I Can’t Stop Thinking

It’s what an “I” does.

The mind thinks thoughts. It’s what is does. To ask it to stop thinking would be like asking the eyes to stop seeing. Thinking and seeing are natural. The deception is that – and it is a deception – consciousness attaches itself to the thoughts and whatever it sees, thereby making these appearances seem real. This creates an ‘I’-grasping machine, clinging to a self identity, and desperate to defend itself with emotions.

We are bombarded with thoughts, sounds, images, smells, tastes, and physical sensations and, all the while, conscious awareness is present. An ‘I’ was created only when we forgot our true essential nature, and started fantasising. We are not this ‘I’: we are, first and foremost, pure conscious awareness.

Meditation is just seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching – without attachment. Only then are we free to enjoy, without suffering.

Milarepa said, “Thoughts do not fetter us; it is clinging to those thought that binds us.”