Meditation has repeatedly taught me to attach less to my negative thoughts–anxiety, sadness, lack of courage, self-pity, pain…. To have compassion for them, to embrace them, and yet to attach less to them.
I have come, with practice, to realize these are passing clouds, dark ones in a vast blue sky of the mind.
They are passing–here, and then gone–to be replaced by new thoughts, some more uplifting than others.
The key, for me at least, seems to be to not obsess about these ominously dark clouds, these negative thoughts and feelings.
To love the depth of the sky and the mind with these rich complexities of hues and thoughts.
To accept and embrace all that comes to the sky or mind, including, and sometimes most difficultly, the darker thoughts and feelings.
To truly love them with compassion, accepting, gently holding them in the heart, and eventually letting them fade away.
To detach as best I can and not have them shape too much of my actions or words.
At times I thankfully realize I am not really any of these thoughts or feelings–negative or positive.
I feel myself, on these fortunate occasions, being the expansive sky, the thought-free mind.
I expand into it whole-heartedly watching the menajerie of clouds or thoughts at play, coming and going across this beautiful field that contains and holds all, with no judgement, for a time, in its stillness.
The Every Day Yogi 