My Thoughts are not Me - we think what we think is real.
Based on Anahat sitting session May 29, 2019
After the past week, we know that mindfulness meditation helps us to achieve a peaceful, stable mind and equanimity or balance. It creates a strong core from where we move into the world.
And a stable, peaceful mind is important because it is through our mind that we experience the world and through our mind we experience our problems, our stress, guilt, fear, etc.
The nature of our mind is a constant mind-stream. Which is why it is not correct when people say “meditation is to empty the mind”. It's not possible to empty our mind. We can calm it, we can concentrate our attention on a single object like our breath, for example, but if you find your mind is completely empty, you should definitely go and see someone about it. :)
It is simply not the nature of our mind to be empty.
Most people take what's happening in the mind very seriously. We pay huge attention to our mind. We take all our thoughts at face value – even fabricate whole stories around them. And then we make those stories concrete.
If we sit still for 5 mins, we'll quickly see that our mind keeps throwing things up – thoughts, feelings, impulses, sensations, emotions. Our mind-stream works 24/7. It works even when we are asleep, when we dream.
Even though it's with us day in and day out - and although we are taught many skills from when we are at school, we are never taught how to deal with this mind-stream.
And because we are not fully mindful of what is happening in our own head, we do not always fully understand how what's going on in our mind influences our actions, reactions, perceptions, perspective – we believe what we think. It defines us, we think what we think is real.
We also don’t always fully understand - or are not always fully aware of - how our mind projects what we feel inside onto the world outside. We see the world the way we are. Not the way the world really is. We see things through our filters of past experience.
The whole purpose of meditation, then, is to understand our own mind - and consequently the world around us. Two things about mindfulness meditation and our mind-stream: I invite you to consider this:
1.) Thoughts do not define me, and
2.) Thoughts are not real - what’s happening in my mind is not ME.
My mind is not ME?? We are separate from our mind? Yes, we are. This may a complete revelation, or even if we know it, we sometimes have to be reminded of it. When our mind throws up fear, guilt, shame, anxiety, planning, remembering, we then think “I AM” those things. We feel like it’s in the fabric of us.
How often have you heard someone say “I am an anxious person, that just who I am”.We get caught up in our fleeting thoughts (because they are fleeting) and the feelings they cause, and we identify with them, even taking them to be who we are.
In meditation we learn that whatever our mind throws at us, this is not ME. I am not these things. These feelings are not me, these impulses are not me, these imaginings are not me, I am not these things. I am separate from them. They might be moving through my mind, but I wasn’t born this way, so it is not part of my fibre.
We use meditation to learn to balance our mind-stream without reacting. We merely observe. For the purpose of training our mind to be the observer, not getting caught up in our stories. In this way we can begin to understand our habits, our tendencies, our self-talk, our stories. And we begin to recognise that we don't have to follow our thoughts. We don't have to get caught up in our old stories.
The way to change – to solve our moods, our problems etc. doesn’t mean we have to work super-hard to change our inner landscape, or the people around us, or the place we live in, or the job we have. Rather it involves a subtle shift in how we pay attention to all of those things.
Mindfulness meditation is not the amount of thoughts you have or don’t have, and it's not about the thought itself. Its our awareness of the thought. I hope you will enjoy the last, gentle meditation in this series. Have a happy Sunday.
