Why Our Thoughts Are Just Like Bubbles

My job as as an “Insightful Living Mentor” is to explain to my clients how the Human Mind works and why they get to experience life the way they do.

While it’s, at times, easy for them to grasp the simplicity of the system, I often encounter resistance from their side.

“What do you mean I’ll never stop thinking?” my clients would usually ask in despair.

My heart really goes out to them as their frustration is a very familiar feeling to me.

It reminds me of my younger years, when I felt I was just drowning in my own thoughts the whole time.

It got to a point when my head would just hurt, right from the moment I opened my eyes. Or perhaps it never really stopped and I just got used to the pain even as I slept.

What a relief it was when I first saw how our mind really operates.

I felt free for the first time in my life.

My shoulders relaxed and my head stopped pounding.

I resisted too, though, to how simple the truth behind life is.

I just really refused to accept it.

“So, are you saying I just wasted my whole life trying to stop thinking and I didn’t need to? This is not on, I want a refund!” – I used to angrily bark at my mentors.

While it was clear that I was not going to get that time back, I had the choice to stay low or fly high.

I chose to fly.

How do I explain thoughts to my clients?

I simply describe human beings like “living bubble machines” and thoughts like soap bubbles.

Remember as a kid having fun making million and millions of bubbles?

Remember how you looked in awe to the very big ones and just dismissed the smaller ones?

There was always the very annoying tiny ball though, wasn’t there?

The one that refused to pop and just lingered around…only to quickly vanish moments later.

That is exactly what our thoughts are.

Little balls.

Massive balls.

Ugly ones and pretty ones.

Our personal bubble machine will be turned on the day we’re born (although some believe it’s way before then…but that’s another story for another time!) and will come to a stop the day we die.

Our lives will be spent thinking millions of thoughts, which will continually bubble up without us even knowing most of the time.

The majority of them will appear and then disappear, rather instantaneously.

Some thoughts, though, will enter our Consciousness and will hover around for a bit. Whether they are nice thoughts or ugly ones, they usually are the ones that are really significant to us. So much so that they will become “habitual thinking” and soon enough we’ll be swallowed up by a gigantic ball and we may not then be able to see life as it really is.

The one thing that makes all our thoughts the same is that they will come and they will go.

Every single one.

The beauty of this fun little machine is that it creates new bubbling thoughts all the time.

Even when you really don’t like some of the bubbles you are making, you know that sure enough, prettier ones will be on the way.

And when we understand this fundamental truth, life becomes slightly easier.

Clients will often ask why we think.

I don’t know.

I don’t have an answer for that, same as anyone else.

What I do know is that we can turn our mind into an enemy or a very loyal friend.

I also know that we are never stuck with the same thoughts.

We have been granted, despite the mystery of it all, the ability to continuously produce fresh thoughts.

And that is our saving grace.

When we really see this, it will make sense to be OK with whatever bubble we get because we’ll be far more interested in the bubble-making game than the bubbles themselves.

We’ll be OK with thoughts rising, staying a bit and then puff…gone.

No thought will have a particular meaning anymore, and we’ll be able to sense the silent space between thoughts.

That’s how I explain thought to my clients and how they learn to quiet their mind down.

Antonia Lyons

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