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Are you a compulsive thinker, constantly stuck in your head? Are your concepts and judgments getting in the way of your relationship with yourself and others? ‘The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly,’ says Eckhart Tolle. ‘Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly – you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you.’ Believing that you’re your mind is a delusion: don’t let the instrument take over.

Listen

Tolle advises to start listening to the voice in your head. ‘Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old audiotapes that have been playing in your head for perhaps many years.’ By doing this, you start ‘watching the thinker’.

As you listen to what’s happening inside your head, do so without judgment. ‘Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come again through the back door.’

Tolle says that you’ll soon be able to recognise the voice: you’ll realise that you are there watching it and listening to it. The reward of this exercise is that you’ll not only become conscious of the thought but of yourself as the witness of the thought.

The end of compulsive thinking

Tolle explains that you’ll feel a conscious presence, what he refers to as your deeper self, as you listen to your thoughts. ‘The thought then loses its power over you and quickly subsides, because you are no longer energising the mind through identification with it. This is the beginning and the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking.’

As a thought subsides you will have a gap of no-thought which can bring a moment of peace and stillness. As you practice this no-thinking, the gaps will become longer and the peace will deepen. This is ‘the beginning of your natural state’.

How it feels to be in your ‘natural state’

With gaps in thought and greater inner peace, you can start to feel a sense of connectedness within yourself. ‘You are much more alert, more awake than in the mind-identified state,’ says Tolle. You become fully present while the body becomes more fully alive.

Whenever you find that you’re trapped in your thoughts, you can also create a gap by focusing your attention on the present moment as it is. You can become highly aware when you’re ‘not thinking’ which, as Tolle points out, is the essence of meditation.

Practice

To practice, Tolle advises to take any routine activity (that you normally see as a means to and end) and give it your full attention. The activity will then become an end in itself. Pay attention to every step you take while you walk, for example.

Use your senses so that you are totally present. Notice your breathing and how it feels when you touch something. Tolle says ‘the degree of peace that you feel within’ is a measure of your success.

Tags: lifestyle