What is Meditation

Meditation Techniques

Spiritual Inspirators

 

Western  Mystics

 
What position should I choose
Simple beginner Meditation
Meditative Pixelation
Breathing Techniques
Mantra Meditation
Who am I

 


How to deal with Thoughts
Group Meditation

Open-Eye Meditations
Healing Hands
Music Meditation







 


How to deal with Thoughts - in Meditation & Life

"I could be confined in a nutshell,
and count myself a king of infinite space,
were it not that I have bad dreams."
— Hamlet, Shakespeare

"The mind can make a Heaven out of Hell
or a Hell out of Heaven."

— Milton

A friend once asked me, "How many percent of your thoughts do you think are bullshit?" Before I could respond, he answered, "90%." I then asked, "What about the remaining 10%?" Without hesitation, he replied, "Those are bullshit too."
 
While I still find a bit of value in that last 10%, it's hard to deny that we think too much, and much of it is of low quality. The mind, when left unchecked, becomes an endless chatterbox, often filled with worrisome thoughts.

How should we deal with thoughts? This question is intricate and cannot be fully addressed through techniques or technical approaches alone. It requires us to step back and actually think about the nature of thoughts themselves.

So let us now think about thinking.
 
Never Fight Thoughts in Meditation
First and foremost, it’s crucial to remember a simple yet golden rule: never fight your thoughts during meditation or in general. While this may be a well-known principle among experienced meditators, I find myself needing to be reminded of it time and again. So, I repeat it here like a mantra, for my own benefit as much as yours. When thoughts arise, resisting or confronting them only strengthens their presence. The more you try to push away unwanted thoughts, the more they seem to multiply.
 
Why is that so? It's important to remember another simple rule: everything you give attention to grows. It doesn't matter whether that attention is positive or negative. The more you focus on the evil around you, the more evil you will perceive. Conversely, the more beauty you focus on, the more beauty there will be. Nietzsche was right in warning us about the danger of becoming a monster while fighting one. So what can we do?

Not long ago, I had a conversation with my 6-year-old son. He had watched something about the Greek myth of Medusa on YouTube and was now worried that the snake-haired Medusa would find him, look at him, and turn him to stone. I reassured him by telling him there was a simple trick to make her magic powerless: just smile at her when she looks at you. My son beamed and said he understood now—it was our own fear that makes us freeze like stone. Then he asked if this technique would work on zombies too, and I said yes with a smile.

There's a saying: "If you can't beat them—join them." But rather than befriending your thoughts, it's wiser to treat them with polite detachment, much like how you would courteously acknowledge a stranger. When you pass through a crowded place, you don’t push people aside; you gently find your way through them. Sometimes, crowds can be intensely zombified, like when they’re all rushing to catch a train or lost in shopping frenzies. In those moments, it helps to smile and peacefully navigate through them, as if moving in a matrix-like bullet time.

After all, who wants to fight these thoughts, if not your ego? The clarity within you is a non-dual, all-embracing presence that seeks only to expand and deepen. This clarity doesn’t know how to fight—it simply observes and allows. The impulse to struggle against thoughts comes from the thinking mind, not from the true, 'awaring' essence at the core of your being.
 
Why Thinking Steals Clarity
Thinking requires significant mental energy. As one of the most recently developed evolutionary systems, the process of thinking and verbalizing is particularly energy-intensive. When the brain generates thoughts, it draws from the same energy source that fuels your consciousness. This is why excessive thinking can make us feel mentally fatigued or drowsy. And the irony is that we don’t even aware that we’re not aware because we need to be aware to aware that.

Imagine your consciousness as a light bulb connected by a spinal power cord. When thoughts start to siphon energy from this cord, the light in the bulb dims. This 'thought-theft' reduces the clarity of your consciousness, often leading you into a semi-awake, daydream-like state where you may lose awareness that you’re even thinking.  In both meditation and daily life, when thoughts dominate, you’re on a slippery slope toward a state that closely resembles sleep. When left unchecked, the mind can act like a parasite, draining your mental energy. Alone out of this reason it’s crucial to silence the low-quality chatter that fills our minds.
 
To be Aware of Awareness
Take a moment to examine your inner headspace... In the last five minutes, how many thoughts passed through your mind? Most were likely irrelevant, perhaps even outright nonsense. You engaged with them, but were you aware of that engagement?

There's gold to be found in this simple mental dredging! There are two kinds of awareness: one where you are simply aware, and another, deeper one, where you are conscious that you are aware.

I hate to say it, but most people are not self-aware of being aware. For those who do experience this awakening of wakefulness, it can lead to a profound sense of loneliness. The sudden alienation that occurs when they view friends and family through these new eyes—realizing the pervasive, matrix-like state of thought-sleep that engulfs most of humanity—can be overwhelming. However, over time, such an awakened soul will inevitably find kindred spirits, and gradually learn to extend love and compassion to everyone, whether they are 'awared' awake or not. I must confess that I spent years judging those around me who seemed less aware. This arrogance, while it felt like a justified survival fence to protect the fragile new growth of awakening from being eaten by the "goats" of mediocrity, was actually a clever trick of the resilient ego. Once again the enlightened part of you does not know anything else than love and inclusiveness.
  
Allow me one more associative detour before returning to the subject. This chapter, after all, is about thoughts, and thoughts have a tendency to multiply, colonizing everything by association. The resilient ego, now camouflaged in spiritual robes, often emerges on social media forums as non-dual trolls—individuals who relentlessly attack any statement that might be interpreted as dualistic. What can I say without becoming a troll myself? If the Great Wheel of Buddhism holds true, there’s comfort in knowing that, eventually, everyone will reach a state of loving, non-judgmental awareness in their own time.
 

HOW THE OUROBOROS DEALS WITH THOUGHTS
Back on track, it's important to emphasize one key point: being aware of being aware is the most crucial meditative loop to cultivate. This loop is the birthplace of the Ororobus Consciousness within us, symbolized by the ancient image of a snake feeding on its own tail.

In this heureka moment of ouroboros, we as humans enter a qualitatively new state of self-referential awareness, triggering a cascade of profound transformative effects across all levels of existence. Here, we’ll focus on how this self-awake awareness impacts the thought process.
  
In more 'self-awared' states of being, we find ourselves thinking less. There is more open sky between the clouds—partly because maintaining this heightened state of meta-awarenes consumes more energy, leaving less for the energy-intensive act of thinking. This 'awared' awakened awareness seems to bypass, and even starve out, the thinking processes within us.

This bypassing is reinforced by the amplification that occurs when the inner light illuminates itself. Not only does this drain energy from other mental processes, but it also generates an increase in the body's production of mental energy, similar to how an electric guitar creates feedback with a loudspeaker. This is one of the biological reasons why spiritually awakened people often exude such energy and vitality.
 
In this reinforced state of double awareness, we awaken to just how deeply we’re often immersed in thought. With this realization, we gain the choice: do we continue feeding those thoughts, or do we allow them to dissolve?
 
In summary, there is an inverse relationship between the stream of thoughts and the quality and intensity of our luminosity. The more we think, the less aware we become; conversely, the more aware we are, the more energy we harness, but not as food for thought. The ouroboros allows us to get high on our own supply, but the thinking mind isn’t invited as a guest of honour to the party.

And by the way... did you notice that in the pages you’ve just read, my associative thoughts wandered off course a few times? It’s a natural part of the process, and even these detours can offer valuable insights when 'awared' in awareness.
 
I 'know' that I am Thinking
To uncritically engage in the stream of thoughts is to 'wake down.' Meditation, in contrast, is the practice of waking up from that endless chatter.
We've all experienced frustrating time trapped in sleep-thought states both in daily life and in meditation. So, how do we return to clarity?

In traditional Zen Buddhism, during long group meditations, a monk with a stick (keisaku) would deliver a sharp tap to those falling into daydreaming, drowsiness or sleep. While this practice was effective for disciplined samurais, I believe there’s a gentler and more efficient approach suited to our times.
 
This approach is rooted in understanding how the brain 'produces' consciousness. When we become drowsy during meditation, it often indicates a deep relaxation, allowing the body to tap into its self-healing instincts. If there is pent-up tiredness, we may fall asleep. Rather than fighting this process, consider it a healthy and beneficial occurrence. Sleeping during meditation can be more rejuvenating than ordinary sleep. Often, these drowsy states are filled with thoughts that lack meta-awareness. After such a cycle, the brain is ready to return to wakefulness.
 
Aha! - I am (was) Thinking...
Here is a powerful tool that can effectively manage thoughts, especially during meditation. Paradoxically, this tool is itself a thought, but it operates on a meta-level. This thought typically emerges at the end of a cycle of mental drift and simply declares, "Aha! - I am thinking," or more elaborately, "I am aware, then know, and then realize that I am thinking." This recognition has the power to interrupt the dreamy stream of thoughts with the realization, "Aha! - I was thinking."

In this instant of aware knowing, we can begin to evaluate the quality and purpose of our thoughts. More importantly, we gain the choice to disengage from them, turning our focus back to pure awareness.

In the very split second you recognize that you are thinking, the thought’s grip on you weakens. In this sense, the meta-thought "I am thinking" betrays its own kind. Allow me to repeat this tremendeous important lesson: In this moment, you must recognize your recognition to fully harvest its potential. Otherwise, this moment of clarity will disappear as quickly as it came. This window of opportunity, this spark of meta-awareness, is a golden chance—like a surfer waiting for the perfect wave.

A common mistake, however, is to waste this precious moment in irritation, lamenting that we've once again been lost in thoughts. This is how the thoughts get the best of us—by turning it into a drama. Instead, embrace this wonderful heureka with gratitude and simply get back in the saddle. Every time you lose yourself in thoughts, when you realize you've been think-dreaming, just return to aware wakefulness without any drama. Do this consistently, in both meditation and daily life. Do it millions of times, and you will master the art while enjoying the surf.

Descartes Wakes Up
In this light, Descartes' famous statement, "I think, therefore I am," takes on deeper meaning. He wasn’t just thinking—he was aware that he was thinking. This meta-awareness revealed the essential "I-am-ness" of consciousness, though still within the realm of thought. Thoughts thrive on resistance, but when invited into the light of non-dual awareness, most of them wither. However, some—those shaped by a kind of "survival of the fittest" mechanism—will enter consciousness. It’s this meta-level of reflection that I consider high-quality thinking.

The beauty of the thought "I am thinking" lies in its subtle carrier wave. Behind such a 'descartian thought' is a canvas of wakefulness—a brief projective flash of clarity that emerges naturally from the brain's consciousness cycles. Yet, it’s up to you to recognize that precious moment. It holds a key that you must grasp in order to unlock the door leading into a room of light.

Recognize Recognition
When awareness turns inward, entering a self-referential ouroboros state, thoughts mirror this movement within their own realm. This is the essential beauty of the inquiry "Who am I?"—like a black hole, it begins to consume all trivial matter around it, drawing everything into its depth.
 
The key is to become meta-aware of the significance of that moment when the brain naturally shifts back into a heightened state of consciousness. By consciously acknowledging the importance of this realization—"Aha, I am thinking"—you can begin to cultivate it, much like nurturing a plant.
 
Once you become more meta-aware of your thinking, you can, by recognizing the importance of this heureka moment, prolong it.
 
In India, there's a saying: "The snake was just a rope." A man enters a dark room and is startled by what he believes is a snake. But when he turns on the light, he realizes the snake was just a rope.
 
Thoughts are like shadows; when you expand your ability to shine the light of awareness on them for longer periods, they not only lose their power to obscure your consciousness, but you also gain access to a "study room" for examining the nature of thoughts. In this examination, their hold over you diminishes.
 
This brings us to an essential question: What power do thoughts have over us? My initial answer to that question points directly to evolution.
  
THE SURVIVAL THINK TANK
A large part of our thoughts are evolutionarily wired to make us worrisome. The selfish gene thrived by anticipating, worrying, and strategizing to avoid potential threats, such as being eaten by predators. The genes of those who were carefree and simply enjoyed the sunshine in the open grasslands often didn’t make it—losing their biological carrier before they could pass on their traits.
 
As Ice Age hunter-gatherers, our risk of dying a premature death due to violence or other dangers was far higher than it is in our civilized world today. We survived our perilous encounters through millennia by constantly thinking, "What if?" When we evolved the neocortical ability to anticipate and verbalize the future, we gained a tremendous survival advantage over our instinctual and emotionally regulated fellow beings and potential food sources. However, as with all significant advantages, there was a price to pay. Sophocles famously noted that the gods never give humans a gift without a curse.
 
The curse was in this case that we evolved into worrisome survivors.
As rulers of the animal kingdom, we now bear the heavy burden of kingship.
 
The Temporal Disconnect Between Old Thoughts and New Life
In today’s relatively safe, civilized world, our ingrained ability to worry is no longer as necessary as it once was. This tendency, deeply rooted in our evolutionary past, has become outdated—out of sync with the reality we now live in. What once ensured our survival now weighs us down. Our inherited habit of surviving through worry has transformed into a reverse wish-fulfilling tree, where what we fear often materializes because our anticipation reinforces it. When we look at another person with suspicion, the likelihood that they will see us as a threat increases. Ironically, while we in the Western world are safer than ever before in human history, we worry about everything to such an extent that it has become dangerous.

This asynchronicity—the temporal dissonance between ancient survival strategies and our modern life—is precisely what calls for meditative introspection.

Meditation, in this context, becomes a crucial tool for delving beneath the surface of our mind to reprogram it. However, I’m not advocating for a detached spiritual life as the solution. Instead, the goal is to find clarity and balance, like mastering the art of surfing on the waves of life.

To address this misalignment between our Stone Age worries and our comparatively secure modern existence, we must consciously observe our thoughts and how they manifest within the feeling body. By doing so, we can begin to untangle the knots of outdated survival mechanisms and bring our mental and emotional states into harmony with the reality of the present moment.

Thoughts Tell Us Who We Are
Beyond survival, but still evolved from the need of survival, thoughts have another crucial function: they tell us who we are, where we came from, and where we're going. Without thoughts, we wouldn't know who we are -
we wouldn’t have a sense of self. The thought-created 'I' with its survival strategies is the main character in a narrative stretched between past and future. This 'I' is permanently 'story-telling' itself as a part of one tribe, but not the other tribe. It’s perpetually occupied with negotiating the boundary between 'me' and 'not-me.'

For decades, as I sought to quiet my mind on the non-dual, Vedantic path, I believed in and pursued a state completely free from words, language, and storytelling. Now, as I reflect with love, I realize that this ideal of a story- and thinking-free existence was itself just another fabrication of thought. Let us face it. The truth is, we cannot escape our own nature as thinking, storytelling beings. However, within this realization lies a new freedom: the ability to consciously craft new meta-stories that have the power to transform our lives.

To put it simply, the narrative you choose to tell about yourself matters. So why not create a story of glory and love for all life? For this new story to unfold, it’s not just a new author we need, but also a new stage within our consciousness—a space capable of holding and nurturing this transformative narrative.
 
WHEN THOUGHTS LAND IN THE FEELING BODY
It’s time to delve into the intricate relationship between our thoughts and our body. This exploration demands more than just intellectual understanding; it calls for what might be termed 'innerstanding'—a deeper, embodied knowledge that resonates throughout our entire being. So let’s move beyond understanding to innerstanding as we explore how our thoughts impact our physical and emotional state.

Our capacity to feel and sense is an ancestral gift from the mammal kingdom, an ancient bio-operative system that often struggles to distinguish between real and imagined threats. This means that the thinking mind has the power to imprint emotional responses in the body that mirror those triggered by actual events. A simple rule of thumb is that the more awake and aware you are, the better you can discern between thought-based imagination and reality. Conversely, the less awake you are, the more these two realms blend, culminating in dreams where imagined threats, like a tiger, feel entirely real.

In more scientific terms, we could focus on the amygdala, an ancient part of the brain that evolved early in mammalian history. While the emotional and interoceptive systems in humans are far more complex, the amygdala serves as a useful starting point for our discussion. This small but crucial part of the brain, largely through instinctual pathways that bypass our more evolved cognitive processes, continually assesses life situations as they unfold. Its unspoken, primal query is always the same: Does this situation pose a threat? If the answer is yes, the amygdala prompts the body to enter fight, flight, or freeze mode. Now it seems that somehow the amygdala not only reacts thorugh its most ancient pathways but also uncritically believes in what is told by thoughts.

To push the point further: our thoughts have the power to make us suffer, which brings us back to Milton's timeless observation: "The mind can make a Heaven out of Hell, or a Hell out of Heaven." When we experience suffering in the form of pain or fear, these sensations can originate from both the imagined world of thoughts and a more immediate, sensory-based reality. In this intricate interplay, there is a kind of retrocausality at work, where we think as we feel and feel as we think.
 
This mutual reinforcement can quickly spiral downward in a state of low-quality awareness, where the very act of thinking drains the mental energy necessary for maintaining clarity and wakefulness. As the thought process intensifies, our awareness dims, leaving us vulnerable to acting on autopilot. This is why people consumed by anger or fear often behave like sleepwalkers, caught in a loop of reactive, unconscious behavior.

A Space for Constructive and Creative Thoughts
While it's easy to focus on the negative aspects of daydreaming and the mind's tendency to wander, there's also a more positive dimension to this realm of thought. Among the endless stream of mental chatter, there exists a subset—albeit a minority—of thoughts that don't drag us down or bite at our heels. These are the creative and constructive thoughts that emerge when the mind is not gripped by survival fear but instead is free to explore, play, and imagine.

This kind of thinking isn't about reacting to threats or navigating immediate challenges; it's about expanding possibilities and envisioning new realities. In these moments of mental playfulness, we tap into a wellspring of creativity, allowing us to build new worlds within our minds that can later manifest in our lives.

Referring back to the initial joke about thoughts being mostly "bullshit," I believe this creative, imaginative thinking represents the valuable 10 percent—the thoughts that have the potential to enrich our lives and push the boundaries of what's possible. These are the thoughts worth cultivating, the ones that remind us that our minds are not just tools for survival, but also for creation.

This also serves as a reminder of the value found in occasional drowsiness. If we pursue wakefulness with strict, unyielding discipline, we risk losing the balance that creativity and relaxation require. The extreme example of Bodhidharma, who is said to have cut off his eyelids to remain permanently awake, illustrates the danger of taking such practices too far and the danger of copying others instead of loving our essence.


 

How to use this Insight in Meditation
Here’s a little trick for manage disturbing thoughts during meditation. Have you ever noticed that the thoughts in your mind can feel closer to you or further away? When thoughts come closer, they often overwhelm us with their emotional intensity. When they feel distant, they seem less threatening. This reflects how our ancient brain perceives threats: the closer they are, the more dangerous they feel; the further away, the less of a threat they naturally seem.

This recognition of "thought-spatiality" naturally emerges as we become more aware of ourselves as space-holders of our own existence, particularly when we enter a self-referential, meta-conscious state.

In meditation, we can harness this instinctual mechanism by intentionally creating distance between ourselves and our thoughts. The Tibetans use a meditation technique where they observe clouds, employing this as a metaphor to cultivate a more detached relationship with their thoughts. We can do the same—simply observe your thoughts as if they are far away, like clouds drifting across the sky. In doing so, you can prevent them from sinking their teeth into your emotional body.

This process also naturally occurs when you enter the blessed state of being aware of being aware.

May you find joy in 'awared' awareness!

'Awareness,' Thoughts, and Mantra Meditation
Mantra meditation is another powerful tool for managing thoughts. The mantra itself is a thought, yet it functions differently—it annihilates other thoughts by creating a reinforcing loop that dismantles emotionally loaded, lengthy thought patterns. In this sense, the mantra, when introduced at the right moment in the stream of association, "sucks" up chatterbox thoughts much like a black hole attracts matter through its gravitational pull. For a deeper understanding of this process, I recommend reading the chapter on 'Mantra Meditation.'
 
Similar to the thought "I am thinking," mantra meditation acts as a feedback loop, with the capacity to subvert the typical thought process. However, mantra meditation is distinct in that the rhythmic repetition often leads to trance states. These states, in their intensity—comparable to psychedelics—can momentarily overwhelm or collapse high-quality consciousness. Yet, this doesn’t diminish its value. Trance states are immensely beneficial on the spiritual path, and mantra meditation can also spiral upward into the realm of ouroboric consciousness, where awareness feeds on itself.

In summary, both the lucid, meta-awareness of Apollo and the ecstatic trance-play of Dionysus provide us with valuable pathways to escape the chatter of the mind.

And now, my final thought and wish for you:

May you find the peace of a thought-free state. May you evolve into a content squirrel basking in the sun, untroubled by the fear of being hunted.


Kind regards
Gunnar Muhlmann