Welcome to day eight in this beautiful waxing crescent phase that we are in right now.
Notice what's coming up for you today.
What's arising and what's here now as you get ready to listen to this Dharma talk and drop into a meditation.
Today we'll be talking about mindfulness of thoughts.
Carlos Castaneda said,
You talk to yourself too much.
You're not unique in that.
Every one of us does.
We maintain our world with our inner dialogue and yet a man or a woman of knowledge is aware that the world will change completely as soon as they stop talking to themselves.
So let's do a practice right off the bat for one minute.
You don't have to change your posture particularly but when you're ready just let your eyes close and what we're going to do is count the thoughts.
So for this minute notice the picture thoughts,
The word thoughts,
Whatever kind of thoughts that they are and simply number them.
Jack Kornfield says that you know when you start numbering your thoughts and then if you're counting the numbers as thoughts that's called the cat chasing its tail,
Right?
So you're just going to wait and sit like the cat at a mouse hole and then the thoughts will come out and they're sneaky,
Right?
They might come up from behind and they're just like,
Oh you haven't had many thoughts yet have you?
Or wow your mind is so busy,
Right?
That's a thought too.
So hold yourself with kindness over the next minute and begin and stop.
Okay very well done my friends.
So how many thoughts did you have?
And just notice there's no right or wrong answer here.
It's just an awareness exercise.
One thing that is fun for me to do is to create a top 10 playlist of our hit habitual thoughts,
Right?
So maybe you can spend some time with that.
What are the thoughts that are coming into your mind on a regular basis?
They come,
They show up,
They show up over and over again.
Research in the mindfulness world has shown us that when we put electrodes on the brain we can start to see when thoughts are active and they've discovered that we have between 60 to 80 thousand thoughts every single day.
60 to 80 thousand thoughts every single day.
How many of those thoughts would you guess are repeating themselves?
Take a guess.
80% of our thoughts repeat themselves throughout the day.
Okay have you ever heard of this concept called monkey mind or wild jungle mind?
Our minds are all over the place.
They just are.
And so one thing that can be really helpful is to start naming those thoughts.
That's a future thought.
That's a past thought.
That's a planning thought.
That's a fear thought.
Right?
We just get to start noticing what our thought patterns are and naming them allows for us to better map out our minds and these thought patterns so we can start to see,
Oh there I am thinking about that thing again.
Okay,
Great.
And the other thing is some people ask me,
You know,
Should I take notes during meditation?
And since 80% of our thoughts are repeating,
Most likely the thoughts are going to come back up again in your day world when you're not in formal meditation practice and then you can do that thing that you remembered that you needed to do when you were sitting in meditation in the morning,
For example.
So another thing that is really useful for me when a thought comes in,
You can just look at that thought.
Now you see the thought,
Right?
And you get to say,
Thank you for your opinion.
I am choosing to be right here and I'm coming back to my breath now.
Right?
We don't get angry with the thought.
We're not mad that it's there.
We're not resisting it because when we resist it,
As the depth philosopher Carl Jung suggests and reminds us,
That what we resist persists.
So we're not resisting the thought.
We're just noticing the thought,
Creating space for the thought to be there and shifting how we relate to the thought.
Thank you.
Now I'm breathing.
Now I'm with my body.
I'm right here.
Jack Kornfield has a teacher who he speaks of highly and often and his name is Ajahn Shah.
And Ajahn Shah is famous for saying to his students,
You see that big boulder over there?
Is it heavy?
They say,
Why yes,
Of course.
And he responds,
Not if you don't pick it up.
Right?
So it's not that our thoughts are good or bad.
There's just an honoring of their existence.
And in honoring their existence,
We create some distance.
We don't have to pick up the boulder.
We don't have to pick up our thoughts.
We get to choose the thoughts.
And it's not to stop our thoughts,
But continue to practice compassionately relating to them.
Who is your enemy?
Said the Buddha.
Mind is your enemy.
No one can harm you more than a mind untrained.
Who is your friend?
Mind is your friend.
No one can assist you and care for you better than a mind well trained.
Not even the most loving mother or father.
Let's begin our practice.
Take a few slow,
Deep breaths right here.
You'll hear three bells to begin and three bells to close.
Perhaps you'd like to take a few deep,
Slow breaths just to drop yourself in,
To drop yourself right into the moment,
Into the here and now,
Attuning yourself to your surroundings today.
What you can see,
Perhaps you'd like to keep your eyes open today,
Or it's more supportive for you to gaze down on the ground,
Or even at a candle,
Or to soften your gaze completely to go inward.
Allowing for yourself to arrive by also tuning on your senses,
By noticing,
In particular,
The thoughts that come through today,
The thoughts that come as visuals,
The thoughts that come as auditory messages,
The thoughts that arrive.
No matter what,
Just creating a space for them to rise and fall.
Today we're simply taking an inventory of our top ten thoughts,
Our top ten playlist.
We can use this as a practice ground for training our minds.
So notice what arises with the music and with the space you're creating to come home to yourself,
To feel yourself in connection with the moon.
Noticing what's in your awareness,
Where your attention is in this moment,
With a kindness and a gentleness.
I'm finding an anchor that continues to root you to the moment.
As you breathe,
Notice if there's an openness that you can bring as we're simply training our minds.
We're simply calling that puppy back.
Come on back right here.
Starting to notice your internal voice,
Starting to notice the way you're speaking to yourself,
The thoughts that come when you notice your thoughts.
And in this practice,
As the Buddha reminds us,
No one can assist you and care for you better than a mind well-trained.
Allowing for your anchor to be present as thoughts come and go.
This root back,
Back to the moment,
Back to right here.
Opening the space,
The space in your body that allows for each moment without judgment.
Coming with a sense of this too is welcome here.
Whatever it is,
Greeting it with gentleness and compassion.
Noticing what's arising,
Breathing there,
Learning to relate to what arises with tenderness.
How open to your experience can you remain?
How open to your thoughts can you be?
Can you bring a deep sense of presence to your own mind to coming home to yourself?
In this moment,
We will have no other breath that is the same as this one.
Can you be there for it?
Maybe you'd like to try,
Practice,
Train yourself right now.
Who is your enemy?
Said the Buddha.
Mind is your enemy.
No one can harm you more than a mind untrained.
Who is your friend?
Mind is your friend.
No one can assist you and care for you better than a mind well-trained,
Not even the most loving mother or father.
See you tomorrow.
