Thoughts...
When you sit down to meditate, a stream of thoughts distracts you, thoughts about the past, thoughts about the future, thoughts about things you worry, thoughts about things you want or don't want. As soon as you attempt to put your attention on your breath you will meet your mind and your mind is the most rambling, chaotic, needling, insulting, insufferable person you will ever meet and you are completely identified with this internal dialog. It's like some maniac walks through the front door of your house and follows you around from room to room and refuses to stop talking and this happens every day of your life. This voice is predominately unhappy, so it generates an enormous amount of unhappiness.
The most important thing that happens with mindfulness is the moment you can separate from that internal voice, no longer identify with the constant stream of thinking. Awakening. Wake up out of the stream of thoughts. And when you wake up, you become present and a completely different dimension of consciousness is suddenly there.
It is a true breakthrough when you realize here is my thinking, here are all the importune thoughts I've been having, habitual thoughts, repetitive thoughts, very often recurring negative thoughts, here I am knowing that these thoughts are going through my head.
The identification breaks, you stop identifying with the stream of thinking.
You recognize thoughts for what they are: mere appearances in consciousness, images, bits of language.
That is why the language used is awakening. Wake up out of the stream of thoughts. And when you wake up, you become present and a completely different dimension of consciousness is suddenly there.
Another sense of self, deeper than thinking, inside of you, a stillness, an aware presence. Just that.
Now a thought that arises does not give it a necessary claim upon your life, it does not need not to have any implications, good or bad, it is just a thought.
You will always continue to think and be moved to act by thoughts but meditation gives you a choice.
You really want to follow this next thought wherever it leads?
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