Power of Awareness I

This week’s words are from an article in Lion’s Roar magazine by Diana Winston, director of mindfulness education at UCLA. They are from an article entitled “Mindfulness: The Power of Awareness.”

Thoughts are like trains. We get on a train (I blew it today at work…) and it leaves the station. The next thing we know, we are twenty miles down the track – twenty minutes into disturbing, predictive, globalizing, or catastrophic ruminations (so, I’ll probably get fired…).
With mindfulness we have some choices. When we realize we’re on the train, we can get off[!] – it doesn’t matter how long we’ve been ruminating. Or, we can never get on the train in the first place – a thought arises, we see it as a thought, and we stay on the platform while the train passes.

How do we do this? Sometimes simply the power of noticing our thoughts in the moment is enough to help relieve them. Often we harangue ourselves without really noticing we are doing it., so this recognition is key. One more analogy: You know those thought bubbles that cartoon characters have over their heads? Imagine your critical thought is in a thought bubble. Now you can take the pin of mindfulness and pop it.

Ah, sweet relief.