Guided Meditation: Thinking to Support Meditaiton

But for now, for this meditation, I'd like to offer you, suggest if you'd like, to do a radically different thing in meditation.

Normally in meditation, we're thinking about quieting the thinking mind.

Sometimes we realize that thinking mind takes us so far away from the present moment that we're not even meditating.

We're fantasizing or planning or remembering or doing something else.

But we're lost in it, kind of caught up in it.

And so thinking is sometimes considered to be the problem we're supposed to address, find a way not to think so much.

And so we're looking maybe for a quiet mind.

What I'd like to suggest for this week is that you include your thinking as part of the meditation.

But not to have free reign to think whatever it wants to think.

But to not think that you're supposed to have a silent mind, a quiet mind without thoughts.

And the middle way, the meditative way, is to have thoughts which are supporting you, actively supporting you to become more peaceful.

To be more aware of the present moment.

To be less reactive to the present moment.

To be kinder to your experience.

To think about how the discursive thoughts can be quieted.

How you have better things to do than be involved in fantasy, past, present, plans.

That you want to be thinking about the depth of this moment.

The full possibility of here and now.

For connecting with yourself.

For really knowing yourself in a deep way.

Feeling yourself.

And so, and then you want to talk to yourself in a way that seems kind, meditative, quiet, spacious.

Not in a hurry.

Not trying to make something happen.

But more like you're being your own kind of best friend sitting with you.