Learning to observe our mind opens us.
It opens up space. It frees us.
It allows us to gain awareness, deeper self-awareness.
When we observe our mind, when we begin to watch our thoughts and the ways they move through us, we become acquainted with our mind, with its patterns and tendencies, with the way it thinks and reacts, with the ways that it pulls us in.
We see repetitive thoughts, stories we tell ourselves, similar reactions that arise during certain kinds of moments and situations.
And we’re able to distance ourselves from those thoughts.
We’re able to watch them, observe them, notice them from a distance, with some separation.
And with that separation, we’re able to see that those thoughts aren’t us. They arise and move through us.
They may be strong and enticing and they may pull us in. We may get sucked in, wrapped up in them, lost in them, for a while—but they’re not us, and they’re not who we are.
We see the nuances, the distinctions, the way that sometimes those thoughts and feelings don’t mean what we think they mean, how there may be a deeper layer, something we hadn’t been able to see or understand before.
We may learn, for example, how to discern between different kinds of fear—fear that is protecting us from harm and fear that comes from the discomfort of the unknown and the unfamiliar, from doing something that we’ve never done.
We begin to see how we project our own ideas out onto the world, how we create stories about ourselves and the world around us and then live according to those stories.
We see that the mind isn’t a static, permanent thing but rather shifting and moving. How it can be restless and relentless. We learn the ways the mind reacts, how it shifts, how it resists. We learn its patterns and its tendencies.
Through observing our mind, we gain awareness. And this allows us to more consciously choose how we move in the world. Instead of always automatically reacting to our thoughts and feelings and beliefs, we’re able to choose how we want to act in the moment.
As we watch our thoughts, we learn about them and we learn about ourselves.
Through observing our mind, we free ourselves.
We find openness. Space.
We free ourselves from knee-jerk reactions and habits and patterns that don’t serve us.
We discover beliefs we have that limit us, the ways we may hold ourselves back without even realizing it.
We gain clarity and insight.
We learn how to turn inward, to discover the truths that lie beneath the thoughts that we think.
Through observing our mind and our inner experience, we learn about ourselves.
We allow ourselves the opportunity to see and learn and understand.
We create space. We create distance.
We allow awareness to arise within us.
And we give ourselves the opportunity to move with more awareness, to move more consciously and intentionally.
~
AUTHOR: LISA ERICKSON
IMAGE: ANASTASIYA VRAGOVA/PEXELS
This account does not have permission to comment on Elephant Journal.
Contact support with questions.