Thoughts come in continuously giving me suggestions of what I should be feeling.
A thought can often be a suggestion that I should be worrying about something.
A thought of comparison can suggest I feel sad and diminished, powerless and less than another and jealous perhaps.
A thought about another’s behaviour, can suggest I become annoyed, offended or feel slighted by another’s actions. “They should have….” Or “They shouldn’t have……”
We can ponder on what is working in our lives and on our good fortune and thoughts about that evoke humble gratitude and happiness.
When we learn to notice the thoughts (mindfulness) we give ourselves the gift of having a choice of following the thought’s suggestion of what we should feel or not instead of just doing it automatically.
And then eventually we come to see the thoughts as a continuous procession of random ‘suggestions’ on what to feel and just notice them all and let them go. Staying quiet at he centre as they all come and go.
And perhaps they get bored now that they no longer get to grab our attention, and they reduce their effort and become fewer and fewer. Leaving us in peace and stability. Yes to that. Boring our thoughts away through lack of attention to them.
Still feeling unusually ill here, have not felt close to anything like this many years. While the body suffers the rest is pretty calm and happy. I think my body is very focused on getting better so I wonder if that is why there haven’t been so many sticky or intrusive thoughts this week.
I notice how much happier I am without the mind trying to suggest how I feel all the time with its stories about people and interpretations of events past and future.
Learning to Rest with it All 