HOW DO I STOP THOUGHTS WHEN I MEDITATE? YOU CAN’T!

Meditation is the art of witnessing thought without attachment. It’s the practice of allowing thoughts to arise and float by, like clouds drifting across an endless blue sky—uninterrupted, untouched, and free. In meditation, we come to realize we are not our thoughts; we are the observer, the vast awareness that holds them all.

If you really pay attention in meditation, you notice something.  You don’t actually think your thoughts. They just appear, much like a scent drifting into your awareness. Like walking past a bakery and catching the smell of fresh bread. You didn’t create that aroma; you simply perceived it.

Thoughts arise in the same way. Perhaps it can be helpful to think of the mind as just another one of our senses—picking up impressions, pockets of information, like smells or sounds, that arise and pass without us having to claim them or attach meaning. We can even simply have the experience without needing to label it at all.

The mind is like the sky, and thoughts are clouds passing through. You didn’t create the clouds, and you don’t have to identify with them. And you also don’t have to hold onto them.

Ego and Attachment to Thoughts

When we identify with our thoughts and attach to them, we give our ego’s permission to kick into overdrive, transforming them into a story. That’s how the ego operates. And when the ego latches onto a thought, it often serves the purpose of making you feel more right than someone else. It generally seeks to make someone or something wrong.

You stub your toe. Immediately, the mind rushes in: "Oh, she left that there. That’s why I stubbed my toe. She always does this!" And off you go… The event was simply stubbing your toe and you can very simply allow the emotion to pass.  But if we attach a thought to that emotion, it becomes something entirely different—something personal, something that we have now given meaning, something fueled by a thought that is now attached to the ego, looking for someone to blame.

Thoughts—the endless commentary of the mind—only have power when you identify with them, believe them, when you feed them. They are not reality. They are not truth. They are fleeting. They arise and dissolve—unless you hold onto them.

The Real Practice of Meditation

The real practice of meditation isn’t stopping thoughts. It’s recognizing them for what they are and letting them pass without attaching.

So, how do we meditate if we can’t stop thinking? You simply become the observer.

Again and again, you bring yourself back—back to breath, back to the body, back to the present moment.

When we first start meditation, we sit, we breathe. We go off with a thought, we become aware, and we come back to breath. Again. And again. And again.

At first, it takes an enormous amount of energy to stay conscious, to simply observe everything going on in our mind. People often think they’re doing meditation wrong when they go unconscious and follow thoughts or experience agitation in the body. But that’s exactly what meditation is. You catch yourself going unconscious thousands of times, you never go unconscious again.

Over time, you notice you’re less reactive, less caught in mental loops. You stop identifying with every passing thought.

The Transformation Meditation Brings

This is the transformation meditation brings—not the elimination of thought, but freedom from it. The freedom to choose.

After we embark on a meditative journey, you quickly realize you were never your thoughts to begin with. You were always the vast, open awareness in which thoughts arise and dissolve.

And when we choose the thoughts we feed, we are changing the chemicals, hormones, and neural pathways within our body.

Our thoughts influence the biochemistry of our entire system, affecting everything from our stress levels to our immune response. When we consciously shift our thinking, we can literally rewire our brain, creating new patterns of health, joy, and calm. We become the architects of our own reality, shaping our emotional state and physical health with every thought we nurture.

So stop trying to stop thinking. Just stop feeding every thought that arises.