Our meditative exercises so far have taught us how to observe our mind’s travels into the future and past. We learned how to return our straying mind to the “here and now” – the only place where we can create our life actively. Yesterday, we talked about our self-destructive thought patterns and their effects on our physical and mental well-being. Today, we will look into ways how we can actively steer our thought patterns in a way that they become healing for us.
Our thoughts vary in “stickiness.”
Some of them are easier to dispose than others. When it comes to our stickier thoughts, it’s less about eliminating them, but about deciding what kind of relations we want to form with them.
Do we allow them to control or torture us? Or do we decide freely which of them we pay our attention to?
This requires a healthy “mind hygiene.”
We may have grown accustomed to just “think our thoughts dead” – i.e., just to keep thinking until we finally find a solution. If we pursue that path, however, we can quickly drive ourselves into infinite loops of thoughts, which in turn can trigger stress and helplessness. This vicious cycle then speeds up even more so with our continuing thoughts. The only way to end this destructive cycle at that point is to just stop our thinking altogether.
The “mind hygiene” task is not to overthink our problems or challenges until they are eventually resolved. It is about learning how to differentiate constructive from destructive thinking, and to dispose the latter. There’s a world of a difference between thinking about things in a constructive, solution-focused way, versus finding ourselves entrapped in infinite loops of thoughts about past or future situations.
Constructive thinking has a clear structure and is solution-focused.
Brooding, on the other hand, is a thinking in vicious cycles, as if there is a crack in our record.
In contrast to constructive thinking, brooding leads to overreactions, dramatization, and – as a direct consequence – a release of stress hormones in our body. Possibly even in an unreasonable quantity where our fictional imagination seems so real to us that we experience an amount of stress that makes us feel as if we have to fight for our own survival.
Because it is merely a fictional situation in our mind though, the energy that is released through our stress hormones cannot be steered toward a solution. Therefore, it flows into further brooding. This continued brooding pretends to our brain that we are fully engaged in a supposedly sensible activity, which in turn makes it more difficult for us to stop it. If we then add our learned self-criticism to this picture, our “personal hell” is perfect. We don’t need anyone for creating this hell for us – we do it all on our own!
Since we bring us into this hell on our own, we are also the only ones who can get us out of it again. There will be no savior and no fairy giving us a helping hand out of this mess. The mess will only end with our own act of self-compassion. As soon as we realize that we are in an automatic mechanism that has run out of control and just fires us up even more, we can stop and counteract. The mess ends when we recognize the destructive pattern consciously, and when decide to put an end to our suffering. It ends when we realize: Our brooding shows that our security system has become misguided and is now steering us into our personal hell.
So we exit!
Why?
Because we decide: We will now stop hurting ourselves.
It’s all about our thoughts. And they are merely thoughts – not facts! Thoughts are transitional. They come and go – they have no lasting existence.
Our physical experiences on the other hand are real – for example, our heart races, our chest and throat feel tight… these are real body sensations. But, they result from fictional imagination!
What happens when we no longer pay attention to these fictional mind stories?
They dissolve.
What happens to our emotions when we stop feeding them with images and no longer give them attention?
They dissolve.
Try it with this 15-minute meditation!
Today’s core challenge is to learn how the issues that occupy our mind are constantly changing. They come and go. Each thought and image is merely a thought or an image, nothing more. They are fleeting phenomena of our mind. They will pass as quickly as they came.
The good news is then: We no longer have to worry about each of our thoughts! We no longer have to find solutions for everything that comes into our mind! We no longer have to believe each fictional story that comes into our mind.
It’s just grand cinema! We can see, touch, smell and taste it – but it’s all merely our imagination.
It’s as if we’re wearing colored lens glasses that we can choose to take on or off. Whatever we see through these lenses triggers a release of particular hormones in us that, in turn, causes emotional and physical reactions in us. That’s the natural feedback loop between our body and mind. But in reality, this is just a movie we direct and produce ourselves.
Maybe we recall a day when we had a particularly good mood – when we suddenly thought much less than on other days that others dislike us. This evaluation is our own personal perception! There is no such thing as a neutral observation. Everything we perceive in the world around us runs through our perceptive filter – through our personal glasses we are wearing in that moment.
The more conscious we become of this process, the more we can practice to observe things more neutrally.
The more we realize the transitional, fleeting nature of our subjective thoughts and impressions, the more we recognize that they have no tangible substance – and the easier we can free ourselves with time from their influence over us!
We are not our thoughts.
Our thoughts are merely a game of our mind – an accustomed way of letting our brain run its course of bundling our many thoughts and impressions into categorical themes we already know and are familiar with.
We will now practice an “Open Awareness” meditation, to experience this fact for ourselves. For this exercise, it is important that you sit upright in a place of your choice – a place where you can either look into your room or outside a window. You can also practice this meditation outdoors, on a bench in a park or on a chair in your backyard:
OPEN AWARENESS MEDITATION
Center yourself with your breathing. Allow yourself to calm down. Let your breath flow like it wants to. Let your thoughts come and go. Remain kind and gentle with your breathing.
Now let your breathing drift into the background of your attention. Begin to focus on your thoughts.
Watch how they come and go. For each thought, it may be different. Some of them may come in the form of images or relived memories from the past. They may look like photographs or movie scenes. Some may come with sound. Sometimes they may be coming at you from the front, others may come from the back or circle around your head. Others again may show up like a flash and then pass again just as quickly.
Just observe this game.
The quantity of your thoughts may feels like a waterfall, where you can hardly differentiate between the individual thoughts anymore. Or your thoughts may be very few. They could move slowly or hardly at all. Sometimes it may even seem as if your mind is completely empty.
Exactly!
Your mind is like an empty space.
And that’s exactly what this exercise is here to show you.
So far, you have paid attention to your thoughts.
Now I’d like to ask you to focus your attention on the space between your thoughts. Find that gap!
And now, stretch it out.
There is a space between your thoughts. Remain in that space. The thoughts are not important now. The space between them is your focus of attention. Allow this gap to become wider, allow it to grow bigger.
Notice how your thoughts are merely moving phenomena in an empty space. They pass through that space, just like clouds in the sky. Clouds are just as transient and intangible as your thoughts.
We typically feel our thoughts intensely, this is why we take them as important. But pay attention to their fleetingness! They are nothing but transient phenomena, they dissolve as soon as we no longer pay attention to them.
Now expand that space even further. Let it become as wide as the room you are sitting in.
Now let it become even wider, like the house you’re sitting in.
And then let it become as wide as the sky.
Relax into that space. Let go. Become wide and open up. Look up into the sky, relax into depth of the sky.
Remain in this open awareness as long as you wish.
Everything has room here – nothing has to be fought or battled. There’s enough space for everything to move freely, to come and go.
Let your thoughts pass by, without paying attention to them. Relax more and more into the depth of this infinite space.
To conclude this meditation, gently bring your attention back to yourself, and collect yourself in your breath again. Sense your body.
Take a deep breath. Stretch yourself.
Hold on to this experience of complete openness as long as you can while you pursue your upcoming tasks.
By practicing mindful self-compassion, we stop behaviors that cause us suffering. Everything starts with our thoughts. If we mistakenly take them for real, it can lead to self-neglect and even hurt us. If we recognize our thoughts as mere echoes of our past, we can stop them. It all begins with our recognition, and succeeds with our decision to (re)act in a way that’s healing for us.
Self-doubt and hardness toward ourselves begins in our own thoughts, frustration and anger are fed by our thoughts – but the same applies to the flip side of the coin! Doing things that do us well or make us happy also begins with our thoughts!
The more we practice such “new” thought-decision-behavior patterns and stop practicing our old, self-destructive ones, the more quickly our body will forget about the old and manifest our new behaviors as a standard practice routine.
Thus, our task is to practice ourselves in mindful self-compassion, with everything that comes with it: Self-care, self-acceptance, generosity and kindness toward ourselves. This will free ourselves!
We recognize our thoughts as fleeting phenomena that come and go. We recognize them as mere movements in our mind’s endless space. We no longer identify them or suffer under them. Because we now see the causes of our suffering, and we know how to exit that path. We now have the responsibility for our wellness in our own hands, knowing that it is only us who can influence it.
We can care for ourselves by giving ourselves warmth and affection. By being mindful to what we need – be it by making ourselves a cup of tea, speaking with a friend, or following our own inspiration. By doing so, we set others around us free as well!
Our Exercises for Today
Practice the “Open Awareness” meditation 2-3 times this coming week.
Use the practice you learned from the “Dealing with difficult emotions” meditation whenever you feel that your emotions are taking a toll on you.
Continue to treat yourself to daily “self-compassion breaks.”
Continue to observe yourself in your use of destructive thoughts and words that come to your mind. Treat yourself with brief “self-compassion” breaks in response.
If you have time, practice the full “Body Scan” again 1-2 times this coming week.
— Annegret Hannawa