Quietness Between Thoughts

Have you ever found yourself resisting a thought? Or noticed a thought and wondered where it came from? Thinking is a blessing and a curse. Thoughts make it possible for us to create, imagine, and solve problems. But when they control our experience of the world and we accept them without question they can skew our perspective of the world and cause stress. Practice finding the quietness between thoughts with this meditation.

Your thoughts are not you. You’re the one who observes, experiences, and gives meaning to them. We have more control over our thoughts and our experience of them than we’re aware of.

In this meditation, you’ll learn that by releasing your thoughts, you can find a quiet spot in your mind. This is where you can find yourself.

When to Use the Quietness Between Thoughts Technique

Use this meditation when your thoughts are so active that they seem to consume your whole awareness. This meditation will help you learn to find gaps between thoughts and bring your awareness to yourself in those gaps.

When you learn to observe your thoughts, and let them come and go on their own accord, you’ll find moments of profound peace in the space between your thoughts.

Why it Works

When we observe our thoughts without engaging with them, they lose their potency and start to fade. Thoughts gain power when we give them our attention. They also gain power when we try to resist them, or conversely, when we become fixated on them.

Giving your thoughts your attention is like throwing gasoline on fire. This meditation teaches you to change your focus and thus quiet your mind.

The Technique

While this meditation has a couple of steps, I think you’ll find that’s it’s not complicated. I find it does take practice though. First, allow yourself to relax and focus on breathing. Second, observe the thoughts that come up. As you notice your thoughts coming and going, bring your attention to the sliver of silence in your mind between those thoughts.

Relax and Breathe

• Sit in a relaxed position and close your eyes.
• Focus on your breathing, observing the flow of your breath and the accompanying sensations in your body as you breathe.

Just be aware of your experience. Whatever you experience, let it be. There is no need to control or change anything. Simply notice. (Over the next few weeks you’ll likely find that it will become easier to allow your mind to become quiet as you meditate.)

Observe Your Thoughts

• Observe your thoughts as they pass in and out of your awareness.
• Don’t resist thoughts that appear, even those that make you uncomfortable. Sometimes when you try to block a thought, your mind is drawn back to it.
• Observe your thoughts with a sense of curiosity, just as a birdwatcher views a bird from the distance.
  While thoughts have many triggers, such as physical sensation, emotion, memory, or even a habitual way of thinking, you are not your thoughts.
• When you observe your thoughts with objective awareness, you might notice that you can remain neutral and calm whether a thought is pleasurable or disturbing.
• Practice allowing thoughts to come and go without getting involved with them. You don’t have to finish a thought that comes up. Try letting a thought drop away without finishing it.

Notice What Happens as You Observe Your Thoughts

• As thoughts come to your awareness, simply continue to observe them.
• What happens to your thoughts when you observe them objectively?

When a thought fades away, what do you observe before the next thought arrives?

Experience the Quiet Space Between Thoughts

• Thoughts arise from nothingness and fade into nothingness, which is what you experience when one thought has faded, and the next thought has yet to arrive. You experience nothingness.
• Place your attention on this nothingness.
• This is your quiet space where you can find peace and quiet whenever you wish.
• With practice you can increase the time you spend in the quiet space.

What We Learned Today

By simply observing your thoughts, and becoming aware of the space between thoughts, you can slow your mind and experience peace.

Follow up to Quietness between Thoughts:
A Question that Comes Up Is

“I found it difficult to be quiet and observe my thoughts. What should I do?”

You may be stuck on the definition of “observe.” To observe your thoughts simply means to be aware of them. Sometimes people think that to observe their thoughts they must use effort. Instead of forcing yourself to be observant, relax and simply notice your thoughts as they pass through your mind.

If you find a specific technique doesn’t work for you, go to another meditation that you have more success with. One reason we give you a variety of meditations is to offer you a chance to explore possibilities and to find techniques that work best for you.

Although I encourage you to try all the meditations more than once, some techniques are bound to work better for you than others. For example, I personally found it difficult to notice any space between thoughts the first several times I tried this. Now I can relax and notice the thoughts as they come and go without effort.

Another thing to note with this meditation is that often the space between thoughts can be very fleeting, that is common.

To your health!