Catching myself thinking a thought which was not mine
I was standing at the sink when I caught myself thinking a thought which was not 'my' thought. I am pretty sure it was my mother's thought: an ancient complaint, which she would mutter out loud - unaware that it was being transmitted to her daughters who were sitting at the little white table table in the corner, scribbling math problems into composition books, eating Cheerios, reading Madeleine L'Engle novels..I'm sure that my mother was unaware of the thought - and unaware that she'd picked it up, probably from HER mother, beside some other sink, years earlier.
This morning, when I noticed the thought,I noticed other things.I noticed that, on thinking it, my breath had changed, becoming shorter. My response to that thought had made me gasp - and hold my breath.I noticed the quality of the thought - how it FELT inside of my own energy: different, alien. It had an ancient and brittle quality to it - a texture like the fragile paper on which really old family photos were printed. Brown, breaking apart at the edges.I'm doing this quite a lot lately - noticing, listening. And I know that this is part of opening, part of learning to listen. It's also a part of this teaching I'm receiving (and giving to myself) and asking for (and responding to).As each thought comes, I have the same response: I am surprised. "Why THAT doesn't sound like me at all!!"And then I am curious: "Well, where DID it come from?"And more thoughts come to answer that question: stories if blame (like the one with which I opened this post), stories of concern (like how having this thought sucks or makes me less perfect) which lead to more thoughts, more stories. Shame. Blame.And then I am confused or more often, annoyed, "Ugh! I don't have time for this distraction Get this STUPID thought out of me!!"But sometimes, on good days, like this one, i catch myself: and I exhale.I open again. I listen again. And my breath softens.And I laugh. "If that is not my thought," I realize, "then I don't have to do ANYTHING with it. I do not have to understand it or know where it came from or chase it away."I can simply let it go by, like all the other thoughts that are not mine.So, this morning, I blessed that little thought - which transformed it from something that I needed to think and wonder and worry about, into something that was no concern of mine.And it floated by.All part of a thread of awakening to my own thoughts and learning to meet them, one at a time, with breath.