Peace of Mind is a Thought Away: Mastering Your Thoughts, Part II
This is Part II of an eight part blog which began on April 14.
The meditation I will lead you in at the end of this mini-course is a Buddhist Mindfulness meditation; it has been around for a long, long time and called by different names in different traditions. What we are going to do in this meditation is really simple. I am going to lead you in learning how to dis-identify from your thoughts by teaching you how to just count them instead of getting all caught up in their content. Thus, you will learn how to dis-identify or soften around your thoughts.
You will sit in meditation and focus on your breath and your breathing in order to distract your self from your thoughts. If any thoughts wander in just count them: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, etc. Yes, just count them.
If you lose count or get caught up in a thought, stop, come back to your breath and start counting again. Imagine your thoughts are just clouds passing in the sky, leaves falling from the trees, freight cars passing by on a freight train, waves on the ocean. You don’t need to pay attention to them and get caught up in their Siren snares, their negative, stressful emotions. Just objectively count them!
You will notice, though, that certain thoughts do grab or hold onto you and immediately cause tension in your body, turmoil in your emotions, and stress in your mind. Usually they revolve around work, relationships, finances, and health.
There are all kinds of thoughts, past, present and future that wander in. Some old junky ones just kind of wander in and you say, “Huh? What is this?” If you can imagine these thoughts as just flies buzzing around your ear, you can release them.
That is why in some of the meditative traditions you are taught that, if a fly lands on your nose while you are meditating, it is no different from a thought landing in your consciousness. You ignore it.
Ignoring a fly on your nose while you are meditating can be a challenge. But you can learn to ignore the fly on your nose. That is the training. You learn to ignore the thoughts that cause you to be tense and the thoughts that are irritating and annoying. By ignoring them you can minimize or eliminate their importance and impact on you.
This is Part II of an eight part blog.