Mindfulness Series, Working with Thoughts

Have you ever felt over-taken by your thinking?  Exhausted by a never ending story line, problem solving, analysis, or dialog?  Thoughts can be magically stimulating or they can make a person sick with dizziness.

Mindfulness provides a way to work with thoughts.

Oh my gosh, I love this picture!  Mostly because I took it in my own front yard one morning when the sky swirled and rocked like waves in the ocean...seeing the photo takes me back to the moment.  

You're in for a real treat today.  Maybe, maybe not.  One thing for sure, I am really feeling playful and lighthearted...most likely the result of too much coffee;)

So I can't remember if it was Jon Kabat-Zinn or Jack Kornfield who used the analogy of clouds in the sky to describe thoughts in our minds. Who knows, maybe neither one of them did but that doesn't diminish the analogy.  It's perfect!  Both of these guys are well established teachers of mindfulness (unlike myself) and offer wonderful teachings.  I included links to some of their work if you are interested.

The idea is that clouds come and go in the sky just as thoughts come and go in our mind. 

We would never mistake the clouds for the sky because we see the clouds are separate.  They form and dissipate on their own.  They are changing all the time.  The sky continues on regardless of the cloud activity, two separate things.  The clouds don't control the sky and the sky doesn't control the clouds.

We can watch our thoughts come and go without getting attached to them.

This takes practice.  The more we can develop space between our experience and our awareness the easier it gets.  The more we practice being in a mindful state, the more we develop the "space" I am referring to.

Try spending a few minutes in quiet with the sole purpose of "watching" your thoughts.  Notice how it is different when you have awareness of a thought happening versus when you are lost in it.  Thoughts are so pervasive and ever present.  They trick us into a time-space warp of self-created reality.  The moment you have awareness you are lost in thinking, label it "thinking" and return to watching.  This helps us pull ourselves back into the awareness of thinking and away from the seductive attraction our thoughts present.  

Cool, right?  Very, awareness is the ultimate ticket to personal transformation.  Once we have the awareness of our thoughts then we can work with them.

Thanks for reading!  Let me know if I can be of value to you.  Leave a comment or request a specific topic for me to address.