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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
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