Welcome to this awareness of thought meditation.
Cultivating the ability to become an observer of our thoughts can be a useful skill to develop.
Learning to bring attention to our thoughts can unhook us from getting caught in unhelpful habitual thought patterns,
Getting pulled away from the present moment,
Or being stuck in rumination.
You can use this meditation when you find yourself engaging in unhelpful repetitive thinking,
Rumination,
Or simply as a practice of observing the mind.
Beginning by finding a comfortable seated posture that allows you to feel grounded,
Relaxed,
Yet awake.
If it feels right,
The eyes can be closed for this practice,
Otherwise allowing the gaze to be cast downward three to four feet in front of you.
As you settle into this posture,
Taking a moment to connect with the experience of breathing,
With that very simple knowing that you're breathing in and knowing that you're breathing out.
Feeling the breath as it comes into the body and leaves the body.
Now deliberately shifting the attention to thoughts and allowing the breath and any other aspect of your experience to recede into the background,
Bringing into the foreground thoughts.
The invitation here is not to engage with the content of thinking,
So not analyzing or problem solving,
But simply becoming curious about the process of thinking itself.
For example,
You may experience thoughts as words or images.
You may notice a variety of thinking,
Planning thoughts,
Evaluating,
Wishing,
Analyzing,
Fantasizing,
Remembering.
You may notice that thoughts are like events.
They have a clear beginning.
They arrive.
They have a middle.
And they have an end.
They pass.
You may notice that some thoughts seem to be connected to one another to form a story or narrative,
And at other times seem completely random or disconnected from one another.
You might notice that there are spaces between thoughts.
And at other times,
Thoughts seem to appear all at once or rush like a torrent.
And how easy it is to become swept away or lost in thought.
You may also notice how some thoughts are particularly compelling or carry an emotional charge,
Sensing a desire to want to engage with them,
Others less appealing,
Perhaps prompting a desire to move away from them or shut them out in some way.
The invitation is to simply allow neither engaging with nor turning away,
But simply observing thoughts come and go like clouds in the sky or like images moving across a TV screen.
If you find that you get drawn into the content of thinking,
Then simply notice that you are no longer observing thoughts but are lost in them.
Thoughts arising,
Lingering for a while and passing away.
And now letting go of the practice and shifting the attention to your breathing,
Connecting with the breath for a few breaths until you hear the sound of the bell.
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