The ceaseless torrent of mind.

And the first lessons of the meditator.

Mind is a ceaseless, churning river of activity.

Not just yours. Not just the ADHD or ‘hyperactive’ mind, but all mind, since the conception of mind.

This is the first lesson of the meditator: the ordinary mind is unruly, uncontrollable and distracted. A torrent of thoughts that cannot be stopped.

Without awareness of the river, you mistake yourself for it.

Many, if not most, never develop this awareness, and so spend their entire lives identified with the activity of mind. They believe that meditating involves a cessation of thoughts, but this is a misconception.

Activity is the nature of mind.

The heart beats. Lungs breath. Mind thinks. Thought simply occur.

When you first sit to meditate, your experience will mostly consist of thinking with your eyes closed. This is one of your initial discoveries: just how difficult it is to fix attention on a single point. When you try, attention slips as if everything is coated in oil. Into the stream of thoughts you slip, and in the stream you stay. Maybe for seconds, but likely for minutes, until you realise that you’ve wandered, drifted, become caught up and taken away.

It’s this moment, the moment you realise you wandered, that you wake up.
You wake up from mind-wandering, and you return attention to the object of focus.

This is the foundation of practice.

Wandering, realising, gently returning, repeating.

Wander, wake up, return. Wander, wake up, return. Wander, wake up, return.

This process can be underscored by celebration. Critiquing yourself for wandering does little good but a reinforcement of the critic. In contrast, celebrating each ‘awakening’, each return, reinforces wakefulness, strengthens attention and infuses your practice with compassion. Meditation practice becomes a joy rather than a demand to add to the never-ending list of things you ‘should’ be doing.

Wander, wake up, return. The mind continues generating its river of thought, but you, the witness, the awareness of mind, are no longer fixed and tethered to mental activity.

The tether dissipates, and with it, the attachments and identifications you’ve held onto your entire life. What you thought you were begins to fade, and true Nature begins to be revealed within awareness.

A realisation gradually builds, though it can hit you quite suddenly. “I am not these thoughts. I am not the one thinking. These thoughts are… occurring. And I am seeing. I am witnessing. I am the witness. I am the space in which these thoughts occur, but I am not the thoughts themselves.”

In the absence of identification with the ego-centric self, the presence of something else is recognised. Something brilliant, luminous and enduring.

Pure awareness.

Without form, time, change, location, mass, beginning or end.

Pure, eternal awareness.

There’s no rush. The practice begins slowly, and you will likely return to your foundations many times in your life. I am. Now. Returning, after a great phase of forgetting.

I am grateful for this forgetting, for it makes remembrance quite sweet indeed.

Happy meditating 🧘🏽‍♂️📿

Namaste 🙏🏽 and Big Love ❤️