Hello and welcome.
So the goal or the intention of this recording is for us to examine the relationship we have with our thinking and maybe to shift it so that our thoughts become a little bit less who we think we are.
So that relationship with our thinking becomes a little bit more light-hearted so that thoughts become essentially harmless.
So the other day I was reflecting that maybe the most important relationship we have in our life is with our own thinking.
So of course the relationship with our parents and children and our partner and friends are important but there is one relationship that we will always have until our last breath and that is with our own thoughts,
With the voice in our head.
And the way we relate to our thinking really determines to a very large extent how the world looks to us,
What we believe we can do or cannot do,
How we look at ourselves,
How we look at others.
So I wanted to share from my own experience my relationship with thinking and invite you to reflect on your own relationship with thinking.
So the first stage in my experience I had was that every thought that I had I believed in.
So no matter what appeared in my mind I took it as an accurate representation of reality and that was a kind of scary world because we all have an experience of really scary thoughts flying into our head and when every thought in a way becomes us,
When every thought we believe to be the reality,
Life can be really frightening sometimes.
So there was at that stage no distance between a thought and me observing it.
So every thought became me no matter how frightening,
No matter how stressful,
No matter how horrifying and there was no choice but to believe it.
So if you're meditating,
If you're practicing meditation,
If you're noticing your thoughts as thoughts then you're probably already past that stage.
You know that thoughts do not define you.
So the next stage was when I started reading self-help books and books about positive thinking and I was trying to upgrade my thinking.
I was trying to think positive thoughts only and that was an effortful world because it's really hard to control,
To monitor every thought we have and it's really exhausting.
And there was still this belief that I was the content of my mind,
I was what I thought.
So the next stage after that became when I started meditating,
When I first got introduced to meditation and I started noticing that there is space around thoughts,
There is space between thoughts.
So me noticing thoughts I noticed was not fully identified with them.
So thoughts came and went and I was a witness of them,
A witness in presence of those thoughts.
So there was a little bit more gradually over time,
A little bit more distance,
A little bit more perspective and that was really liberating because a stressful or self-depreciating or an angry or hateful thought that just flew into my head was not me anymore or at least less me than before.
So I was learning that there is a certain distance between thoughts and me,
Whoever that was.
So the next stage became I was meditating regularly and I really enjoyed that space of calm and quiet in my mind when I was meditating.
But then after meditation thoughts would come back and I was trying to fight them,
I was trying to make my mind stop,
I was trying to make the thinking stop and that was really a frustrating world because they never did,
Thinking never stopped.
And later I realized that it was just another thought that was trying to make thinking stop,
There was just that resistance in me that was trying to quiet my mind instead of making friends with thoughts,
Whatever thoughts bubbled up.
And I realized that without attaching importance to thoughts as I was before,
Without seeing them as reality,
Without seeing them as who I am,
There was no need to fight them,
There was no need to try to stop them.
Like I said I could make friends with them,
That is what became the next stage and the stage I'm currently in is being more light-hearted about thinking,
About thoughts,
Not to try to make the mind shut down,
Not to try to stop thinking,
Which from what I gather is impossible really.
We will live our life with the mind thinking,
With thoughts that just come up and we just want to be a bit less invested in them as our stories.
So I want to give you a very simple way to just see how thoughts are really,
However convincing they may sound,
They're really not an accurate representation of reality.
So for example we all have an inner dialogue that goes on throughout our day when we're narrating what we're doing,
How we relate to other people,
What we're going to do,
What happened to us and so on.
And we usually take it as a reality but what I want to invite you now is in your mind just summon up a ridiculous thought,
I think for example that something like I am a cauliflower or I have 50 hands or my nose is a cabbage,
Something that is really,
Really ridiculous and notice that it sounds,
That voice in our head sounds just as convincing,
Just as real as any thought we may have throughout the day.
So it just helps to see that that inner voice that keeps talking throughout the day,
It's just a made-up voice that keeps narrating what happens to us,
That may happen to us,
That happened to us in the past.
It just keeps talking and talking and talking but we don't really have to believe everything it says.
It will keep talking and over time it will get quieter with the practice of something like meditation or inquiry but still even when it's talking we don't have to believe everything it says.
It's just a voice,
It's just a stream of thoughts and thoughts unless we invest in them,
Unless we believe in them,
They are harmless really.
So thank you for listening and have a great rest of your day.
Bye.
