Welcome here.
In this meditation,
We will begin to explore the world of thinking.
But to begin,
We can take some time to land into the space,
Taking three slow,
Deep breaths.
On the inhales,
Our abdomen expanding like a balloon.
On the exhales,
Our abdomen dropping back inwards like the air coming out of the balloon.
And building on those deep breaths,
Inviting a deeper softening into the entire body.
All the muscles relaxed,
Yet the spine upright.
And then anchor your attention into either breath,
Sound,
Or body.
Just picking one and settling there for some time.
And we'll begin our exploration of thoughts by trying an exercise.
So you can firstly put aside the method you were just using.
And then I'll have you visualize in your mind's eye a brown horse.
And then silently think the thought to yourself,
This is a brown horse.
And wherever you saw the brown horse and those words happened,
That is the space of thought.
The place where all future thoughts will occur.
And then you can let go of the brown horse and open into a more relaxed,
Open awareness.
And bring some awareness to thinking.
Do your thoughts seem to be more visual,
More verbal,
Or perhaps they appear another way?
Spend some time investigating how thoughts appear to you.
Putting aside the specific way they appear,
Just start to notice how thoughts change.
Do they come and go quickly?
Do they seem to linger like in big,
Long thought chains?
Are there spaces between?
There are no thoughts?
How do thoughts change?
And continuing to rest in a more natural,
Open awareness.
Can you notice the precise moment where you realize you were just lost in thought,
But now you're back?
In that moment,
Can you more intimately see the difference between non-awareness and awareness?
Between lost in thought and present again?
Well,
Sometimes it can be very clear that we're either aware or we're lost in thought.
We also start to see that there's a pretty big in-between land,
Where sometimes there's this fuzzy mode where we're kind of aware,
Kind of lost in thoughts,
Seems to all blend together.
And then there's other times there's just little wispy background thoughts that don't even overtake awareness.
Maybe even sometimes we can be aware and a louder thought comes through and it doesn't suck us in.
Our task as meditators isn't to try and force one of these things to happen,
But just to keep observing.
Oh,
It's like this now.
This is what thinking is like.
And we're going to prepare to move on to the next part of our meditation.
So we're going to prepare to end the meditation.
Maybe putting aside any specific investigations and allow yourself to take one extra full,
Extra deep breath.
Then you can open your eyes,
Observe the world around you,
And prepare to end the meditation.
