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Guided Meditation: Mindful of the Process of Thinking

Greetings, and welcome back for our meditation and exploration of thinking—mindfulness of thinking.

As an analogy, it's possible to walk in shoes that aren't really a fit for our feet. It's possible to walk with shoes that are not quite a fit for us, but we don't really realize it for quite a while. They're tweaking a muscle, tendon, nerve, or something in the foot a little bit, and slowly, over time, it's causing an injury.

The shoe might be doing its job in the sense of helping us walk someplace and walk about. So, in a sense, the injury is being masked by the function of the shoes, which is very successful. But if we bring our attention to the feet carefully, and start feeling that there's an ache, a numbness, a strain, or a pain, we think, "Hey, something's not quite right here." And then it might occur to us to change shoes or take the shoes off.

The same thing can happen with thinking; our thinking doesn't quite have a good fit for us. Maybe thinking is doing its function: it is helping us solve problems, helping us plan better for the future, helping us be entertained, or helping us review all our resentments quite successfully. All these things thinking will do.

But what we do in mindfulness meditation^[1] is we learn to also pay careful attention not so much to the content of thought, but to the fit of the thinking, or the other aspects of thinking which have nothing to do with the content. In doing so, we start becoming aware of the impact thinking has, or that the way we're thinking is not a good fit. Perhaps the way that we're thinking feels constricted, tight, discouraging, draining, or inappropriately agitating. There are all kinds of ways that we think.

There is a lot to become aware of once we put aside the content of our thoughts and bring a quiet, careful, caring attention to the quality of thinking, or what the activity of thinking is like within us. That is going to be the focus at the beginning of this meditation, and I'll do so as a little bit of an exercise.

It is not so much that you have to do this as a regular mindfulness practice, but it's an exercise to familiarize yourselves with the terrain of thinking. Maybe it will help you become a little bit freer of thinking. In fact, by becoming more aware of the characteristics, the quality, and the fit of thinking, we become much more capable of discovering how to be free, and where liberation can be found in relationship to thinking.

Settling the Body

So, taking a meditation posture and gently closing your eyes.

It's useful at the beginning of a meditation to relax, to settle in, to begin turning the attention to the here and now, instead of the there and then. Within this physical body, from deep inside, opening it, spreading it, expanding it—take a few long, slow, deep breaths. As you exhale, take a few extended exhales. Let the exhales be a kind of relaxation of settling in. If possible, evoke the emotional equivalent of saying, "Ah, here we are. This is good."

Then, let your breathing return to normal.

For an exercise of focusing on thinking, it really helps if the body is relaxed. So perhaps soften the muscles around the eyes and forehead. Sometimes when those relax, there's an opening or expanding sensation spreading as the muscles release. Relax and soften the jaw. Release the shoulders that can be carrying the weight of the world. For these minutes here, no weight needs to be carried. Just sit here relaxed.

Soften the belly, letting it hang forward and relaxed, open. Sometimes when the belly is relaxed, the weight of the torso and the belly has an opportunity to sink a little bit, to settle. There might also be irregular, maybe even chronic tension in the thighs. See if you can soften and relax the thighs a little bit, releasing the holding.

For a minute or so, we'll sit quietly. If you can, just attend to your breathing in a cozy or intimate way, enjoying the simplicity of just breathing for a minute.

Observing the Process of Thinking

Now, turn your attention to your thinking. First, notice how you think. Do you think mostly in words, like an inner voice that speaks, or inner text that floats by? Or do you think mostly in images? Or is it a combination of the two?

If you're thinking in words with an inner voice, is there a location for that voice, or where the speaker is? There doesn't have to be, but maybe there's a very general sense of where the voice, the speaker system, floats and exists. Maybe it's somewhere in the head more than it's in the feet. Maybe it's somewhere behind the eyes.

If you think in images, where are the images projected? Is there a location for that? Are they free-floating and random, or do they tend to be kind of in front of the eyes, in front of you, as if you're seeing a scene?

As you think, become aware of the general location of the thinking. Doing so is a way of not being solely interested in the content, but interested in how it is and where the thinking is happening. Thinking is not all of who you are; it is just a part of you. Sometimes, seeing the location of thinking takes away the authority, the bigness, or the sense of importance in thinking. It's just here, in this place.

In that location where thinking occurs, is there any tension or pressure? Is there any tightness or constriction? Is there any insistence, enthusiasm, or resistance? What happens if you take that location from where you might be thinking and smooth it out, like the surface of a wide lake getting smoothed as the wind dies down? The location spreads out, becomes expansive and open.

As you listen to the voice that thinks, or the images that are being displayed, what's the mood of that thinking? Is it gentle and soft? Is it harsh and hard? Is it slow? Is it fast? Is it kind or is it angry? Is it confident or is it anxious? What's the mood or the emotional quality of the thinking, independent of what you're thinking about?

If you do notice something about a mood or emotional quality, make a lot of room for that mood to be there. Give it permission to be there. It's okay. It's almost as if you open up all the doors and windows or walls of the mind and make lots of space. It's okay to give breathing room to how you feel.

As you do so, what happens to your thinking?

Returning to the Breath

Now returning to your breathing. If you can, put aside any concern with your thoughts. Let go of them. Let go just enough so that you can center yourself on the body breathing. Having acknowledged what they are—that they are thinking—it's easier to put them aside.

But if thinking is strong, breathe through these qualities of the thinking. Breathe through the location. Breathe through the qualities of sensations, mood, and tension. Not to make it a problem, but just so you can stay with your breathing and acknowledge the thinking.

Cultivating Goodwill

Sometimes, if we are really tracking the process and the activity of thinking, we can realize that it's not so useful to keep thinking the same thing over and over again, or thinking about something that's pointless. At that point, it might be possible to simply change what you're thinking about.

One possibility is to think thoughts of goodwill^[2]. Think about the people you know. Imagine how nice it would be if they were happy, healthy, and peaceful. Have simple and maybe reasonable wishes: May it be so. May they feel greater happiness, greater peace, greater well-being. Having these thoughts of goodwill can be an improvement to what we were thinking about.

Especially at the end of a meditation session, it is helpful to do this regularly. Consider how nice it would be, how wonderful it would be, if more people in the world could experience happiness, well-being, peace, health, and freedom.

It really does count; it really does make a difference if we wish, intend, and have a sense of purpose around doing what we can, however small, to make that possible—to improve the lives of others, to better this world that we live in. Perhaps it's in the small ways that we can make the biggest difference: our small acts of kindness.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be at ease. May all beings be free.