Awareness of thoughts is a powerful meditation method that can bring clarity, tranquility, and insight to the mind.
It can be difficult at first to recognize thoughts and to tell them apart from emotions. Thinking is the same as speaking, but silently, in the mind [1]. This initial insight uncovers many others. For example, language provides the basic structure of thought. All thoughts, from the trivial to the complex, are linguistic in nature. The sentence is the discrete unit of both speech and thought. It is not that you are putting your thoughts into words; rather, the words are your thoughts.
Thus, the way to be aware of a thought is to observe its full natural language structure within the mind. A complete thought has the form of a grammatically complete sentence; in other words, sentences are the atomic elements of thought. If your thoughts seem to consist of just phrases or scattered words, you may be interrupting or constricting them, never letting them finish. You are missing something essential – the structure, the grammar, the completeness of thought.
All languages have grammars, which suggests that grammar corresponds to something inherent not only in language, but in thought itself. Grammar is not a prescription for a “proper” form of thought, but rather a description of completeness of thought. You can use incorrect grammar or any slang you like, as long as the complete thought is observed.
The mind is constantly cutting off its own thoughts. As a thought begins, if it is judged as impermissible, or insignificant, it is instantly preempted. Over time this becomes a habit: since you have always thought according to this pattern, you now do it automatically. It results in a clinging to the thoughts. Unless and until you become consciously aware of the habit, it cannot be broken.
Once you know this basic characteristic of thought, it is time to implement the method. Sit silently and think in full, grammatically complete sentences, each thought separate and discrete. Simultaneously, slow down the thoughts to half their normal speed, or even slower.
In this method, the focus is on the structure and form of thoughts, rather than the meaning behind them. The meaning is embedded within the form, not separate from it. The mind tries to think multiple thoughts at once by suppressing structure, but then thoughts become tangled, muddled, and anxious. The defining criterion for the present, real thought is that it is the one occurring as a full language sentence. Choose only this present thought and follow through on it deliberately, with gaps between sentences – just as you would if you spoke the thought out loud.
The raw, original form of the thought is always linguistic, and then, as a second pass, the mind extracts patterns from these raw thoughts for the purposes of organization, simplification, connection, and analysis. However, in this extraction process, the original form of the thought is destroyed and discarded, at the expense of clarity. To be aware of thoughts, observe the original, unprocessed language structure of them.
Be unconditionally aware of whatever thought is occurring to you, whether simple or complex. The particular content of the thought doesn’t matter. The entire thinking process has to become conscious, through awareness of every thought small and large, not just certain types of thoughts, or just important thoughts. Let no thought remain hidden in the shadows, however inconsequential or uncomfortable. No one is watching or hearing your thoughts, so you can give complete freedom to them.
In the paradigm of this method, thoughts are the only things that exist in the mind, and compressed or tangled thoughts appear as emotions. As you clarify and elaborate the corresponding thoughts, the associated emotions dissipate.
If you speak more than one language, keep in mind that thoughts may come in any of your fluent languages. Certain styles of thoughts may only come in certain languages, solely due to linguistic reasons.
If you realize a little late that some thought has gone by automatically, without your awareness, go back and observe the complete sentence structure of the thought. With a little practice, this deliberation can extend to new thoughts in real time, and bring an astounding clarity and steadiness of mind.
If the method is working, your thoughts will become simultaneously crystal clear, unwavering, and calm. The gaps between thoughts will become deeper and richer. Thoughts will become fewer and less intense, less compulsive, yet they will be more authentic. The mental clarity and depth of insight brought on by this method are unparalleled. It is also an essential counterbalance for the methods of being and allowing.
Allow the thoughts to become slower, the gaps between to become larger. Finally, allow the thoughts to subside completely, and remain in the tranquil state of being that is undisturbed by thoughts. This is the ultimate goal of this method – to go beyond thoughts – but first the thoughts have to become clear and sharp. Advanced meditators are able to abide in this ocean of thoughtless, flawless awareness as long as they want, and venture deliberately up to the surface waves of thoughts only when necessary. But such an advanced state may take years of practice and perseverance.
We give an identity to the stream of thoughts – “me” – but when they are seen separately, there is no “me” in the thoughts, it is just a stream of individual thoughts.
This method is difficult because it doesn’t seem like there is anything wrong with the thoughts; if anything, it is the feelings which seem problematic. Identification is stronger with the thoughts than with feelings; feelings are noticed, but thoughts are not even noticeable unless you make a deliberate, conscious effort. The way to see the worth of this method is to exhaust the allowing and being methods until they don’t work anymore, and then try this method as a last resort. That is how I finally discovered it.
We communicate only some of our thoughts to others, and make an effort to express our intended meaning fully. Thoughts which are not communicated to anyone else remain blurry, anxious, and ill-defined. The reason for this is that we never observe their complete linguistic structure. Without the powerful, expressive structure of language, thoughts merge together into an amorphous cloud of anxiety, confusion, anger, hatred. Unexpressed thoughts remain stunted and weak. Thus, even if there appears to be a fog or cloud of tangled thoughts and emotions in the mind, know that this fog is composed entirely of distinct, though unconscious, thoughts. Awareness of individual thoughts dispels the fog.
It is a common experience that when you explain or teach something to someone, you yourself understand it better. This happens because you have consciously expressed your thoughts about the subject in an effort to communicate them.
Even certain psychotherapy methods benefit from the effects of thought awareness. When asked questions by a psychotherapist, you have to make your thoughts communicable — thoughts that are often difficult and that you may have been suppressing and ignoring — and thereby these thoughts become clear even to you for the first time. Often, the simple act of expressing your thoughts in full language helps more than any response or advice given by the therapist. The method of journaling works for the same reason, because you have written down your thoughts in complete language. Knowing the root mechanism at play, one can implement thought awareness directly in order to fully cleanse, uplift, and clarify the mind.
The method can be summarized as: think in full sentences, one at a time, at 70% speed.
Note: It is possible that some people may not think linguistically at all, or could find it very difficult to form thoughts linguistically. I don’t know whether this method can work for everyone. Also, it is possible that this method may only work well as a complement or counterpart to the allowing and being methods; it may only work at the end of a full iteration of those methods.
Footnotes:
1. This is not the neuroscientific definition of thinking, but rather a narrower definition specific to the purpose of this meditation method.