POLL: Watching thoughts

[Peter]

We are wondering who can stay aware of their thoughts while they are happening. Watching your thoughts drifting by like clouds in the sky, as it were.

The goal is to get (and give) some insight, because a lot of people seem to beat themselves up for not being able to do this, while probably the majority are not able to do this. This is especially helpful to know, since it is part of most 8-week courses.

Note, there is no good, or bad answer here! Being pulled into one's thoughts is a subconscious process, and the goal in mindfulness isn't to stop that! 'Even' Buddhist monks, are still 'pulled' into their thoughts after practicing mindfulness for decades.

Thanks in advance for your cooperation.

P.S. you have to be a registered forum user to be able to vote

[Peter]

It would be nice if people would also leave a comment as a nuance.

I like to start off by repeating my nuance from another thread:

My mind has a tendency to use 99% of its conscious resources to the thinking. This means there are no conscious resources left to be aware. I can deliberately dial it down, and use like 80% for the thinking, and 20% for being aware, but the thinking is a lot less focused, and effective. Furthermore, I can only keep that up for a short while, because my subconscious automatically dedicates the 99% back to the thinking.

Peter

[barbs55]

I think this really clears up the difference between meditation and mindfulness. When I meditate I can (sometimes) just watch my thoughts go past and stay in awareness of my own breathing. In 'real' life, I try and mindfully be aware when I've been distracted by thoughts from what I'm actually doing, and in that moment, there IS awareness, but then I focus back on what I was doing in the first place, which often involves some thinking.

I have been listening to the new Sports section of the Headspace App and in it he talks about 'being in the zone' and 'the state of flow' when you are doing a sport well; that moment when your body and mind are totally focused on the activity, undistracted - it's a great feeling. So completely in the moment that 'you' don't exist, it's just this moment in its entirety - that is awareness. But again, it is difficult to keep yourself there, in awareness, for very long, because the mind starts up again with distracting thoughts.

So meditation is training the mind to experience that for longer, and more often, and we can find moments in our everyday life to do this too. A state of flow will always come and go, we cannot expect to maintain it for hours, and we only find it by letting go of distraction and thoughts. When you recognise the distraction, that's the place of awareness.

[Happyogababe]

I've realised, from where I'm at right now, that it very much depends on what is going on in my life at the time as to how easy I find it to stay observing rather than attaching to thoughts.

Recently I've had quite a bad relapse of my illness and added to that there has been some stressful situations to deal with. I find when energy is depleted it's difficult to maintain awareness and when worries or concerns float around my mind they are persistent.

Compared to how I was before mindfulness and meditation I've dealt with all of this in relative calm, even though I've really struggled to let go of thoughts....I have been aware and I've remembered to be compassionate with myself.

Even when life is calmer I can struggle to watch thoughts like clouds in the sky, but I can do it for short periods of time.

[Matt Y]

Great idea for a poll Peter.

In my opinion there are numerous commonly used meditation instructions that can cause these unnecessary difficulties. In this instance we're being asked to do the impossible, or virtually impossible: to stay aware of our thoughts as they are happening.

We might be able to do this for a few moments, now and then, but certainly not with any consistency, and usually not deliberately. When we're aware of our thoughts as they're happening, it's almost by accident; an unintended outcome of certain mental states we find ourselves in as we meditate. And usually, when we try to become aware of our thoughts, we unconsciously influence them in some way. They stop, or vanish, or slow down. So we're not actually aware of our thoughts - we become aware of some other, different pattern of thinking. A pattern that is influenced by our awareness.

The instruction is too idealistic.

It's an example of some well meaning meditator turning an outcome into a process. That is, someone, whilst meditating, found themselves experiencing their thoughts in this unusual way. So they decided to recommend this way of looking at thoughts to others.

In this way, an experience is turned into an instruction, or technique.

But the experience is the outcome of some other process; one of which the person offering the instruction may not have been aware.

A metaphor might help to explain what I mean here.

Imagine you have a desire to travel from London to Paris. So someone tells you what Paris is like and where it is. So you begin imagining yourself in Paris. You can have some success with this strategy; you can get a sense of what it might be like to be in Paris. But to actually get there you have to put one foot in front of the other, and make a range of decisions based on the mode of transport you choose and the traffic and weather conditions present. That's a very different undertaking.

In the same way, the way you get to or become aware of your thoughts is very different to imagining them like clouds in the sky or leaves on a stream. It's also very different from deliberately trying to become aware of your thoughts.

[Peter]

What a great, helpful comment, Matt. And spot on! I couldn't agree more! Thank you very much!

Peter

[Jonaaaa]

I have often wondered about this aspect of the practice and how we do it. Kabat-Zinn says 'Watch and let be, watch and let go' without actually elaborating much on what that means.

I find that when I notice thoughts they 'stop'. I find myself instinctively stopping them.

How DO we let them be and let them go? Surely if I am doing this 'properly' the thought stream would continue a bit, after I have noticed them?

In all that waffle in his book, the meditation instructions are not THAT helpful. I don't grasp if there is any difference between 'breathing with' and 'breathing into' either.

[JonW]

Hello Jonaaaa,
JKZ is only pointing, not instructing. Mindfulness is experiential. Nobody can tell you how to experience your life. You are being invited to notice what is happening, right now, and being with that. Nothing more complicated than that.
Please feel free to ask any further questions that arise.
My best wishes,
Jon

[Jonaaaa]

Thanks, Jon. So how do we 'notice what is on our mind and bring ourselves back to the breath' (or body part, whaetevr the anchor is)?

I find that I sort-of half notice my mind has wandered and then it refocuses on the breath whilst in a state of semi-awareness. I then become 'fully' aware, note the subject matter of what the thought was about (not linguistically - I see a picture if what I was thinking about) then refocus on the breath.

[JonW]

'So how do we 'notice what is on our mind and bring ourselves back to the breath' (or body part, whaetevr the anchor is)?'

By intention. Rather than get caught up in the content of our thinking, we simply notice that our mind has wandered and return our attention to the anchor. It's all in the noticing.
Cheers,
Jon