I am no longer held hostage to my thoughts

Have you ever noticed the incessant chatter of your mind? We notice it most when we move into meditation and the silence, or go to bed at night – I do anyway! The last thing my mind wants to do is be quiet! It is like – ah, now I have your attention, and off it goes! Do you identify with this?

Michael Singer, author of The Untethered Soul and published in Unity Magazine, writes about this. He writes about ‘the maniac’ that lives inside our heads – these thoughts that dictate, criticise and chatter away. Truthfully, when I read that statement it made me laugh. To help us find some distance from this experience, he says to imagine these thoughts as a person outside of us. How would you respond if you sat next to someone who does not stop talking! Well, you wouldn’t keep sitting there for one thing. Yet we sit with the incessant thoughts that keep us stuck in our heads and out of the silence. To my thoughts, I now say, with love and laughter – enough already. This is done!

So how do we switch off from this incessant chatter? We learn to recognise that we are not these thoughts. We are the witness, the observer, who notices the thoughts. The thoughts are a product of our personality. The silence is where we access our spirituality and the beauty, power, love and grace that is God. Indeed, we can only truly experience God in the silence.
I invite you to start noticing your thoughts as the witness, the Self that is beyond thought. As we learn to detach from our personality-driven thinking, we make space to know our divinity – this is the power of being in the silence. It is why Unity teaches it as a core practice.

I know how important this is for me right now. This is why Silent Unity will be leading a one-day workshop on Zoom entitled, “The Path of Peace” and I will be leading a meditation class, all designed to access this glorious silence.

Are you interested in exploring this further with us? Click through to the website for more details.

Today, let us each commit to start the practice of being the observer of our thoughts, not the victim of our thoughts – now there is a challenge I set myself too!

Rev. Kimerie Mapletoft