Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, I want to talk about the progression from being unaware of thoughts to developing a meditative awareness of thoughts. So for many of us, when we're coming to a meditation practice, we come to it from a place of not actually being aware of the thoughts moving through our minds. The thoughts are just coming and going. Many thousands throughout the day, and they're influencing our emotions, what we feel and subsequently how we're behaving.

And the majority of that is happening on automatic pilot, which is, is normal, especially if you don't have much training in this. And so the first transition that we go to from that unconsciousness to awareness is just a basic awareness that, oh, there are thoughts moving through my mind and I can notice them as they're arising. This is a really key insight in meditation practice that happens very early on. In fact, for me, I remember it. The first time I ever meditated, it was really profound that I could watch thoughts moving through my mind without being caught up in them.

I could watch the tone of the thoughts. I could watch what they were saying to me and what I should be thinking and what I should be feeling. I was like, whoa, there is so much going on here that I'm never paying attention to. And so it was really revelatory for me just to be able to see that. And it is for many people.

And so in this stage, you go from unaware to aware. And the way we can think of that is I'm watching my thoughts. The sense of you becomes awareness itself. There's the I that is awareness and there's the thoughts which is something that you can observe. And this can go on for very long periods of time in the meditation and really for much of our meditation career.

We can take this orientation. But there is another maturing perspective that happens that is more akin to a deeper meditative awareness than this sense of there's an I watching thoughts. And this is the shift from I'm watching thoughts to watching is happening. Watching is happening. So see if you can just feel the distinction there.

I'm watching my thoughts to watching is happening. In the first one, awareness is still kind of like a sense of self. It's a sense of, I. Just I'm more in the backdrop. In the second one, the awareness is almost something that we're watching.

It's like, oh, there are thoughts happening, and then there's awareness of the thoughts happening. And it's all unfolding really without much of a sense of me or an I doing anything in relationship to it. It's just arising moment by moment by moment. And the reason I say this is a maturing meditative awareness is because what is happening here is that your sense of self is becoming more and more expansive. In some sense, it's becoming smaller and smaller because we're reducing that the sense of like, oh, there's an I who is doing the thinking and watching the thinking and really dropping into this much more spacious consciousness that's just, oh, there's a thought.

Oh, there's awareness of thoughts. There's thoughts and awareness of thoughts is happening rather than I have to be aware of thoughts. The thoughts are there and the awareness is just happening organically. So it's a, it's a subtle distinction. And Tara Brach says something similar where she says, oh, awareness is meditating.

Not I'm meditating, which is sort of the perspective of I'm watching my thoughts, but awareness is meditating. So awareness is just doing the practice. See how this lands for you. It might be a perspective you want to drop into your meditation. It might not feel like the right time and it might not land well and that could be less about you and more about how I'm explaining it to you.

But it is a subtle distinction and it can be something can, can shift how your meditation unfolds and even some of the sense of doing that can come up in meditation. Like I have to do this, I have to be aware of this. I have to be good at this. All of that can reinforce a sense of ego, a sense of self. And what we're aiming for is just more and more of a sense of like, what is the fundamental nature of experience.

There's thoughts, there's emotions, there's sensations and there's awareness of the whole thing. And all of that can just unfold and we can become the ultimate observer of it all. And even the part of us that's observing, we could stand behind that and watch that happen as well. So see if you can play around with this in your meditation practice today. Thank you for your practice and let's settle in for today's meditation.