When I first started discovering the power of meditation and how it exercises the brain, I started to realize the importance of the exercise itself. While I've tried to explain this exact thought to everyone during my lifetime, I have finally found the words to push this knowledge through my words of wisdom. I have been reading a book on spirituality lately, and something the author wrote about had me pondering for hours.
"Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don't realize this, because everyone is suffering from it."
... to think about this... EVERYONE? its so true! Meditation is something people scowl from and fear. Nobody wants to yet has the time to sit down and separate themselves from the madness inside their head, and because of this, it has become normal -- which scares me. We have so many mental illnesses and forms of it out there, and I'm starting to think its because of THIS subject entirely. People do not even realize that the separation between ourselves and our thoughts is a real thing, they may think its something they have only heard of. However, with practice and repetition, this brain exercise can save lives.
For if you cannot separate yourself from the madness inside of your head, it therefore becomes destructive. Your thoughts and the process involved create an identity for you, one you begin to think is your identity. If you don't take the time to separate yourself from all of this, you cannot truly know oneself -- and that discovery has become clear to me tonight.
This metaphor has always helped me when learning how to meditate and become mindful during everyday life:
View your thoughts as a waterfall. If you can step behind the waterfall and watch it fall, you can separate yourself from the traffic and chaos occurring in that little space behind your forehead.
Take the time to learn to separate yourself from the mental chaos, and you will learn to love yourself.
This is such a profound & complicated subject, and this is the best I can do in this moment at putting it into words and making sense of it.