gave him one thing to focus on.

He said,

That's all I did for two years.

I focused on one sentence he told me,

And that's how I found my enlightenment.

Sometimes it's just like one thing,

Just be relentless with one thing.

And for a meditator,

That one thing might be,

Who am I?

Or what's my truth?

What's the truth?

Why am I here?

What's the nature of reality?

What's inner peace?

What is enlightenment?

What's underneath all this overthinking?

And let's start to build the habit of not thinking together.

So I want you to start to notice that,

Let's call it the gaps between the thoughts.

You might also notice the space around the thoughts.

And no matter how quote unquote good or bad the thought is,

No matter how important it tells you it is,

You just watch.

Just notice the gap,

Notice the space.

Our thoughts will always try to seduce us.

But this is important.

No,

But this is important.

So as you become aware of these gaps,

I want you to also be aware of your own awareness.

I want you to notice you've got the objects of your awareness,

Which we'll call your thoughts.

And then you have the subject,

Which is your awareness,

Your consciousness.

See if you can just be aware of your awareness.

Let the thoughts almost fade into the background.

And I'll just bring us back to that quote from earlier,

Don't just do something,

Sit there.

The most counterintuitive thing when you face that survival energy of I need to fix something,

I have a problem to solve,

I have to accomplish,

I even have to be a good meditator.

See if you can just surrender to not doing any of that.

I want you to be the laziest,

Most relaxed,

Calm person in the world.

And a great analogy for our awareness is a flame,

Like a candle flame.

When it goes out,

It's dark.

And when it's lit,

We can see.

So let yourself just be that flame for a moment.

You are that flame always,

But I want you to just take a moment and be aware of it.

This is the most important thing that exists,

Awareness.

Without it,

There is nothing.

And if you get lost in thoughts,

Again,

You just come back to the space and the gaps.

Thank you.

And then I want you to notice something pretty special.

That every other person sitting meditating here in this space with us is another candle,

Another flame of awareness.

Every person on earth,

Every being on earth.

As is our star,

The sun that heats our planet,

It's nothing but a big flame.

And the trillions and infinite number of stars in the universe,

All just flames,

All just big candles.

And we think they don't have any awareness,

But my sense is they probably do.

We've got this universe full of empty space and candles.

That's pretty much all of life.

And so as a human being,

On the inside of you,

You've got the same thing.

You've got this deep well of darkness,

Of empty space,

Of unconsciousness.

And you've got this flame in you that's starting to grow,

This awareness that's getting brighter.

And every time you become aware of something in that unconsciousness,

Every time that bubble rises to the surface,

You look at that thought,

And then you lose yourself to it,

And you forget you are this beautiful flame connected to infinite flames,

Infinite lights.

And then everything becomes a problem that needs to be solved.

And so now in this context,

As you're aware,

Let the next thought,

The next survival problem that needs to be solved,

Let it arise.

Don't resist it.

Don't fight it.

Just shine some awareness onto it.

Just take a look at it neutrally for a moment.

And I want you to notice there's space around this quote-unquote problem.

Notice the space around the problem.

Don't try to solve it.

What I want you to do is give the problem space.

And just hear it out.

And just let any awareness around it just come up.

And just let it arise.

And just hear your breathing.

You might notice the tendency and the pull to try to solve.

And if that happens,

I want you to just notice the space.

You might have some kind of awareness like,

Wow,

I've been hard on myself,

Or my real problem is I care too much,

Or it's time to be more honest.

You might just have this kind of deep wisdom rise to the surface.

An answer might flower.

It might not be the ultimate answer,

But it might be your next step.

It'll likely be exactly what you need.

And I want you to see if you can have a real deep sense of self-compassion.

And just let it arise.

And if you feel something,

It may be already on its way out,

So just let it move.

If you feel something come out of your body,

Out of your head.

And just let it arise.

And just let it move.

Make sure that you're still breathing.

If you trailed off in some way,

Just bring yourself back.

Bring your awareness behind your eyes into the center of your head.

It's very easy to kind of float away.

So if you did that,

Just really anchor yourself into this moment,

Into this body.

Knowing that you can face anything life puts in front of you.

You may not be able to solve everything life puts in front of you,

But internally you can accept the reality that you're in.

I want you to actually have some gratitude for this quote-unquote problem that creates overthinking.

It's very likely helping you deepen.

It's likely helping you mature into the person you're meant to be.

And even if you've made some big mistakes,

Even if you haven't gotten it all right,

You're still starting maybe on a path of shifting,

Or really deep on a path of shifting your energy and awareness.

There's no growth in perfection,

So it's probably going to be a little messy,

And that's okay.

You can kind of give a light bow to whatever this energy is,

This problem,

This overthinking energy.

Honor it.

It's not your enemy.

It's very much your teacher.

Thank it for being here and for teaching you.

And then go ahead,

Take that problem,

Whatever that thought is,

Just put it inside of a beautiful flower.

Just tuck it in the petals in the middle.

And then just go ahead and just send it off into space.

Just send it off into the stars,

Let this energy go.

Great work.

Take a nice big,

Deep breath.

Relax.

And when you're ready,

You can open your eyes.

Reviews

Thanks for bringing lightness, humour and love to the protective mind, felt at peace ✌️

Always enjoy your chill vibe Namaste 🙏🏽

This was great! Loved it. I want to feel like the laziest, most relaxed person in the world. 😅
I love your sense of humor and lightness. 🙏🏼🧘🏼‍♀️👑😘
Gbless you.

I loved it🙏thank you David

this talk / meditation is so simple and yet powerfully effective- thanks David. I hope you do a ‘Live’ in the near future- i miss your live energy 🙏💜😊

Wise words and thoughts to live by. Thank you for sharing this with us 🙏

I appreciate your teaching immensely. You have a gift and share it so well.

Love this meditation. Especially learning to be “aware of my awareness.” Really helps me to let the thoughts go. Very helpful. Also, being able to have gratitude for the “problem” because it’s been a motivator for spiritual growth. Gotta go through it to grow through it!

The right meditation at exactly the right time- thank you 🙏

So deeply grateful for finding this - just this 🙏🙏🙏

Aware of the awareness… aware of the awareness of the awareness… hm.

I’m still thinking about thinking.

Thank you for your humor and calm.

Nice one thanks David, although it would be good to know what you were laughing about at the start! 🙏

you are awesome and please if you have extra 5 min meditation coupon i will love one 😄

Thank you! It’s hard to focus sometimes and somehow you were able to keep me from giving up 😌

This was very helpful…it allowed me to step back from an issue that has been consuming me and realize that I don’t have to solve it…just continue working with others and learning as we go and let go of the outcome! Beautiful! Thank you David!💖🙏🌲🦋🌈