Hello and welcome into this guided meditation where I want to invite us today to focus on the most elusive,
The most insubstantial and maybe the most powerful object of perception,
Which is our thoughts.
So to begin,
Sit with your back straight and take a couple of deep breaths,
Noticing the rising and falling of our chest and abdomen.
And notice other perceptions in the body that,
With your eyes closed,
Tell you that you have a seat,
The point of contact of your feet with the floor.
And just notice how perceptions of the body appear,
Like a cloud shifting,
Changing,
Changing.
Even though the body may seem very solid,
On the immediate level of our perceptions,
It is fluid.
So now,
Let's start with noticing that we probably are thinking already,
Maybe without even noticing that we are thinking,
Which is quite common.
And just notice the next thought when it appears.
Whatever thought appears,
Just notice it.
And for me,
It feels like an instant image on the screen that suddenly flashes,
That if I didn't notice,
It would be more like a movie where another thought would follow after it,
And then another,
And then another,
And then I would be thinking that movie.
But when I notice a thought,
And it kind of freezes in the inner mind,
Notice how thoughts have so much velocity,
They're moving and changing,
And when we don't notice them,
They can easily velcro themselves to us so that we become our thoughts.
And when you notice a thought,
When you see it as an image flashed out on the screen of consciousness,
You may also notice that when that thought disappears,
You may notice what remains,
Which is that darkness that isn't quite dark,
That is shimmering with light.
And that darkness is that space in which thoughts occur.
So most of the time,
We don't notice that darkness because we're so taken by thoughts.
It's almost like there's a projector,
And thoughts are images projected onto a screen.
So we are often distracted or carried away by the images,
By thoughts,
By the stream of thoughts,
Without actually noticing the screen in which they appear.
So just,
Again,
If you catch yourself being lost in a thought right now,
And you maybe forgot that you're listening to this and forgot that you're meditating,
That's absolutely normal.
And just come back to noticing that darkness behind your closed eyes in which all thoughts appear and disappear.
There's no need to grab onto thoughts.
There is no need to push them away.
They have their own life.
They appear by themselves.
They stay for some time and then they disappear.
And although often we,
When we're not meditating,
When we're not closely observing them,
We have a feeling that those thoughts are us,
That I am thinking those thoughts,
That they are me.
But when we're meditating like this,
We notice that they're quite separate.
We're not quite as implicated with thoughts.
They are objects,
Appearances on that screen of awareness.
And we may also notice that there are moments when a thought appears,
Stays and disappears.
And before the next thought appears,
Then there is only the screen,
That there's only this darkness.
So that shows us that we are not exclusively the contents of our thinking.
That thoughts appear within our consciousness,
Within consciousness,
But they do not define it.
And if any of this seems quite inscrutable or mysterious,
Or you cannot access it in your direct experience,
Or you have another experience,
All of those are totally fine.
Just connect with your own immediate experience of of noticing the next thought and noticing how it will after some time inexorably go away.
And just notice that thoughts always come and then they always go.
Even the most disturbing thoughts,
Even the most painful thoughts,
Unless we keep feeding them by identifying with them,
Unless we keep strengthening them,
They have no choice but to go.
So when we're meditating,
This is the power of meditation,
That we notice how everything changes,
Including our thoughts.
And I hope it's been useful in showing that however solid and real thoughts often seem to us,
Upon closer inspection they are really not more than images that we believe in and identify with,
And by doing so make them powerful.
So that doesn't mean that thinking will or should stop,
It doesn't mean that there's something wrong with thinking,
It just means that we may take it a little bit less seriously.
We may be a little bit less invested in the contents of our thoughts.
And that gives us a little bit more freedom and and if you're ready to conclude the meditation,
Just stretch your body a bit.
If you want to meditate longer,
Please feel free to do so.
Thank you for listening and meditating with me,
And until next time,
Have a good day.
