What Thoughts Do When We Aren’t Looking
Something caught my attention recently. Truth be told, it didn’t just catch my mental attention, it caught my whole body’s attention.
I was reading an article in a major newspaper publication, and as I read through it, I could feel my whole body changing. I was getting agitated and fidgety. I could feel myself tightening, contracting, my breath turning shallow and rapid, my skin began to crawl. It was a full blown viseral meltdown. I know that sounds dramatic and it was. But it also felt dramatic, not because of the article but because of how my thoughts about the article’s contents changed how my body felt.
Out of the Blue
As we read a headline, hear a broadcast, notice a sunset, feel the softness of a cozy, a thought stream appears, then a perception forms and then we are off to the races, down a rabbit hole of thinking.
Almost instantly, the mind begins to interpret the situation with a narrative, typically judgey or opinionated. That’s wrong. That’s ridiculous. How can someone think that? Sunsets aren’t as beautiful as they used to be, Who used my cozy! It feels crunchy!
An infinite number of litanies can play out and then we’re no longer present and observing, we’ve become, entangled, ensnared, or as Pema Chödrön says, “hooked” by out thoughts.
From Thought to Feeling
As I sat with my article reading experience I noticed the thoughts I was having were not neutral. The feeling tone in my body as a result was unpleasant, very unpleasant. All those thoughts were activating my body’s neurochemical communication system, and my body was receiving not the article, but my brain’s interpretation of the article as threat.
My perspective was narrowing and the longer I stayed with those thoughts, the more convincing they became and the more on alert, ready to defend, my body became.
My thoughts were no longer passing through the sky of my mind anymore. They were gaining weight, mass, and feeling heavy. They were shifting the ground beneath me.
Thoughts, sticky thoughts, especially the ones we don’t examine, have a sneaky way of building a world around us. A world created by bricks of thought left unexamined and given time cure into beliefs.
Making Meaning
Our minds are brilliant at taking in information and turning it into meaning. But whose meaning is it? Ours and ours alone. Meaning making comes from within our mental attic of lived experiences. There may be others in our circle that come close in their meaning making to ours but they are not identical. All our perception and interpretation filters are formed differently. The meaning we make is shaped by our past experiences, conditioning, traumas, dramas, fears, values and a whole lot more.
A Not-So-Simple Practice
Instead of focusing on the content of the article I began to observe my mind and the workings and interface of the mind-body connection.
You might consider trying this too. The next time something hooks you, grabs all of your attentional resources, pause and notice:
What am I noticing in my thoughts right now?
What am I feeling in my body?
Where do I feel it?
How does it feel - tightening or softening?
Is my world feeling more open and spacious or closed and contracted?
Is this bringing me closer to who I want to be and the world I want to help create?
Wisdom Speakers
There’s an ancient poetic and wise teaching from the Upanishads that beautifully illustrates the connection of thoughts to our world.
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; for it becomes your destiny.
In-joy your discoveries,
Debbie