Watching your thoughts as they come and go can help you calm the nonstop flow of your thoughts and bring peace to your mind. Watching your thoughts is one of the techniques of meditation and is the topic of this article.
Meditation is not reserved only for people living in an ashram or a cave or for people whose sole interest is spirituality. Meditation is most useful for the most practical person and also for the most visionary one.
You can practice meditation even if you live a busy and active life. You can work many hours a day, manage a business, or take care of your family while still finding time for meditation.
With a strong desire and some planning, you can find the time to practice meditation daily. Even 10 minutes daily would help you calm your mind when you do it correctly.
What Does Meditation Do?
- On the physical level, meditation relaxes the body, replenishes it with vitality, and restores its energy, health, and balance.
- At the emotional and mental level, it reduces anxiety, worry, and anger and brings peace of mind, tolerance, patience, and goodwill toward the surrounding world.
- On the spiritual level, meditation awakens awareness of the real inner Self, the inner consciousness, which is beyond the mind.
- Meditation also improves memory and concentration and allows clearer thinking.
Even just 10 minutes a day can be most helpful. It will give relaxation, energy, and better focus.
Meditation Is a Simple Process
Meditation is a simple process. There is nothing complicated about it.
It has nothing to do with impracticality, absentmindedness and avoiding responsibility, as some might believe. You do not have to live a secluded life, own nothing, and stay away from any activity in order to meditate. Continue living your life with a job and family, and yet, at the same time, you can meditate every day.
To meditate, you do not need to wear a robe or other special clothes, grow your hair, light candles and incense, or sit on the floor.
You can spend your day working in an office, shop, or factory, cleaning the house, and taking care of your children, yet find the time to practice meditation.
You can wear whatever you wish when you meditate or sit on a chair instead of cross-legged on the floor.
What you wear and where you meditate are not important, except that it needs to be a quiet place. It is your attitude that counts most.
Medition Is a simple Process
Proper and effective meditation requires some inner strength. There has to be desire, willpower, drive, and perseverance. All these qualities are, in fact, the same basic qualities needed for success in the material world.
Even if you have a job, run a business, or pursue a career, you can still benefit from this practice.
Meditating will not make you indifferent and impractical and without ambition. On the contrary, it will give you a broader perspective of life and an open mind, increase common sense, and develop intuition and clear thinking.
The concept that meditation is not for practical people is utterly wrong. It is suitable down-to-earth people, for visionaries, and for people seeking to be more spiritual.
Since its purpose is to relax the body, emotions, and mind, it should be simple and not complicated so that the mind can become focused and relaxed.
Watching Thoughts Meditation
I would like to suggest a simple meditation technique that involves watching your thoughts calmly as if they do not belong to you.
This simple, effective, and practical technique of watching thoughts in meditation will strengthen your concentration and calm your mind.
Of course, to get results, you will need to practice it daily for at least ten minutes.
The purpose of this meditation is to watch your thoughts with detachment and lack of interest. This might not be easy, but it will help you relax the restlessness of your mind.
Proceed as Follows with the Meditation
1. A quiet place
Find a place where you can be alone and undisturbed. It can be a room at your house, a quiet office room, or a garden, where there is no likelihood of being disturbed.
2. Posture
Sit on a chair with a straight back, in a comfortable position, and without slouching.
3. Relaxation
Pay attention to your body. You will probably discover that it is tense.
Focus on each part of your body, from toes to head, relaxing each part. Feel how each muscle is relaxing and easing its tension.
Do this relaxation for a minute or two, or more, if you feel the need to relax more.
4. Breathing
Take a few deep breaths. Breathe slowly, filling your lungs without tensing them, and breathe out slowly. This will further relax your body and mind.
5. Watch your thoughts
Start watching your thoughts as if you are looking at an uninteresting movie.
Thoughts are like birds hovering around a crumb of bread. This crumb of bread is your attention, and your thoughts are seeking your attention. They feed on it.
Your thoughts will raise associated thoughts, feelings, and images. Your job is to stay detached and disregard all these thoughts. Just watch them with no interest at all.
It is natural for many thoughts to rise during meditation, trying to make you forget to meditate. If you give in to these thoughts, you will make no progress. If you keep bringing your mind to the meditation, despite the distractions of the mind, your thoughts will eventually give in and stop.
It is a simple meditation, but not so easy to practice since the mind is used to constant, nonstop thinking.
Next Steps for the Watching Thoughts Meditation
6. You are not your thoughts
It would help if you accepted the idea that you are not your thoughts. They are like passing visitors who come to visit your mind.
It is you, the real you, watching these thoughts. You are beyond the mind. To control something, there must be a higher power. To control your mind, there must be something higher than the mind, and this something is you.
Just look at your thoughts and watch them as if you are watching some far-away, uninteresting scene. If they force you to follow them, ask them who is the boss, you or they?
7. Do not fight your thoughts
Stay relaxed, and don’t get tense. Do not fight your thoughts or get angry and frustrated if you cannot avoid them. It is a natural habit to let every thought enter freely into the mind. It takes time and effort to change this habit. The secret of success is detachment.
Continue practicing this meditation, even if you fail and forget to watch your thoughts dispassionately. Your resolve, patience, and perseverance will eventually win, and you will experience a state of expanded consciousness, happiness, and inner peace.
