Something marvelous happens when people learn to meditate with us; they get a glimpse into the fact that their thinking mind is rattling away all the time, and that it’s separate to them. They sometimes, for the very first time in their whole lives, have the insight that they are in fact not their thoughts.
We all have ongoing thinking, it is innate to the human experience. But we don’t have to buy into all our thoughts. We can accept the churning mind as a spinning record. That it will keep going, observing, commenting, judging, noting, and that most of what it says isn’t even true or even accurate.
My mind is like a whining toddler most of the time. I don’t know if you know that stage of having a toddler when they find their voice. It’s relentless. You can be in the room, and they are droning on sweetly, ‘so I did this, oh I just picked this up, I am hot, I am not hungry, no teddy doesn’t want that…’ and you can literally leave the room, re-enter minutes later and they are STILL talking! Our minds are kind of like this. ‘Oh am I hungry? Ugh, I forgot to call Amy. I need to email Peter that document. I wonder what I will have for dinner. That person is awful. Why is that happening over there..’ and on and on. Literally a continuum of mostly nonsense.
And we thankfully can CHOOSE when to engage and when not to. If an insight comes, engage, but let’s not believe everything our thoughts tell us.
Written with love,
Jac x
L E T T E R from Jac – We Are Not Our Thoughts
