You are not your thoughts
The average human has 70,000+ thoughts a day these days. How many of yours would you say are positive? How many are you actually even aware of? Thoughts for most of us are automatic; most of the time we don’t realise what they’re even saying. Our minds run on auto-pilot. A monologue that you tuned out of a long time ago, yet it still holds the vast majority of control over your life. The fear-based thoughts keep you from fulfilling your purpose. Your angry, resentful thoughts prevent you from healing your relationships. Those critical, self-loathing thoughts stop you from reaching out and grasping true health.
When we do catch a glimpse of what we tell ourselves, it’s alarming. We try to shut it off. We distract, condemn, deny and ignore. None of these things work. None give us clarity and the ability to step back and see these thoughts for what they are. In fact, they merely keep us whirling around the thought tornado.
Thoughts are in fact harmless, but the value we place on them is not. The weight we give them, the fact that we hold them as truth, is what causes suffering. What we tell ourselves about our thoughts (and by virtue the feelings they stir up) is what causes pain, fear and suffering. We add meaning, and this is often distorted, because we have a lifetime of mistakenly attaching negative meanings to the things we think. With thoughts come feelings, and when we get caught up in the feelings, the thoughts feed them, and so we find ourselves on a constant loop.
There’s a beautiful quote, “you are not your thoughts”, and it sums things up perfectly. When we learn to meditate, we develop an ability to step back and notice thoughts more objectively. From there we have the power to control how we respond to them, and what kind of meaning - if any! - we want to give them. Thought cycles that once unconsciously dominated different aspects of our lives lose their grip, and we learn to see that they don’t actually know what they’re talking about.
This is why Vedic meditation doesn’t advocate for “removing”, “limiting”, or “controlling” thoughts, because the thought itself is not the issue. Instead, we learn to see that thoughts are a part of meditation, and something to lessen the grip on. Our meditation teaches us to let go and expand our awareness so that we can dissolve the stress our thinking as placed on our system, while gaining greater control over the narrative we tell ourselves about our present situation. During our 2 x 20 minute meditations, we are able to effortlessly drop down into a subtler state of awareness, one where thoughts may still occur, but there is space from them. We transcend the frenetic, crazy surface level, and float in the expansive ocean that is pure consciousness. Thoughts bubble up, and in doing so gradually release the pressure they’ve had on us over the years. We stay gentle, effortless and open, and all it all to take place. In waking life, it means we gradually cultivate a way to respond that is evolutionary, and serves our growth.