How do I stop being caught in my thoughts?

Why can’t I stop thinking?

The mind produces thoughts automatically: memories, plans, arguments, fantasies, commentary. That activity is not the problem. The problem is identification: identifying with those thoughts, becoming fascinated and hypnotized by them. We love them unconsciously.

Watch for the inner monologue that argues with people who are not in the room, the rehearsals of conversations that have not happened, the silent commentary that judges everything it passes. None of these are sins. All of them are leaks, and every one of them closes the same way, by being seen in the light of a kind attention, without commentary and without war.

Am I my thoughts?

You are not your thoughts. A thought is like a cloud. It passes through the sky of your awareness, but it is not the sky. Thoughts come and go, but the one who notices them remains.

You suffer only when you believe that you are the voice in your head. The moment you observe it, you create distance. The thought is over there, passing through the sky of your awareness, and you are here, like an eagle: separate, aware, free. You don’t need to silence thinking. You don’t need to control thoughts. You only need to see them. A thought loses its power the instant it is seen, because a thought cannot control the one who observes it.

How do I watch my thoughts?

Self-observation is not thinking about yourself. It is not judging anything, analyzing anything, or trying to improve anything. If you want to learn about a wild animal, you observe it very quietly, very still, with no disturbance and no added noise. Observe yourself in the same way, as if you were watching someone else. When a thought appears, you see the mind thinking, and you also see that you are not thinking it. You don’t become the thought. You watch it arrive, and you watch it leave, like an uninvited guest.

When this is experienced, something begins to separate inside you. There are the things happening, and there is the one who is seeing them happen. That space, that gap, is the beginning of inner freedom.

• Whenever you remember, pause. Feel your body from within. Notice your mind. Notice your emotions. Then simply say inwardly, “I am observing.”
• Whenever a thought appears, label it silently: thought. Not good thought, not bad thought, just thought.
• Don’t argue with the thought. Don’t follow it. Don’t resist it. Notice it, name it, and let it pass, like watching a bird cross the sky.
• Don’t try to fix anything, don’t try to be calm, don’t try to be spiritual. Just see. Even five seconds of real observation is worth more than hours of thinking about spirituality.

Should I fight my thoughts, or try to silence them?

You cannot fight the night. You light a candle, and the night disappears on its own. This is where many seekers struggle. They begin to observe themselves, they don’t like what they see, and they try to fight it: they resist, suppress and condemn, believing they are improving. But when you fight the darkness, you only give it more life. Whether you indulge in a thought or resist it, both are forms of identification, because in both cases your energy is trapped in it. The only way out is to see it without becoming it.

So when a thought or an emotion rises, don’t suppress it and don’t act it out. Stop, breathe, observe. Feel how it moves in your body and in your mind, and then silently say, “I see you.” Not with condemnation, but with understanding. When you say “I see you,” you are no longer inside it. You are bringing the light of awareness into the shadow.

What if I’m an overthinker by nature?

Many of us, when we see a problem in ourselves, start thinking about it, building structures and methods to overcome it. It is a kind of procrastination. The way of analyzing never stops; it always does what it does, bringing up more questions, more confusion, more doubt. It’s okay to let the intellect give you some answers, but analyzing is only a very small part of meditation.

So slow down. When you see something in yourself, don’t analyze it further; sit with it, and let it be your object of meditation. It’s like inviting the villain into your room, making some hot milk and cookies, and asking it to sit down with you by the fire, simply to get to know it. Stepping back from analyzing will give you more power in analysis, too. That’s a paradox. I can list easily over a hundred problems of my own, and I can let my analyzing mind handle them all calmly, without my inner being doing anything. The intellect just does what it does. It’s just a little thinker, nothing more. It can’t solve all our problems.

Why do I keep getting carried away?

When you begin, you will discover that you are absent far more than you are present. You will sit down to watch your mind for one minute and find, thirty seconds in, that you have already been carried off, and you will not have noticed the leaving. What we notice is the return: the small moment when you land back in the room, back in your body, and realize you have been twenty minutes deep in an argument that ended four years ago.

At first it might feel as though nothing is changing, and that is where many people give up. Persevere. Every moment of real observation weakens the false and strengthens the true. So when you land back and find you were gone an hour, do not sigh. Smile. You just woke up. Yesterday you would not have.

Watch the talk on YouTubeYou Are Not Your Thoughts | Key I — 02 • The Art of Self Observation

Who is the one watching?

There is something in us that doesn’t sleep. Even when the body is tired, even when the mind is chattering, there is a silent presence watching every moment. It is like an invisible friend that is always with us. The trouble is that we forget ourselves. We think the thoughts are us, our emotions are us, our reactions are us, and our life story is who we are, just like an actor who is lost in his role and forgets the one who is watching the play.

You are not the storm of thoughts. You are the sky that sees them pass. You are not the waves of emotion. You are the ocean that holds them. Try it now. Become aware of your breathing. Then, at the same time, become aware of your body, its weight, its form, its sensations. And now become aware of the one who is aware. Can you feel the silent witness behind the thoughts? It is here in this moment, not in the past or the future.

Do this many times a day, not just once. Return, return, return. Don’t try to change anything. Don’t fight the thoughts. Just watch, because the one who watches is the one who awakens. That silent, watchful awareness is not something you create. It is what you are.