Letting Thought Clouds Come and Go

Tara Brach leads a guided body scan meditation on Letting Thought Cloud Come and Go. At some point, the mind has drifted into a thought cloud. It's the perfect time to wake up and rest in openness that's larger than thoughts and let the clouds come and go.

In this guided meditation, Tara Brach guides listeners through a body scan and into a deep sense of awareness of the energies moving through both body and mind. As we begin to witness our thoughts as if they were clouds, we come to realize that we are not our thoughts – that we are more like the open sky, the space within which thoughts come and go.

The Cluttered, Cloudy Sky

We might consider the mind (when caught up in rampant thought) to be like a cloudy day. The sky, or our open awareness, is cluttered with thoughts that impede us from connecting with the vastness and clear-sightedness that is ever-present regardless of the weather. When our attention is fixated on our thoughts, we may experience feelings of anxiety, stress, and other heavy emotions; however, as we learn to relate to these clouds in a different way, coming from them with the knowingness of the sky, the heaviness begins to clear and we might find ourselves coming into a greater embodiment of calmness and clarity.

Witnessing Thoughts as Clouds

To practice this new way of relating to our thoughts, we can listen to this ‘Letting Thought Clouds Come and Go’ or we can take a few moments of silence to mindfully observe whatever feelings, emotions, thoughts, or beliefs are passing through us. Each time we observe the presence of something that clouds our clarity of vision, we can tune back into the breath or into the vast space inside the body, grounding ourselves in a broader perspective of the present moment.