BURNED OUT BY OVER-THINKING

Yogis I invite you to take a moment to consider how much tension your body creates in the process of thinking and how much energy is consumed. In order to maintain focus on a line of thinking, to deduce, to consider, to entertain, we create tension in the body. It’s ever so subtle, but nevertheless it is there. This tension is necessary to employ when we are focused on a task, when we are doing something that requires directed attention. However, we’ve become so over identified with doing something…anything..everything, that we’ve forgotten that not doing is equally important when endeavoring to cultivate balance and healing in our lives.

The more overwhelmed and burned out we are by our thinking mind, the more that subtle tension builds. It builds slowly over time, year after year. We begin to accept this tension as a “reality of growing older”, or as a byproduct of our responsibilities. The more stories we identify with, the more that tension builds. The less relief we have from the process of thinking the more that tension solidifies.

I became more in tune with this thought provoked tension as I became more practiced in meditation. It is the kind of tension you didn’t even know was there, until it started to lift. I came to realize it’s not the appearance and presence of thoughts that cause tension, its the attachment to the thoughts that causes tension. As I release my attachments to my thoughts in meditation, I become more relaxed. Relaxed in a way that is truly freeing. Relaxed in a way that lets pure awareness, divine guidance and intuition have its place at the table of my consciousness.

Thoughts will always arise moment after moment, that is unavoidable as far as I can tell. Through the practice of meditation we can train ourselves to gain distance from them. To observe them as passing phenomena, like clouds moving through the sky. Separating ourselves from our thoughts in this way reduces the over-affiliation with the mind and allows us the opportunity to release this subtle, but all pervading tension. When this tension lifts, we unveil our unfettered awareness, our personalized consciousness. With a deeper relationship cultivated to the personalized consciousness comes a connection to universal consciousness and alignment with the flow of natural law.

ART: Hanin Abouzeid

Image: Hanin Abouzeid