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 differentiate between thoughts and emotions. Thoughts are discrete, having clear and precise boundaries, whereas emotions are fluid and continuous.
Most importantly, language provides the basic structure of thought. In other words, thoughts cannot be broken down into smaller units than sentences of a language. All thoughts, from the trivial to the complex, are linguistic in nature. The sentence is the discrete unit of thought, whether or not it is spoken out loud. 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. A complete thought has the form of a grammatically complete sentence. If your thoughts seem to consist of just phrases or scattered words, you may have missed something essential – the structure, the grammar, the completeness of thought. You are trying to think too fast, interrupting and skipping through your thoughts rather than letting them finish.
All languages have grammars, which suggests that grammar corresponds to something inherent not only in language, but in thought itself. The role of grammar is not to prescribe a “proper” form of thought, but to describe completeness of thought. You can use incorrect grammar or any slang you like, as long as the complete thought is observed.
Once you understand this underlying mechanism of thought, it is time to implement the method. Sit silently and observe the full, grammatically complete structure of your thoughts. Don’t be hasty, don’t tumble over the thoughts, don’t interrupt a thought before it has completed, even if you have already guessed the meaning and purpose behind it.
In this method, the focus is on the structure of thoughts, rather than the meaning behind them. The meaning is embedded within the structure of the thoughts, not separate from it.
The raw, original form of the thought is always linguistic, and then, as a second pass, the mind extracts patterns from these source 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, and much is lost. 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.
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.
At this point, allow 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 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 simple: 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. 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.