Hello and welcome back to practicing human, the podcast where every day we're getting a little better at life.

I'm your host, Corey Muscarra, and in today's episode we're going to talk about eliminating thoughts.

More to come on that in a moment, first let's settle in together with the sound of the bells.

Okay, eliminating thoughts, a very controversial podcast title.

Well, provocative, let's say, mainly because if you listen to this podcast, you know I am not a proponent of trying to eliminate your thoughts, especially taking that orientation within your meditation practice.

This is one of the biggest misconceptions about meditation that you're supposed to sit down, clear your mind, and that's where your piece will come from.

And if you have been listening, you know that it's much more about learning to observe your thoughts, notice the nature of your thoughts, be able to see that who you are separate from your thoughts, to see that thoughts come and go, they pass, they're impermanent, and all of that is what actually leads to a deep sense of peace.

And so instead of trying to eliminate thoughts, we practice being with them, being aware of them.

And if we're focusing on something else, like the breath, we notice the thought when it pulls us away, and then we bring our attention back.

And that's the foundational practice that I stand by in relationship to thoughts.

However, we can play around with thoughts, and if we feel inspired too, and if we already have this foundational practice in place, we can work with trying to eliminate thoughts, at least for a period of time.

What I mean by eliminate thoughts is really focus in such a way that we're not letting thoughts bubble up, or as soon as they do, or as soon as the mind is intending to think we capture it, and then we come right back to what we're doing.

And so this is a more aggressive orientation.

And the reason we might do this is just to play around with holding what we could call a bear attention with experience.

Where we're not letting ourselves get caught up in the story, the ideas, the beliefs about the experience, we're just coming back to a raw attention.

Now if we do this prematurely, and we just go, no thoughts, no thoughts, no thoughts, bad thoughts.

Well, that doesn't give us the opportunity to understand the nature of thoughts, it creates more tension in our minds and our bodies, and it ends up working against our path to internal peace and even insight and awakening.

That's why I don't recommend it as a foundational practice.

But if it's practiced within a larger understanding of what the practice is about, it can be something that is fun to play with, let's say.

So the way I like to do this is I do it as an eye open practice.

Your eyes don't need to be open, they can be closed.

But I like eyes open because I like to focus on one thing that I see.

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