Let's do a thought experiment. If you could turn off the voice in your head, would you cease to be? Who would you be? Where does the voice in your head come from? Why is it in your head and not in your heart or your belly or your feet? Who is the one listening to the voice in your head? Are you still you when you're asleep? How do you know? Are you still you when you dream? Who is watching the dream if you're in the dream? So many questions. Shouldn't the answers be self-evident?
Â
For the longest time, I mistakenly equated consciousness with my identity with the voice in my head. Many of the questions above arose out of the practice of observing my thoughts while meditating. I don't have answers to these questions; however, I'm pretty certain I am not the sum of my thoughts. I am so much more than my thoughts and yet I can't really explain my own existence.
Â
Practice
While I'm not the voice in my head, I do need my thoughts and the stories I tell myself to organize my human experience. They are a part of me but not all of me. In today's meditation, we welcome our thoughts.
Â
Settle into your physical surroundings as you prepare to settle into your inner landscape. Find a comfortable posture, relaxed yet attentive. Recognize your physical body as more than simply a container for your thoughts but as an integral part of your being. Experience your lungs breathing. Feel your heart pumping. Arrive in the body as you open to the present moment. Use the breath as an anchor.
Â
Inevitably, thoughts will arise. The mind creates thoughts in the same way the heart pumps blood. When this happens, allow the thoughts to pass through you as air passes through the lungs. Let thoughts come and go. No need to identify with them. No need to judge them. No need to control them. Rather recognize the subtle space between you and your thoughts. You, the observer of your thoughts, are not one and the same as your thoughts. Freedom is to be found in this quiet space between one thought and the next. This is the gift and the key to mindfulness.
The goal of mindfulness is not to understand with the mind what is happening in the mind, but to experience life itself as it unfolds in the present moment.