So today,
The practice,
The exploration is establishing mindfulness of thinking.
And last week,
We were looking at our emotional life,
Paying attention to emotions.
Emotions are made up of various elements,
They're complex,
And can be challenging.
And one of the elements that conditions emotion is our thinking.
So emotions are a mixture of thoughts and sensations,
And they get stirred up with our ideas and our concepts.
What I've recognized in my own practice with emotions is that sometimes thoughts evoke the emotion,
And sometimes emotions bring about the arising of thought.
More often in my experience,
Thought or an image brings up emotions,
Like we may think about someone that we love,
And what arises is a warm and loving feeling about them.
Or we have a thought of someone who's hurt us,
And what arises is the emotion of anger.
So emotions can regularly be conditioned by our thinking,
By our thoughts.
And it's kind of fascinating to make thought the object of our mindfulness practice,
Like watching the show,
As I alluded to in the meditation.
Our mindfulness practice leads us to seeing this more regularly,
So we don't get entangled with what's appearing.
Thinking is such a huge part of human life.
The products of our thinking are all around us.
Our civilization is a product of people's thoughts and inventions,
And some of those ideas are great,
Great benefit for all of us.
And sometimes they're not such great benefit,
Not really great outcomes.
But without thinking,
We wouldn't be able to navigate the world and take care of ourselves and be safe.
So we're not trying to get rid of thinking.
We're not trying to get rid of thinking.
It's an important part of our life.
But it's also a place of tremendous suffering.
You know,
The stories that we tell ourselves,
The judgments that we have and that we tell ourselves,
Some of our judgments can be completely debilitating,
Undermining our vitality and our ability to experience joy and happiness.
So to learn about how to be mindful of thinking really begins with becoming aware that it's happening,
To see it.
You know,
Perhaps noticing when you become aware of your thinking.
Is it after the thought has already finished that you become aware?
Is it in the middle?
Or is it right in the beginning?
You know,
As you're practicing with mindfulness of thought as the object,
How does it appear?
And not to judge it or evaluate it,
Just notice it.
Having this in your practice will sharpen your ability to see and experience thought as the object of our attention.
And the critical point of this is not to add any judgment about it or have any aversion or resistance to the thoughts that happen.
You know,
It's an exercise in clarifying thought as an object.
And the mind,
As you will see as you do this practice,
Is totally out of control.
It is just a show,
Really,
A really interesting reality show.
When the mind is thinking or wandering,
If you're aware of its wandering,
You're doing well in this practice.
When you're disturbed by the thinking mind,
Remember that you're not practicing to prevent thinking.
We're practicing making thought the object of our mindfulness.
We're refining our ability to be aware of thoughts as they arise.
And then what happens is we're also noticing the attitude that comes with it,
The emotion,
The mood,
When the thoughts get kicked in,
Or maybe there's a mood and then there's all of the thinking that comes with it.
So we're slowly expanding awareness.
Sometimes thinking can be so captivating.
It just seems easier to let the mind wander off instead of stepping back and recognizing,
Oh,
This is thinking,
I'm thinking.
To really learn the art of stepping back in the mind or kind of getting an overview enough to be able to see it,
Like I'm thinking,
I'm thinking,
I'm thinking about planning,
I'm thinking about remembering,
I'm thinking about a fantasy,
I'm thinking about my resentments,
Like whatever it may be,
This is the art of stepping back,
Kind of seeing that,
Oh,
I'm having a conversation in my mind with people,
Or I'm repeating the same conversation I had with my friend last week over and over and over again.
And again,
Meeting it without judgment.
People get caught by the stickiness of thinking or the compulsion of thinking.
For many,
Many people,
Before they do any kind of mindfulness practice,
Thinking is just given free reign and we just think whatever we think and we wander off and the mind just does what it does and we just follow along,
Kind of pulled along by the nose of our thoughts.
So that's all of us.
We're not alone in this,
Right?
To begin developing the skill,
We need to recognize thinking.
What you're thinking,
When you're thinking.
One of the very simple exercises to do is tell yourself what you're thinking with your inner voice.
Or if you're alone,
Maybe even say it out loud to yourself,
Like,
I'm thinking about lunch.
I'm thinking about the news that I just read.
I'm thinking about my plans.
I'm thinking about fantasies.
I'm thinking about my complaints.
I'm having thoughts about grandeur.
We start to develop the skill of learning to notice what we're thinking about.
And if you start doing it,
You'll probably begin to recognize and see how repetitive thoughts are.
One of my teachers,
Jack Kornfield,
Calls them our top 10 tunes,
Our thinking tunes.
And they're often set on repeat.
And this is not the bad news,
Okay?
This is not bad news to learn about this for yourself.
It's actually part of growing in this mindfulness practice.
It's happening anyway.
So rather than not knowing it,
Which can be kind of dangerous,
It's actually healthy and healing and beneficial to start to recognize what is it about your thoughts?
What's happening with your thinking?
So a very important aspect of the establishment of mindfulness practice that's helpful to remember is that it doesn't matter what we're paying attention to.
The practice of awareness doesn't discriminate what it's aware of.
And a big part of this practice is how you're holding what you're aware of.
You know,
A thought comes,
Somebody's hurt you,
An emotion arises,
It feels tight.
You have anger arising,
The body contracts.
And then to see all of this,
You can drop in,
How am I holding this?
If there's enough mindfulness,
Otherwise what can happen is that we hold on to someone has hurt me,
An emotion is rising,
I feel tight,
Anger is happening.
And then we cling to this.
And it starts this whole chain reaction,
This whole spinning.
So as we explore thinking,
I encourage you to consider that we have some freedom around our relationship to thinking.
The idea is to appreciate the possibility of thinking without clinging to our thoughts,
Without taking them so deeply personally.
So I encourage you for the next couple of days as you go about your day to start recognizing what you're thinking about,
Recognizing your thoughts.
You also might want to spend some time thinking about your relationship to your thinking.
Maybe talk to a practice friend about their top 10 tunes,
You know,
Discovering together the thinking,
The thinking mind,
And establishing some continuity,
Some mindfulness around this thinking muscle.
So thank you for your attention.
