Watching the Wheels

Every mindfulness practitioner learns, usually pretty quickly, just how saturated is their mind in random and arbitrary thoughts and imaginings. It’s as if our minds have a mind of their own. To observe this in action, moment to moment, with interest, without grasping, is one of the key tasks of meditation. Why might this be time well spent?

Thinking is a behaviour. As with any behaviour, it has causes and consequences. Usually we are more concerned about the effects of our physical actions – what we say and what we do. But what about mental actions? Consider the thousands, if not millions, of habitual, repetitive thoughts that flit through consciousness each day, quietly clouding our judgements about what we experience, and influencing our perspectives on everything. 

And what about the innumerable likes and dislikes that get forged in the process, which mould themselves into subtle patterns that in turn harden into fixed views about self, others and world? Thoughts have consequences all right.

Mindfulness of Thinking

Meditation is a powerful way of getting wise to the undercover operations of the discursive mind. Mindfulness of thinking involves disengaging from unconscious tendencies to invest energy in thoughts and to construct fixed identities out of them. 

When we sit quietly, with a clear, bright awareness and observe the fabrications of this amazing, creative and, let’s be honest, frequently ludicrous mind, we are undermining its tendency to fixate neurotically on things. In turn, we gift ourselves a chance to intuit whether or not this mind, in this moment, has anything useful to say. Oftentimes, it doesn’t. Thoughts turn out to be dull repeats or gross distortions of reality churned out by a restless mind that doesn’t know when to stop. 

We cannot know how to wisely respond to the mind’s latest broadcast or manoeuvre unless we catch its process in action – hence the value and necessity of skilfully anchoring attention in the actuality of our experience, that is, the here and now. Clearly witnessing our mental process brings with it the seeds of new and beneficial mental patterns, which are the fruit of meditation. 

Greater clarity, a sense of inner agency and balance, improved psychological flexibility – you get all this from just sitting quietly and watching what shows up. It doesn’t really make sense, does it? That’s because your thinking mind doesn’t have all the answers. But try telling it that.

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