Unhooking From Thought

In this teaching, we examine the common experience of getting hooked in negative thought patterns. You will learn why attempting to stop your mind from thinking is itself a trap. Instead, the only way to become free of negative thought patterns is to learn how to ignore the thoughts that arise in consciousness.

Transcript

In this lesson I want to speak about unhooking from your mind.

This is a very important capacity that you can develop in meditation.

Most of us have difficulty because we get hooked by our mind.

So what does that mean?

It means that some circumstance or something that somebody says triggers you and that trigger starts a negative thought pattern that spirals downwards.

So maybe it's a thought pattern about you being unworthy and maybe it starts to tell you,

So you see why this happened,

It's because you're not a good person,

It's because you're not good enough,

You've never been good enough,

You'll never be good enough,

Da da da da da,

It goes downward,

Downward,

Downward.

Once we get hooked on a thought pattern like that,

It's very difficult to get out of it,

But we can learn how to unhook ourselves.

And the way we do that in meditation,

If we practice ignoring what our thoughts are saying,

You see the mistake people make is they think that in order to get unhooked they have to stop the thoughts.

But stopping your mind from thinking is very difficult.

Almost impossible actually,

But very,

Very difficult.

What's very possible is learning to ignore your thoughts.

You can leave them,

You can let them continue,

But you just ignore them.

That's how you unhook.

If you see yourself in some kind of negative spiral and you're obsessing over thoughts that are making you anxious,

You just ignore them.

It's like somebody who's talking in the room next to you and they're really annoying,

But you're not listening,

So you just don't listen to your thoughts.

Now,

If you get very good at that,

You will become unhookable.

And what that means is you will develop so much confidence in your ability to ignore what your thoughts are telling you that you won't even be worried anymore about negative thought patterns.

It's not even a problem for you because you're so good at ignoring them that as soon as you recognize a negative thought pattern,

You ignore it anyway.

So you're unhookable.

They can't get you anymore because you don't care.

And that's what you can get from meditation.

Reviews

Energising for my mind, simple but powerful words 🙏🏼✨️ Thankyou

Thank you for this.

Thanks 🙏🏾

Found this pretty helpful. Simple concept but like you say, it’s not possible to just stop the thought. I liked it, thank you 🙏

Thanks

Great reminder. Thank you.

👍

Goof

A wonderful short reminder that is much needed. Thank you

Excelent thank you 🙏🏽

🫶🏼

Practice,practice, practice, agree with your teachings, thank you for this great reminder

Thank you for this very helpful advice Jeff, I will give it a go. Namaste 🙏🏾☀️

Thank you that was very helpful 💜

Unhooking from thought is a very valuable practice!