Are you ready? Here it is. When you settle into your meditation practice, bringing your awareness to the sensations of your breath, don’t expect to and don’t even try to stop your thoughts. Trying to stop your thoughts is not really possible and it often leads to a great deal of frustration. Frustration that might make you doubt your ability to develop a mindfulness meditation practice. Rather than trying to stop your thoughts, work on changing your relationship to your thoughts. Your minds are thought-producing machines. They’re constantly producing a river of thoughts. This river flows on and on, and sometimes it’s moving really fast, yet sometimes it slows down. Sometimes there are funny little eddies in the river, swirls of thoughts that go round and round. Rather than being in this river of thought, lost in it, carried downstream, maybe even feeling like you’re drowning, with our meditation practice we’re working on getting out of the river. Settling comfortably on the bank. Watching the river go by with curiosity and interest. We use the sensation of our breath as a handhold to pull ourselves out of the river and anchor ourselves in the present moment on the bank. Lets get started, keeping in mind that we’re learning to be with and be aware of our thoughts; we’re not trying to stop them.
