I’m not assuming too much, am I, when I say that we all have thoughts running through our heads for most of the day? How many of us have wished that these thoughts would cease, at least for a while, and give us some blessed moments of peace?


I know I am one of those people, and through many years of meditation, have tried many techniques for either stopping or at least lessening those thoughts. And there has been some success during the meditations themselves, but nothing that has carried over into my everyday life.


The other day I sat for another period of quietness without employing any particular meditation technique. During that time I began simply watching my thoughts without trying to change them. Of course some of these thoughts caught my attention, and carried me away for a bit, but I was able to return to simply watching them. They covered just about every topic on the planet!


But after a while, something unexpected happened. The thoughts started to break up into fragments, with the fragments having nothing to do with the fragment before or after them. It was as if this flow of thoughts, which can be called an autocommentary, was breaking up into its component parts. As if the mechanism of the stream was revealing itself. It was like watching a machine gradually turn off and run out of power. 


I also noticed that I was simply the witness to all this. I wasn’t applying any energy to this process except as an observer. These fragments were definitely not mine!


Is it possible that these thoughts running through my head have never been mine? Has the mechanism that has kept these thoughts running been, well, implanted into my consciousness somehow? 


One thing is for sure as a result of witnessing this. I am not as identified with the autocommentary as I have been previously. Sure, I do get caught up in the thoughts often, but there is some wisdom in me now that knows this entire mechanism is not of my making. It’s more a product of the type of interference we have been experiencing during this lifetime. The personal nature of this stream of thoughts is what makes it so difficult to disengage from them. 


The blessing of all this is not having to take any of these thoughts as seriously as I have done previously, which opens up more inner space in which the true purpose of my mind, that of intuitive knowing and inspiration, can take precedence.