This week our focus is on the 3rd Foundation of Mindfulness – mindfulness of thought. Mindfulness of thought means recognizing you are thinking. We are engaged in thought nearly every second of our lives. Those thoughts become the bases of our lives. We spend much of our lives compulsively inhabiting the cognitive world of stories and ideas. This preoccupation with our thoughts leads to stress, mental anguish/torment, fear, anger and much of the pain of life. Learning to recognize when you are thinking provides the foundation you need to release yourself from destructive habit patterns, negative emotions, obsessive behaviors/thoughts and enables you to experience life as it truly exists.
This week see if you can simply recognize when you are thinking about something. Do your thoughts even relate to what you are actually doing? Are you using thoughts to take you away from the present moment? If so, what is wrong with the present moment? Are you stuck in a comparing, analyzing, evaluating mind? Try letting go of your thoughts and simply experience the moment. Is there a difference? This week is your chance to challenge some of your auto pilot ways of being.
Don’t forget to sit 20 minutes a day (if you are not sitting 20 minutes a day – notice why you are not). Find 3 tasks you do daily mindfully attend to them.
With deep bows…