Like Clouds Drifting Across the Sky
Learn to experience your thoughts as "thoughts" rather than "you"
Imagine a cloud drifting across the sky. Clouds can be many things—pretty, strange, evocative, even menacing—but they all have one thing in common: they’re temporary. They don’t last forever.
We want to learn to watch the thoughts that drift through our minds as if we were watching clouds moving across the sky.
We don’t need to judge the thoughts in any way—for example by labeling them as “good” thoughts or “bad” thoughts, or “true” or “false.” We also don’t need to make any attempt to control them, just as we don’t tend to try to make clouds go away.
We just want to learn to watch them.
This is, admittedly, a bit trickier than it sounds. Unlike cloud-watching, when we turn our attention to noticing thoughts, our thoughts tend to pull us into their world, and in doing so pull us away from the world around us.
ACT calls that state “fusion.”
When you find yourself locked in rumination (for example, when a car cuts you off in traffic and you imagine chasing after the rude driver), you have fused with your thoughts.
Most of us spend a great deal of our lives in a state of fusion, and initially, you may feel you have little control over it.
That’s okay.
With time, you can develop the ability to notice when you have fused with your thoughts, and at that moment, you will likely become “defused,” at least at little bit. Sort of like a diver surfacing and taking a breath of air.
Of course, you will likely be hooked by another thought soon, but nevertheless: congratulations! You’ve become a thought-watcher.
The interesting thing about becoming an observer of your own mind is that you may find yourself becoming a lot more interested in doing things and a lot less interested in merely thinking about them.
That might prove valuable.
As you work through the exercises in the posts that follow, keep in mind this isn’t an exact science. Perhaps you will find something useful; perhaps not. It’s hard to say. But I hope you find the exercises at least a little interesting, and maybe even a tiny bit helpful.
What do you have to lose?
