The mind is a powerful thing. More specifically our prefrontal cortex, the area of our brain responsible for language, reasoning and logic. This part of the brain is why we humans have evolved and become the dominant species on this planet. We can invent things and be curious and investigate things. It means we have the capacity to interpret, think, adjust and grow from our experiences. However, because it is so powerful and useful, that part of the brain often leads us to believe if we think hard enough we might be able to predict or control things. This can lead many of us to believe that over-thinking is helpful, when most of the time it is a hindrance.
At any given moment in time, we are experiencing a multitude of information. Our sensory system is feeding information through the nervous system into the brain and back at all times. Far outside of our thinking, our full being is processing all sorts of information. Much more than we would be capable of thinking about and sorting through if we had to do so consciously. Therefore, the majority of what we experience is subconscious, with many functions of the brain operating interdependently and independent of our thought.
I cannot count how many people have sat across from me in my therapy room and stated “I am…”. A complete and ultimate expression of one aspect of their being in any moment. For example, people, including myself, often say things such as “I am anxious,” “I am sad,” “I am tired,” “I am not enough,” “I am depressed,” “I am stupid,” and so on. These statements are both true and untrue all at once.
Sixteen years ago, long before I even knew what therapy is, I stumbled across meditation practices. Not the ‘breathwork’, ‘box breathing’ and ‘mindfulness’, which dominates the Western world today, rather the practices in their original format. Meditation, in its Eastern origins, was never intended as a relaxation technique or performance enhancer. It was a disciplined inquiry into the nature of mind and reality. Within early Buddhist traditions, practices such as Samatha (calm abiding) and vipassanā (insight) were developed as pathways toward liberation from suffering, grounded in the recognition of impermanence (anicca), unsatisfactoriness (dukkha) and non-self (anatta). Similarly, in Hindu traditions, contemplative practices embedded within the Upanishads, and later systematised in Patañjali’s Yoga Sutras, oriented practitioners toward direct experiential knowledge of consciousness itself. In Daoist contexts, meditation was concerned with attunement to the Tao, cultivating harmony rather than control.
Across these traditions, meditation was relational and ethical, as much as it was attentional. When we trace meditation back to these roots, we see less a technique for ‘symptom’ reduction and more a truly radical invitation to observe experience without clinging. An invitation to fall awake to one’s experience and to loosen identification with transient mental states, and to encounter the fluidity of what we habitually call self. Far from telling a person to breathe in for four, hold for four and breathe out for four. The practice was stripped of its existential and inquisitive nature and translated into another tool through Western lenses.
When I discovered these practices, I quickly changed from stating “I am anxious” to “I am noticing that anxiety is part of my experience right now” or “I’m noticing that I am having thoughts of anxiety”. That change in internal dialogue and my relationship with my thinking was a powerful one, I was able to move from over-identification with thinking to noticing it for what it was, simply thinking. Buddhist’s say “I am the thinker, not the thought itself” because creating a space between one aspect of one’s experience and your very own consciousness can be life changing.
We call it the ‘train of thought’ or ‘stream of consciousness’ for a reason; it is always running and it does its own thing. As you read these words right now, your attention is on them and making sense of them to the best of your ability. Here is the shocker, your thoughts are still flowing in the background as you read this, they don’t go anywhere, and the mind certainly does not get ‘silent’. If you shift your attention from these words to your senses right now you might notice sensations, temperatures, sights, sounds, smells and much more that stick out to you. If at a given moment in time you are experiencing anxious thoughts or physical sensations of anxiety you could move your attention through each of your senses and notice that there is so much more happening moment by moment, breath by breath.
When I discovered the power of moving my attention around and checking out more than just one aspect of my experience, I found that thinking lost its power in the best way possible. At the time, all those years ago, I couldn’t help but wonder, what is really happening when I feel such an urge to qualify myself as anxious or sad or any one thing in its totality? I discovered quite quickly, through practice, that I am so much more than the singular thing my attention might be focused on in a moment. Does this mean I never experienced a thought or sensation that I relate to the concept of anxiety since? No. I often do professional things, which include speaking to many people at once. Right before I start, I sometimes notice a buzzing in my chest, my heart rate increasing, a flush of warmth, a little bit of dryness in my mouth, a tingle in my scalp, thoughts of getting it wrong and so on, believe me when I say that this is a non-exhaustive list! What does noticing all of that do for me? It brings me squarely into the present moment and becomes information that I am experiencing. No more and no less. Do I then say to myself “I am anxious” in my mind? No. I continue on with whatever it is I am doing holding an awareness of all that is present for me without judgement and with knowledge that it will pass.
You might notice that everything passes. Whatever has the nature to arise in one’s consciousness also has the nature to fall away of its own accord without us having to do a single thing about it. If you ever have had a scab and it was itchy; if you had simply paid attention to the itch without scratching it, then it would have probably reached a crescendo of itchiness and then reduced to nothing of its own accord. I would invite you to try this out for yourself; pay attention to smells or sounds or anything else you can and you will notice that by simply being present to what is, the experience changes of its own accord.
Everything is impermanent according to the Buddhists. Truly the only certainty that we have in our living is that of our dying. If we can do our best to not grasp on to experiences we enjoy, such as joy, pleasure and so on, and to not struggle against or avoid painful experiences then we would all have such a greater capacity for this living. To live is to suffer; suffering is part of this blessing and curse of the human condition. We cannot know what happiness is without knowing the other side of the coin, which is sadness, the same goes for all other experiences. Why make our existing more challenging than it needs to be by grasping or struggling against it? Leaning into the experience, trusting that simply being is enough and knowing that everything is impermanent can be transformative. I often bring these concepts into my therapy room when a client finds them useful. The shift of attention and shift of perspective can be all that is needed to simply say, I am.
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phone: 085 1300573
email: info@leomuckley.com
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