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Train of thoughts, and of silence

If you have ever tried to look at your thoughts, you would have noticed that there are many thoughts happening during a day. Scientists have shown in average we produce about 6200 thoughts per day. They float in our minds like clouds on a windy day, one after the other big and small, bright and dark, sometimes even very subtle we barely notice them as clouds. And there is the phrase 'train of thoughts'. However, our cloud simile would be more appropriate as each carriage in a train would be more or less similar to the one before, thoughts on the other hand are markedly dissimilar, like clouds. There are never two clouds, together similar to each other.


clouds on a sunny day

If you are watching in, at your thoughts, like on your last vacation, in a shade of a tree. You will be disturbed by these thoughts, sometimes so much so that you wouldn't have time to enjoy the beautiful sceneries. The trees or the waves or the chirping of birds, spark a cloud after cloud that you miss the next moment, moment after moment you will bounce back and forth between reality and imaginary.


A yellow bird on white flowers

Let's imagine you wanted otherwise. Let's imagine you wanted to look at a waterfall and feel everything it has to offer. Imagine you wanted to carve it into your memory that you could go back to it from anywhere. How can you do that without your clouds. How can we enjoy our day out in the moment of silence, when the mind is playing exactly the opposite game?


A waterfall

Remember the law of attraction? Positive nature of thoughts can attract positive outcomes. Let's be blind followers for a moment and forget that this doesn't work. Let's be a yes man (2008) for a moment and believe it works. If that is the truth, what we should be doing. We should focus on the silence, right? How, can we focus on the silence when there are thoughts keep coming back?


Look at the sky again, now look at the clouds. If clouds are the thoughts, where is the silence? Its everything else, silence is there before the cloud, silence is there after the cloud, silence is there in the background of the cloud.


empty yellow cafeteria chairs in an open space

Now, again back to our minds. Now you should know where silence is. If you didn't get it let me help. Silence is there before every thought, silence is there after every thought, silence is there even during thoughts. It's just we are too much focused-on thoughts we lose the silent silence. Thoughts are there only because there is silence in the first place. If there is no sky, there would be no clouds. Focus on the gaps in between, focus on everything else except the thoughts and you will find silence in anywhere, at any time.


Well, I haven't used the train of thoughts analog as it would be difficult to see gaps of silence. If it is really a train, I suggest wait until it slows down to see it.


You may also like reading: What is mindfulness? (A fine definition)

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