We don’t control our thoughts, but if we are not careful, they will control us. Every stimulus we encounter produces thoughts. Trying to diagnose “where” they come from is about as useless as trying to predict the weather. Thoughts are ripples of mind caused when a sensation drops into our subconscious. One thought leads to another, a second stone plopping into the water, and so forth. Sometimes these ripples turn into waves of beauty and insight. Sometimes they create a confused sea that is difficult to navigate.
We can’t control the interplay of factors that cause thoughts to arise, but we can watch them as they do. We can know that thoughts do not define who we are nor do they require that we take action on their behalf, no matter how insistent they may seem. Like raindrops on a windshield whatever thoughts we now have will soon be washed away by new ones created by the next round of stimuli.
Our joy is not found in our thoughts. It is in the tiny spaces in-between them, where the mind is still and all our opinions and judgments are silenced. In this place, our senses are open enough to feel that there is no space between us and anything else. Within the stillness here, we can experience what it means to belong.
Based on a journal entry from 5.18.17
I was running up Greybeard Mountain when I reached a state of total acceptance. I accepted the pain and fatigue in my legs along with the beauty of the snow and ice-covered trail. I accepted the thoughts that questioned why I was doing this and the lessons of humility and perseverance that running teaches me. I accepted the difficult conditions of the day: the steepness of the trail, the slippery surfaces that caused each footfall to slide a little bit backward, and the growing fatigue in my body as I neared the top of my second ascent of the mountain. To try and fight these things would be futile. Acceptance was the only answer.
I sit down to meditate. I watch my attention skip like a stone flung across the turbulent waters of my mind. Sometimes, that is an entertaining show, and sometimes it is not. But, if I am patient enough to keep watching that stone of attention as it hops and jumps around, it settles down and sinks beneath the chaos on the surface of my mind and into the depths of stillness and peace that lies within each one of us.