The mind thinks, just as the heart beats and the lungs breathe. That is just what it does, you can no further stop the mind than you can stop water from following with gravity. The mind thinks thoughts every day, a lot of these thoughts are the same exact thoughts every day. Some of these thoughts are useful, like how to drive, to problem solve or to brush your teeth. But a lot of these thoughts are not useful, a lot of these thoughts are critical, judgmental, and harmful. The latter category of thoughts are the thoughts that we can start to learn to separate from. While the mind does think thoughts of its own accord, we get to use our free will to cultivate these thoughts to be directed in a more positive direction. We get to decide what thought strings we follow and which ones we drop. As we begin to watch our thoughts we get to begin to see the different voices that are present in us.
As you observe your thoughts you may begin to notice that there is the inner critic voice. The inner critic is the voice of the ego and is the voice that tells you that you’re not good enough, the voice that tells you fear-based thoughts and the voice that is completely not true. You may begin to notice the voice of your true self, the voice of your intuition, the voice coming from a place of pure love. You may “hear” that in your body as in gut intuition or knots in your stomach telling you something is amiss. Sometimes this voice is harder to hear than the critic, which can be easier to believe. What can happen is the things that occur in our life create a snowball effect. If we start operating from a place of the inner critic and we see things take place in our life that reflect what the inner critic said we may really begin to believe it. But that snowball effect can happen the other way too. When we tune into our true voice, that place of true love – the experiences in our life begin to reflect that. So we really have to work to redirect our attention.
It’s very hard to say, stop thinking about something. In all the movies when the hero is up very high and someone says “don’t look down”, the first thing the character will do is look down. So instead of trying to say don’t think about this or don’t do that. It’s better just to flip it and go from the positive side. So for example if you’re thinking “I hate my life, my life is horrible or this sucks”. Try to switch your perspective and start with things like “I am grateful for… or what lesson is life trying to teach me?” This can be so simple and profound. I’ve done this exercise before when I’ve been really down. If I am struggling, I start with something simple like “I can drink the water out of my faucet, I have a refrigerator with food in it”. That usually this gets the ball rolling and I start to think about everything else that I am so grateful for. Beginning to identify the lesson behind the situation can be incredibly empowering. Every event is a learning opportunity, to see how life is directing us on our path back to our true nature. Often we can look back on a situation and see the message, so we can also shift and look into the present moment and see what the lesson is.
Like everything else this is a practice. We practice playing music, we practice playing sports, we practice yoga, we practice meditation and we can practice watching our thoughts. We are not just going to be experts at it from the very first second that we try a new thing! So we get to have the curiosity of a beginner mind and practice! We can begin to have some insight into ourselves if we begin to simply observe our thoughts.
I always like to say in my classes, that I am no an expert at any of this! I am not great at it, I’m not even good at it. But I am practicing. This deeper intelligence often feels like remembered knowledge and not new information. That’s because it is! It’s all the deeper truths that are in our daily sayings and lessons we try to instill in our children. So some days I remind you and some days you remind me. We are all in this together.
Once we take the time to observe our thoughts we can begin to tell that we are not our thoughts! We are the deeper intelligence that is watching the mind make thoughts. Being able to step into the observer seat, into the place of the true self we can begin to see that we are not our minds and we are not our thoughts. Taking the time to find the space between the thoughts and feel the higher presence existing in all of us is the path back to our true nature. Our true nature is a place of peace, love and joy. May these moments of peace be a part of not only your yoga or mediation practice, but of your daily life.
The light in me sees and honors the light in you
Namaste,
Larissa
Nome Yoga 