Everyone is overridden by thoughts;
that’s why they have so much heartache and sorrow.
At times I give myself up to thought purposefully;
but when I choose,
I spring up from those under its sway.
I am like a high-flying bird,
and thought is a gnat:
how should a gnat overpower me?
– Rumi
After a few days of practicing, you’re probably noticing a lot of THOUGHTS!
And that’s TOTALLY NORMAL. You are human. You are going to think.
Remember, mindfulness is not about NOT THINKING, it’s about bringing awareness to our thoughts.
At the same time, meditation is not “thinking with your eyes closed.” 
So what do you do when you notice thoughts?
First, you should be excited — that’s mindfulness!! Knowing you are thinking when you are thinking is the entire practice! You’ve observed that your mind has wandered. So don’t ‘beat yourself up’ because your mind wandered — be thankful that you noticed. The more you practice, the more you’ll notice your mind wandering. We don’t ever get “better” at meditating, but you will likely notice that you start to catch yourself thinking more toward the beginning of the thought, rather than getting lost in a long train of thoughts.
When you do notice a thought, you can practice what’s called “noting” — you can simply say to yourself, “thinking, thinking.” I think it’s important to say the word twice, and in a kind voice. A gentle “thinking, thinking” is much kinder to yourself than “THINKING!”
Once you’ve noted the thought, just observe it. You don’t need to engage it, follow it, or suppress it.
In a session I once conducted for teachers, after I led a brief meditation, a participant said, “I had a hard time pushing my thoughts away!”
That IS a hard practice. We’re not pushing anything away! Remember our foundational attitude of allowing — we allow the thought because it’s already there. We observe it, and watch it run its course. We invite it to float on past — and it might. But it might stick around. We allow that too.
Do you remember the show SuperNanny? The one with the sassy British nanny who helped American parents learn how to discipline their kids? Jo Frost (aka the SuperNanny) would teach parents the proper technique for using time outs, which involved repeatedly bringing the child back to the “naughty corner” (or whatever the timeout location was) every time the little cherub escaped.
This often happened over 60-70 times in a span of 10-15 minutes!
And that’s pretty much what we’re doing in meditation. We set the intention to pay attention to the breath. And then our mind wanders away. We gently bring it back. The mind wanders again…. and so on.
The SuperNanny also told parents that when they retrieved the escapee, they should not engage in dialogue — no scolding, no rationalizing, no questioning. They simply and wordlessly brought their little one back to timeout.
It’s the same in meditation. You don’t scold yourself for “letting” your mind wander. You don’t engage in dialogue with the thought (“yeah, you SHOULD be mad about that comment that person made three days ago because….”). You gently, non-judgmentally escort your attention back to the breath.
There are many other helpful analogies for this practice — you can imagine that your awareness is the vast, expansive blue sky. Each thought is a cloud passing through. Some are dark and stormy, others are light and fluffy. But they all eventually pass on their own time.
You can imagine your awareness is a river, and thoughts are passing ships.
I like to imagine that our awareness is like the ocean, and while it might be active and stormy on the surface, we can dwell in the depths below, in the gorgeous stillness beneath thinking and doing.
In mindfulness meditation, we come to recognize that thoughts simply come and go… and they don’t require engagement. We realize thoughts are actually quite fleeting. And, more powerfully, we realize that we have a choice about whether to engage with a thought or not! This profound insight stays with us well after we end our formal meditation session.
So continue with your five minutes of mindfulness practice. You can use the audio meditations from the previous lessons, or you can set a timer for 5 minutes, and practice mindfulness of thoughts.
Your practice will look something like this:
Repeat, repeat, repeat….
If you’d like, click on over to Facebook and let us know how you’re doing — how is your practice going? What questions do you have? Remember you can submit questions on Facebook for me to address in our coaching call on Friday.
You’re almost through the lessons for this first week — you are doing great! I’m so proud of you for making this commitment to your practice!
We’ll wrap up this first week with a lesson on mindful eating (one of my favorites!) You’ll need some chocolate (although any food will do!)