WHAT ABOUT THOUGHTS?Most of us, most of the time, are lost in thoughts. We might call this unfettered thinking. We think and react and think some more and ruminate and worry and catastrophize and replay, and we don’t have much awareness that we are thinking. This is what an untrained mind is like. We can train our mind to have a different relationship to thoughts. Classical mindfulness meditation and natural awareness meditation have different approaches to thinking (although the different approaches may sometimes overlap or be used in either type of meditation).
In one type of classical mindfulness meditation, focused awareness practice, in which we are trying to cultivate concentration, thoughts are considered distractions. We attend to a main focus (such as our breathing); when we notice we are distracted, we return to our main focus.
When we have more stability, thoughts don’t have to be distractions. We can turn our attention to thoughts, noticing them as another object of meditation. We might even label them: planning, remembering, imagining. Labeling thoughts when they become predominant but then returning to our focus is flexible awareness practice. In flexible awareness practice, we can take it even further: noticing thought after thought after thought is flexible awareness of mental activity.
In natural awareness meditation, we have relaxed, broadened our attention, and dropped the objects of attention. Well, thoughts are objects. So in natural awareness meditation, we are not focusing on thoughts but are turning our attention to awareness itself, in the ways I have described throughout the book.
Experientially, it means that in natural awareness meditation, thoughts are present, generally, but they are usually in the background, in that we don’t focus on them. They are arising in our awareness, but we are not in their grip, not clinging to them. We don’t have to do anything about them. They often appear to be weightless or transparent. We can see through them. Because they are not our central focus, they may feel somewhat indistinct.
Sometimes in natural awareness meditation we may become naturally and effortlessly aware of thoughts. We may experience them, not as separate from our larger field of awareness, but as part of it. In this case, we can think from a naturally aware place. There are even times in natural awareness meditation when thoughts appear slower than usual, are very subtle, or are even almost nonexistent.
What typically happens for most people is that, at a certain point, our minds get caught again in thinking. A thought or memory or worry captures us. In that case, we have shifted out of resting in natural awareness. To return to natural awareness, we need to notice that thought and then refresh or “melt back” into natural awareness (see chapter 39).