Welcome to day 27 of mindfulness with the moon.
Today we will be talking about the concept that I am not my thoughts.
We are getting to the time in mindfulness with the moon where I will be talking quite existentially.
We are seeds again in this waning crescent phase and we're going back to the earth to die.
We are looking at ourselves fully and in these guided meditations I will be saying much less.
I will just be offering some phrases here and there and simply allowing for the music and for your own body,
Mind,
Thoughts,
Spirit to be here with you on your journey with less for me.
We have now 27 days of mindfulness meditation practice under our belt if you have been following along.
And so I encourage you to notice what happens with more space as you create quietness and as you tune into your intuition.
With this waning crescent phase it's getting darker and darker and darker and here we get to look in all of those cracks and those corners so that we can remember that we're actually not our thoughts and we get to choose what we believe.
Most of the time there's a voice in our head that comments with a point of view,
With interpretations,
With judgments,
With suggestions about what is going on in our life.
Eckhart Tolle calls it the voice in the head.
Alan Watts calls it the chatter in the skull and the quaking mess.
Sometimes it feels like we are swimming in a sea of our own thoughts.
Now most humans don't even know that they have a voice in their head that never stops talking including me.
I didn't know when I first started my mindfulness meditation practice.
I just thought that voice that I heard,
The many voices that I heard inside of my head just was the way that it was.
And this voice often wants to be heard and again many voices is also possible.
As a therapist I work with a model called Internal Family Systems,
IFS,
And with Internal Family Systems there's a whole family internally that has typically something to say and they really want to be heard.
Sometimes they're fighting for our attention and these thoughts typically come from a good place,
Right?
They want to keep us safe.
We've developed these coping skills and these strategies to listen to different parts of ourselves based on what we've learned quote unquote from the past so that we are protecting ourselves and oftentimes this protecting of ourselves is actually not protecting us at all but instead causing more and more harm because it takes us away.
We allow for these thoughts to actually take us away from being right here right now which has nothing to do with the past or nothing to do with the future.
Just right here and practicing being right here is what we're doing with Mindfulness Meditation.
Eckhart Tolle says thinking is a wonderful tool and ability that humans have if used rightly.
It is an important instrument and it is also an instrument that causes dysfunction,
Unhappiness and misery for millions on the planet.
When thinking is not used but you are used by your thoughts,
Right?
So when our thoughts are running us and we're not aware of the fact that we're thinking we buy in to the thoughts and the thoughts might even be collective thoughts,
Right?
They might not even be our thoughts but if we start to pay attention we can start to loosen our grip on these thoughts.
So when we're gripped by thoughts we think that we are our thoughts.
We actually think so involuntarily most of the time without a Mindfulness Meditation practice that we become our thoughts and most of us think so involuntarily that it just feels like it's happening in the background that we become our thoughts.
We bring our thoughts into our reality.
And this is particularly for people without a Mindfulness Meditation practice.
So if you look when we feel unhappy in whatever form that is,
Irritation,
Boredom,
Sadness,
These are states that don't feel pleasant and are usually attributed to a life situation.
You can ask yourself,
Is this caused by the situation or is it caused by what my mind is telling me about the situation?
Is this,
Buddha would call it suffering,
This unpleasantness,
Is this suffering caused by the situation or is it caused by what my mind is telling me about the situation?
Eckhart Tolle shares with us that most of the time mental commentary is coming from what we are telling ourselves about the situation.
We are imposing the narratives that we have about what we think should be happening versus being in the moment just as it is and allowing for the moment to be.
What is the case now?
What's happening now?
When we align ourselves with the now,
Because when we align ourselves with the now,
We start to be able to tap into awareness.
And when we have awareness of our thoughts,
Of our feelings,
Of our emotions,
Of our body,
That is the beginning of freedom.
As you meditate today,
I invite you to simply notice your thoughts with kindness as we've been practicing.
Kindness,
Compassion,
Tenderness,
Openness,
Allowing yourself to simply be with what arises now,
This now,
And this now,
And this now.
You'll hear three bells to begin and three bells to close.
Noticing how you drop in,
How you tune into yourself,
Finding a comfortable seat,
One that works for you and your meditation practice today.
Seeing what it's like to align yourself with right now.
Taking your breath,
Staying with yourself,
Breathing,
Tuning into a quietness of mind so you can relax and tune into your intuition right here and now.
Notice what's happening now,
Right now.
This moment,
The only moment that there is,
Staying with right now.
Can you simply notice your thoughts and remind yourself that you are not your thoughts,
You are more than that.
You are not your body,
You are more than that.
You are consciousness.
We are consciousness.
Can we zoom out and offer space to be with the bigness of now?
Can you align yourself with right now?
Alan Watts says,
We are so tied up in our minds that we have lost our senses.
Can you find your senses now?
Slowly starting to bring your awareness back to your body,
Maybe bringing some movement into your fingers and toes,
Blinking your eyes a bunch of times,
Letting in a little light at a time,
Taking a moment to honor yourself,
To honor this practice of remembering that we are not our thoughts.
Our thoughts are a tool and if we can start to notice them with kindness right here and now,
We can tap into our freedom that's right here for us,
Waiting for us.
Remember that the moon is visible around sunrise.
Maybe you'd like to pay her a visit.
See you tomorrow.
