Where did your mind get trapped?
“When we are disturbed, we attract even more disturbances, and so the snowball effect continues. One action generates a reaction, and the consequences can be infinite. The only way to halt this process is to identify where our minds got trapped. This is done through self-observation and presence. We can sit down, align our bodies, close our eyes and allow ourselves to observe our thoughts and emotions. Slowly, we will see that there is a psychological soundtrack, a flux of repetitive thoughts, playing in our minds. This means that we are identified with these thoughts because they give us a sense of identity. But, as we continue to observe, the identification begins to lose its strength and we can begin to disassociate from these thoughts." Sri Prem Baba
Relating to thoughts differently: seeing them for what they are
The thinking level of mind pervades our lives; consciously or unconsciously, we all spend much or most of our lives there. But meditation is a different process that does not involve discursive thought or reflection. Because meditation is not thought, through the continuous process of silent observation, new kinds of understanding emerge.
We do not need to fight with thoughts or struggle against them or judge them. Rather, we can simply choose not to follow the thoughts once we are aware that they have arisen.
When we lose ourselves in thought, identification is strong. Thought sweeps our mind and carries it away, and, in a very short time, we can be carried far indeed. We hop a train of association, not knowing that we have hopped on, and certainly not knowing the destination. Somewhere down the line, we may wake up and realize that we have been thinking, that we have been taken for a ride. And when we step down from the train, it may be in a very different mental environment from where we jumped aboard.
Take a few moments right now to look directly at the thoughts arising in your mind. As an exercise, you might close your eyes and imagine yourself sitting in a cinema watching an empty screen. Simply wait for thoughts to arise. Because you are not doing anything except waiting for thoughts to appear, you may become aware of them very quickly. What exactly are they? What happens to them? Thoughts are like magic displays that seem real when we are lost in them but then vanish upon inspection.
But what about the strong thoughts that affect us? We are watching, watching, watching, and then, all of a sudden – whoosh! – we are gone, lost in a thought. What is that about? What are the mind states or the particular kinds of thoughts that catch us again and again, so that we forget that they are just empty phenomena passing on?
It is amazing to observe how much power we give unknowingly to uninvited thoughts: ‘Do this, say that, remember, plan, obsess, judge’. They have the potential to drive us quite crazy, and they often do!
The kinds of thoughts we have, and their impact on our lives, depend on our understanding of things. If we are in the clear, powerful space of just seeing thoughts arise and pass, then it does not really matter what kind of thinking appears in the mind; we can see our thoughts as the passing show that they are.
From thoughts come actions. From actions come all sorts of consequences. In which thoughts will we invest? Our great task is to see them clearly, so that we can choose which ones to act on and which simply to let be. Adapted from Goldstein (1993) ‘Insight Meditation’
Lost.
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
An old Native American elders story rendered into modern English by David Wagoner.
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